THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Angie Marchese is Vice President of Archives & Exhibits at Graceland. Yes, that Graceland. Angie is in charge of the artifacts that Elvis Presley owned, used and lived with in his career, his personal life and his home. What a job!
We interviewed Angie a few years ago when she brought over many of the items she looks after. She's back now, with a new, larger selection of artifacts that will thrill Elvis fans of all ages. They're in an exhibition called Direct from Graceland: Elvis, in a new central London venue called the Arches London Bridge. So Angie, what's new?
We're in central London, right in the heart of the city. It's a brand new venue, and I don't know how they're going to top opening with Elvis after we're gone! We opened in October, and the exhibit has been hugely successful so we're really excited about being able to extend it throughout the summer. It's really good to do a longer piece on it this time.
The exhibition we curated at the O2 was a timeline. You started out in Tupelo, and you went through this entire career and life. This one we've curated differently, more thematically, so one room is Elvis in Hollywood, or Elvis the performer where you can see everything from Elvis on stage in '68 all the way through to 'Aloha from Hawaii'. The room that people seem to connect with the most is the one that we call 'Elvis, the man'. And that's where we really get into Graceland, and Lisa, and his army career - we have an amazing fashion exhibit in there too, as well as lots of personal items that were missing from the O2. We've even got the Jesus statue that was sat next to Elvis's bed, as a matter of fact when I went to go bring it to London, I had to go upstairs to get it because that's where it lives, in Elvis's bedroom. You really do get this real personal connection in that room.
The venue is unique, too, it has its own feel and its own history, and it adds a whole different element to the exhibition. It feels intimate, you're really up close and personal with everything.
You've used the word 'personal' several times, and it's personal for you too – you don't just work in a museum, you're actually in Elvis's home.
It's so fun working at Graceland. When I walk through that front door I sometimes take a moment to just stop and think about all the times Elvis walked through that front door, and all the people that he opened up the door for. Normally when I'm in the house, it's at night. I kick off my shoes by the front door and walk around the house, and I can imagine Elvis sitting on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table playing the guitar, or music coming from the music room or sitting at the dining room table having dinner, you almost can hear the action going on when you're in the room. It is a very personal look into someone's life. We tell people 'we're going to take you across the street and show you the jumpsuits and gold records and cars and everything that you want to see, but you're first going to have this very intimate connection with this person'. It feels like a real home with a real person. You can be in the Jungle Room, and you can just imagine what it was like to be there when Elvis was recording the The Jungle Room Sessions there, with all that activity going on.
You've had millions of people visit Graceland, do you see the same faces coming back?
We have Elvis Week and his birthday, they're eight months apart. Elvis Week is in August, it surrounds the anniversary of his passing, and that week is crazy. There's people everywhere, lots of activities and events going on. Then you roll around to Elvis's birthday celebration in January, which is a much smaller event, it's more relaxed, you get a chance to spend time with people. We're fortunate that we have those two events because it gives people 'bookends' to make repeat visits and do new things. Elvis kept reinventing himself every decade, from the '50s to the '60s to the '70s, and today, he's still doing that.
It's a lot of fun to see old faces, people who remember when they saw Elvis, but it's also great to see all the new faces, eating all of this up and absorbing everything, putting it on social media and doing TikToks about it, sharing their experience with people of their age, which is going to keep Elvis's legacy going on another generation. With the advancements in technology, the younger generation are fascinated and they go down these rabbit holes of information. It's all at their fingertips so they get a more rounded image of who Elvis was and his impact on pop culture. There's a fan group online that have an Elvis book club, they're reading books about Elvis that were published decades ago, breaking it down, and they're all in their early to mid 20s. It's fascinating to see them discover who this guy was, and why he still is so important.
I was only five when he passed away, so I never had an opportunity to see him in concert, but when I'm talking with Lisa or Priscilla, or even Jerry Schilling [one of Elvis's 'Memphis Mafia' friends], they have questions about what Elvis did and I can tell them 'it was this day, this time, this is what he was wearing'. They're like, 'how do you remember all that?' 'Well, you guys lived it, but I've studied it, like I was in school so I know all the details. You guys put the emotion behind it'.
The greatest thing about my job is being able to meet all of these people over the years, especially when they're at Graceland, because they each have their own personal connection to the house and to the stories. It can be funny when they're telling me some story that happened around the dining room table with Elvis. It can be the same story that George Klein told me years ago, or that Sam Thompson has told me or that Linda [Thompson, Elvis's girlfriend] has told me. They all tell me their perspective, and it's like you can pick out the pieces that were the same out all of those stories and work out the concrete facts.
I get to pass these stories on, through exhibits and talks. I try to share them and every time I talk, it's not from my perspective, I'm just relaying what I've heard from other people, and I always reference things - 'Priscilla said' or 'George said', so you know where the source came from.
You regard your job as being a storyteller, and the items themselves tell stories?
When I first started at Graceland, I was a tour guide, so I literally was the storyteller, whether I was stationed in the mansion or the trophy building. I shaped everyone's experience by telling them what I had read, learned or heard about Elvis. My 'performance' is what shaped that guest experience. Now we have an amazing audio tour, and John Stamos is our host of it right now. I actually got to write the script, so I'm still influencing the guest experience with that.
