It's been a year in the making, but we are almost ready to release "Elvis, The Beauty Queen & Me", with Jeanne LeMay. The majority of this DVD was filmed during Jeanne's trip to the UK last year. She was filmed talking candidly about her time with Elvis at Graceland, on tour and in Vegas. She openly discusses how she was able to enjoy a close relationship with Elvis through her friendship with Linda Thompson, how she became a secretary at Graceland and what went on there. Her memories of those times are funny, fascinating and extremely riveting. Jeanne is a great talker and her warmth comes across beautifully in the programme according to Essential Elvis' editor Andrew Hearn on his blog.
Over the past few months Essential Elvis has been lucky enough to have tracked down and acquired some stunning new 1974 cini film of Elvis, still on the original reels! He and and David Wilson have been working hard on having the reels digitally transferred and restored. The speed has now been expertly corrected, the picture quality has been enhanced and the brightness and colour has been worked on enabling us to now offer the footage in virtually perfect quality.
So, what is the footage of?
You'll get to see Elvis in Vegas during his August 29th 1974 midnight show, September 1st dinner show and the infamous September 2nd closing show (wearing the beautiful Tiger jumpsuit). There's lots of karate on these clips with Red West coming on stage at one point. Elvis even knocks poor Charlie on his backside.
There will also be some 1973 footage shot at Graceland. This includes the gates, the grounds, up at the mansion itself and the pool area. This is not the poor quality Dutch footage that has been doing the rounds for years, but new footage taken from the reels and restored by Essential Elvis. This is TV quality material.
They are also extremely excited to tell you that we have been restoring some amazing footage (running for a staggering 13 minutes) of Elvis in Kansas City, Missouri on the evening of June 29th 1974. This is the most beautiful clear, close-up footage that they have seen in a long, long time with Elvis wearing the fantastic Embroidered Eagle jumpsuit