Will This Actor Capture the Dark Side of Elvis too?
TV Guide, January 30, 1988
By Susan Littwin

With his love for Presley, Dale Midkiff may find it difficult to betray all the fond memories

"Elvis and Me" has the usual production problems. Today there's rain and a location house too small for the crew. The director has a cold, and leading actress Susan Walters is nervous about playing the emotional scene where 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu discovers that her father isn't her real father.

But these are the usual problems. Curled in a stray chair just beyond camera range is a good-looking man with curly brown hair and straightforward blue eyes. He introduces himself as Jerry Schilling. The name is familiar. "Well, I'm one of the characters in the movie," he explains matter-of-factly. Jerry Schilling, who serves as a creative consultant on the film, was one of Elvis Presley's boyhood friends and later became a member of his entourage. One night he and Priscilla angered Elvis by chatting in the kitchen at Graceland. The scene is in the movie. "Priscilla and I were self-conscious around each other for two years after that," Schilling admits, musing over the memory.

It's the memories that give "Elvis and Me" unusual problems. The script is based on Priscilla Presley's best-selling book of the same name. It is the story of her life with Elvis, and, understandably, it tries to preserve her memories of their relationship. That's what memoirs do. And Priscilla, as the author of the book and the owner of the memories, is an executive producer of the ABC TV-movie. But producer Robert Lovenheim and director Larry Peerce want to tell a believable, objective story. "The book tries to uphold the myths. Our script has insight into Priscilla, into the subtext of her story," says Lovenheim. "We want to do right by her. We don't want to destroy her memories, but we're not making This Is Your Life."

Most often, the relationship with Priscilla's memories is helpful. A whiskey bottle is removed from the set because Priscilla tells them Elvis never served whiskey. She tells them exactly how many members of the entourage ought to be sitting around. And actress Susan Walters stops biting her nails when she finds out that Priscilla never bit hers.

But then there are the touchy issues, like The Wink. When Elvis was leaving Germany, his two-year Army stint over, Priscilla accompanied him to the airport, where hundreds of screaming fans waited for him. The King of Rock and Roll mounted the boarding steps, waved to the crowd and then winked. As Priscilla saw it, The Wink was for her.

But Lovenheim and Pearce have their own views. They saw the newsreels of Elvis's goodbye, and they visited Elvis's house in Bad Nauheim. For a rock-and-roll star, that house must have seemed cramped, dingy. "He's finally through with the Army and being a jeep driver," says Lovenheim. "The mobs overwhelm him. He's getting a taste of 'the life' again, the world at his feet." As Lovenheim sees it, The Wink was for his fans. "I'm back," it said.

And Pearce, who is the son of the late tenor Jan Pearce, understands how stars feed on the adoration of their audience. “I cold always tell whether my father was calling from the road or from home. There was a lilt in his voice when he was on the road." When they shot the scene, says Peerce, he could see Dale Midkiff, the young actor who plays Elvis, responding to the squeals from the crowd of extras. "I could see the pleasure on his face in the car, just as I saw it on Elvis's face in the newsreels. He's waiting to go back. He's filled with fear and anticipation. That crowd at the airport must have tasted good."

But when Priscilla saw the shot, she was disturbed. This Elvis wasn't winking at her. "It was a very romantic moment for me," she explains. "I was waiting for that moment, and it didn't happen. They did it from a man's point of view! Elvis had other things on his mind. I guess that's cold, hard reality." A decade later, when her marriage to Elvis was almost over, she would tell him that he gets his thrills on stage, understanding Elvis's love life at last. But the wink at the airport remained an inviolate part of memory and myth. "It was the perception of a lovesick 14-year-old girl," says Lovenheim. Peerce explained their interpretation to her. "She understood," he says "but it has been quite an experience for her, reliving and reinterpreting her life. You could feel the charged emotions when she was on the set." At times, Lovenheim reports, she had tears in her eyes.

Luckily perhaps, it was not possible for Priscilla Presley to play herself. It would be too much of a reach for her, at 42 (and a member of CBS's Dallas cast), to play a 14-year-old. But casting the role was a problem. The producers needed an actress young enough to play 14 convincingly, but with enough range and seasoning to carry the role all the way up to the 32-year-old woman who has been through tragedy. They came up with Susan Walters, a 24-year-old former soap-opera actress who has a small role on Hotel. Walters bears a strong resemblance to the young Priscilla - the high cheek bones and heartstopping blue eyes. A marathon runner, she is charming and athletic as the teen-age Priscilla. She jumps rope, sprints across the street, does a wistful ballet dance. Can she do the heavier drama? "We'll see,” she says. "It will take vivid imagination and a lot of homework."

Casting Elvis was no easier. Again an unknown was needed, since a star couldn't dissolve into the role. The producers settled on Dale Midkiff, a lanky 28-year-old who played the young Jock Ewing in "Dallas: The Early Years." On a drizzly afternoon, he drives up to the location shoot in a red 1963 Buick Wildcat convertible, the top down and Bruce Springsteen blaring from the 1987 sound system. It is a car The King might have driven and an entrance almost theatrical enough. He parks and swaggers down the street in cowboy boots, a big, 1-know-I'm-sexy grin across his unshaven face. "I was with Priscilla and Jerry Schilling last night," he tells Walters, the excitement obvious in his voice. Not surprisingly, they talked about Elvis.

What does he think of Elvis? He explains while cruising the quiet neighborhood in the Wildcat. Elvis was basically "a good Christian boy." He wasn't really a drug addict. "Those were prescription drugs he was using. He thought he had it under control." And he didn't break his word to Priscilla's father by bringing her to live with him at Graceland. “It was his father, Vernon, who made the promise [that she would live apart from Elvis], not him."

Midkiff has fallen in love with his character. He plays young Elvis with an easy, boyish charm. But Elvis also had a dark side. He was, even in Priscilla's account, unnaturally attached to his mother, sexually kinky, addicted to drugs and to fame. He was volatile and, in later years, increasingly paranoid. With the help of makeup, lighting and a few extra pounds gained, Midkiff will be made to look like the bloated, dissipated singer of those years. The big question is: will he be able to capture the dark side of Elvis? Or will he be too worried about betraying all those memories?