But the coolest thing is the way that people connect to the items that they're seeing, and being able to let these pieces tell stories. It's the most amazing thing when you put an exhibit together and then you just sit back in the corner and watch the guests as they're going through, and what they're connecting with, and when you see that look in their eyes, or that smile on their face, and you're like, oh, this actually means something to them. This is influencing their life or their thoughts on Elvis. It's an honor to be able to do that all these years.
What do you have in the exhibition this time?
Each of our exhibits is tailored to where it's at, so if you've seen the Elvis exhibit we did in Bendigo in Australia, it'll be different to London. We had Elvis's Lincoln at the O2, then we swapped it out for the pink Caddy. Here we've got Elvis's Ferrari, the first time it's been to London. We also have one of his snowmobiles – he took the skis off of them so he could ride them around the hills of Graceland! We've got one of his go-karts on display here and one of his trikes – custom made three wheeled motorcycles that Elvis had made in the mid '70s.
There are personal clothes including the iconic gold lamé suit from the '50s, jumpsuits, and lots of personal items. We're very grateful to be able to feature some of the outfits that Austin Butler wore in the Baz Luhrmann film as our legacy section. Elvis's black leather suit from the '68 Comeback Special isn't here because it's starring in it's own special exhibit in Memphis at the moment, but the one Austin wore in the movie is.
Another thing that I did with this exhibit, a new topic that I had never really explored before, is 'Elvis in the press'. We have an area that's all about the outfits he wore in press conferences. That's a really cool look at the press conferences that happened during the concert touring years, before Madison Square Garden and his Houston show, and you can see that footage with those outfits presented together.
Do you have a favorite story about Elvis that you can pass on?
Everyone I've had a chance to talk to adds a new story that I just fall in love with. One of my favorites was the very first time I ever met Sam Thompson in the mid '90s. We were doing a photo shoot at Graceland, and we were sitting on the staircase. I asked him his favorite memory of being at Graceland, and he said, 'I was actually sitting right here on the stairs when Elvis gave me my TCB necklace.' We just happened to be sitting right there.
And there was a story about the Jungle Room. Everybody wants to hear about the famous recording sessions, but the story I loved hearing was, that in the middle of the session, Elvis took a time out and called the guys up, one by one, to his dressing room and gave them shirts out of his closet. Yeah, that's what I would do in the middle of a recording session! Each story that I get to hear from a firsthand perspective is precious and it gives me a look at Elvis through their eyes.
Whenever I would talk to Lisa about him, it was such a unique perspective because she's talking to me not about Elvis the icon, or Elvis the musician. It was her dad. I treasure all of those stories and all of those memories. We were in the house once, and we were using Elvis's sound system – the sound system in the house still works. Lisa was there, and she wanted to hear some some Elvis music, so I put on the Jungle Room Sessions. And she lit up! She goes, 'I remember when this happened. They woke me up trying to saw the door off to get the organ from upstairs to downstairs, because it wouldn't go through the door.' That's a new perspective! It's stuff like that, that makes my job very special. But then I also can use these stories to further an exhibition, to reintroduce an item in an exhibition - 'you might have seen this before, but you haven't heard this story behind it'. I get the chance to share firsthand experiences that I've heard about through the exhibits.
You're doing some Curator Talks in March and June, and there's a White Glove experience too – what's that?
Well, I kind of take for granted that I can go put on a pair of white gloves anytime and go pick up anything in Graceland that I want. But being able to give our guests that experience is amazing. Like handing them Elvis's gold belt that he got for breaking the attendance records in Las Vegas – if you look at almost any photos in '72, this is the belt he's wearing on stage with those jumpsuits, and he wore it in the Oval Office with President Nixon. It's a piece of history that tells all of these stories and it's great to be able to hand that to somebody and say, 'now you're holding that!'
I brought a couple pieces with me that we're going to be leaving here through the rest of the exhibit. We have Elvis's famous TCB aviator sunglasses, his red vest that he wore on set during the filming of the 1968 Comeback Special, and a diamond and ruby ring he wore on stage that featured in his concert documentary Elvis On Tour. And we have one of my favorite '50s items, the leather guitar cover that Elvis had custom made to go over his Gibson J-200 guitar (the oldest guitar in our collection). Back in the late '50s all the country acts were doing it, Patsy Cline had a guitar cover that had her name on it, Hank Snow had one, and so Elvis had one. This one was used on stage and also for Elvis's last appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, so it kind of captures that moment in time.
I do have some items with me that are only going to be available during the curator talks as I'm taking them back to Memphis with me – but I think they are going to spur some great conversations. I actually have his TCB ring, and I brought the gold key to the '73 Stutz, which was the last car he drove. One of my favorite pieces of wardrobe is the blue tie up jacket that you've seen a million times in the family photos of Elvis, Priscilla, and Lisa from the early '70s, and I brought that jacket with me.
I am very informal so we're going to talk about whatever the fans there want to see and want to talk about. Since there really no set theme, the sky's the limit of what we're going to talk about.
Direct from Graceland: Elvis is at Arches London Bridge 8 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 2ER until September 1, 2024
Angie Marchese is giving Curator Talks from 6pm to 7.30pm on:
Friday March 22
Saturday March 23
Friday March 29
Saturday March 30
