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Sheldon Cooper

(3,724 posts)
Wed Jan 8, 2014, 02:05 PM Jan 2014

Is this a heretofore unknown picture of teenage Elvis?



I was prepared to say no way until I saw this, which is a confirmed picture of young Elvis:



Now I'm not so sure...

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/01/elvis-teen-photo-tupelo?mbid=social_tumblr

Elvis Presley is one of the most photographed figures in music history. But in the nearly 37 years since his death, every significant picture of rock’s swivel-hipped pioneer has been widely seen. Or has it?

Wade Jones, 50, a lifelong Elvis fan from Mount Holly, North Carolina, has been “constantly looking at photos” since 1977, when he smuggled a tape recorder into one of Presley’s last concerts. And so in 2005, when the late Janelle McComb—a Presley family friend from Tupelo, Mississippi—sent Jones a childhood picture of the future king of rock ’n’ roll, Jones was dumbstruck.

“I had never seen that image in my life,” says Jones, who looked at the photo of a young teenager leaning on his bike—his head tilted back, his hooded eyes nearly closed in the Tupelo sun—and realized it was the first shot placing Presley (who would have been 13 that year, 1948) on the streets of his hometown. “Just his pose, and the fact that he was in a candid situation, surrounded by normal people, was kind of eerie.”

So, is the photo—published here, for the first time, uncropped—really Elvis? In the full-frame version, someone has written “Elvis” in script near the right border. But who? Janelle McComb, who died two months after mailing it, told Jones in a phone call that the woman who took the snapshot was on her way to the drugstore to drop off some film to be developed. She had one more exposure on the roll, and just asked Elvis, whom she knew, to pose. But Jones didn’t catch her name.
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Is this a heretofore unknown picture of teenage Elvis? (Original Post) Sheldon Cooper Jan 2014 OP
interesting ... Tuesday Afternoon Jan 2014 #1
I think they look the same. mockmonkey Jan 2014 #2
It certainly is... polihood Jan 2014 #3
someone turned up on Antiques Roadshow ..... kwassa Jan 2014 #4

mockmonkey

(2,778 posts)
2. I think they look the same.
Wed Jan 8, 2014, 03:00 PM
Jan 2014

In the background over his shoulder is Fred Astaire in a Top Hat waiting for a bus, or is that Harpo Marx?

kwassa

(23,340 posts)
4. someone turned up on Antiques Roadshow .....
Wed Jan 8, 2014, 06:32 PM
Jan 2014

the English version, with all these pictures of her girlfriend posing with Elvis when he was a GI serving in Germany. They were cute pictures, too. The person assessing their value was quite astounded.

You know Elvis is old when he turns up on AR.

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