Edge of Reality [Elvis]

1958 - A Sighting in New Orleans

At gas stations. At hotels I was staying in. In the audience in my concerts. On the set to my new movie. Outside Graceland as I looked out the window and happened to see a female silhouette off near the fence...

She was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I say nowhere because it was like she wasn't even there. I would see the girl I thought was Meara, but she always vanished, and when I would ask around to see if anyone saw a blonde girl with curly hair wearing whatever color of the rainbow dress she was wearing, they would say they hadn't seen anyone.

This was honestly really scary and really annoying at the same time. How could I see her, and then she would just not be there after? I read a philosophy book sometime ago, and it said sometimes things seem real when they're not, like it's all a dream.

Was I dreaming Meara up? But my manager and other people had seen her, just not many of them.

Or maybe she was indeed a ghost. I had no idea anymore. I took the Colonel's advise and just stopped looking for her. I was so distracted that I goofed up in my concerts, I would walk off to some random place after meeting fans and almost fall off a ledge looking for her, and recently, I would mess up a scene for my new movie King Creole. It was getting out of hand. I convinced myself that Meara was in the past now. Plus, Anita didn't like me always being on the lookout for another pretty blonde girl. She was having a hard enough time accepting the fact that I was heading off to the army in three short weeks.

We were doing the last scenes in New Orleans, then we would be heading back to LA to work on the rest of the movie, like some of the club sequences. We had to jam it all into three weeks since we couldn't extend the dates any longer due to my army entrance date. That date was already pushed far enough so I could finish the movie.

It was the last day of filming in New Orleans, the chasing sequence at the end of the movie where Danny has to run for his life from Shark, the guy who was his partner in crime when Danny's father needed money, and Danny would sing while his bad-boy buddies would steal from a store. As Shark chases Danny, he carries a knife. Shark came to work for Maxie Fields, the owner of a club, who blackmailed Danny into working for him. When Danny fought back, Maxie sent Shark and another thug out to murder him. There was obviously more to the story, but all that had been filmed already or was needing to be filmed. I also got to work with Caroline Jones, which was amazing. Dolores Hart played in it as well. I worked with her in Loving You.

This had to be my favorite movie so far to work on. The storyline was good, the action was exciting, all the people were great, and the location was spectacular. The music drew me in as well. I was always a fan of the blues and gospel singers. They inspired me to be a singer and influenced my style of singing in the first place. Some of those singers came from New Orleans. Maybe, if I was still famous in the future, I would buy a house in the city just to be close to it all. At the moment, Graceland was my big splurge on a nice home for me and my family.

"Alright, let's get started!" shouted the film director Michael Curtiz, but we all just called him Mike. His loud call jumped me out of my thoughts as we were on the streets of New Orleans at night, since that chase scene needed to be shot when it was dark out, just for some extra suspense. I thought it was brilliant. Vic Morrow, who played Shark, and I had already practiced this scene during the day, and the knife fight was practiced in a studio.

"Elvis, Vic, I want this to really make the viewers sitting on the edge of their seat holding a pillow like they're watching a horror flick," Mike told Vic and I as we stood in the alleyway, and there was a light shown that would be turned off when we started the scene. "We've already done most of the chase sequence, but here, we're going to have Danny climb over a wooden wall, head down the alley, then hide around the corner. Shark behind him, leaps the wall as well, then stalks slowly up the alley while he tells Danny he finally has a chance to fight, to get even, and reveals that he knew it was Danny's father they mugged that night. Danny's around the corner, notices another guy coming in, climbs up the wall in the darkness trying to hide himself. Shark still tries to coax Danny out, but Danny is busy attacking the other man."