Realizing that Graceland was not your run-of-the-mill assignment, Golden acceded to the unusual request. "Elvis,' I said, 'you have my word.'"
Unfortunately for Graceland historians, the decorator was as good as his promise and never once photographed the property during two years of sporadic decorating and remodeling work. As a result, the rejuvenated mansion's early years were never adequately photographed for posterity. The few photographic examples of the early Elvis-era Graceland that exist today are random background details visible in informal snapshots from the Presley family album.
Truth be told, you'd have needed a pretty quick shutter finger to capture Elvis on film at Graceland during the late Fifties; The King was forever leaving the building due to extended professional and governmental engagements. (The singer was drafted into the U.S. Army less than a year after moving into the house.) His mother wasn't destined to enjoy much more time at the Presley dream house, either. Reportedly happiest when tending to the Cadillac full of poultry Elvis had thoughtfully unloaded in Graceland's backyard, Gladys Presley succumbed to acute hepatitis in August 1958, only a year after moving into Graceland.
@rule:
@body:As Golden is quick to point out, the Graceland of 1977 (the year Elvis died, thereby "freezing" the manor in time) is not the Graceland of 1957. "Lord, no!" gasps the decorator, who estimates that 20 percent of his work can be seen in the house today. Considering Elvis' later penchant for tented billiard rooms, shag rugs, fountains, fake fur and other horrors of Seventies decor (even Graceland's press material warns potential visitors to anticipate a Lava Lamp-lighted "time warp"), it's surprising that percentage isn't much lower.
"That's often the kind of opulence that instant money buys," says Valley decorator Peggy Gustav, national director of the American Society of Interior Designers. "There's a well-known designer in New York City who says, 'Every night I pray that my clients with money will get good taste and my clients with good taste will get money,' because they don't usually come in the same package."
Such a prayer would have been wasted on Elvis Presley, judging from a stack of photos documenting Graceland interiors of the late Sixties and Seventies.
"Is this garish?" Golden asks, gazing at a pile of photos that includes a shot of Presley's infamous Jungle Room, a nightmarish, early-Seventies addition to Graceland that looks like a third-rate knockoff of Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room. "Yes, I'd have to say so. But then, this doesn't represent the Elvis I remember. See the bar in this picture? No way would he ever have had me put one in back when I was working for him. No sirrreee."
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@body:Earlier this year, when Golden returned to Graceland to participate in the ceremony to dedicate the U.S. postage stamp featuring Elvis' picture, the trek marked his first visit to the house since 1959, when he oversaw installation of a swimming pool, patio furniture and a nonalcoholic wet bar capable of serving 100 guests at a time. At that time, he was interviewed and his recollections published in the official Graceland house organ.
Graceland's Todd Morgan elaborates on the importance of contributions such as Golden's in nailing down the mansion's ephemeral, often contradictory history. Because of the dozens of speculative and often sloppily researched books about the singer (just published: The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley, a dietary tell-all reportedly chronicling the singer's lifelong eating disorders), determining such simple facts as how many bedrooms Graceland housed at any one time can be a major research project.
"It depends when you're talking about," says Morgan, Graceland's director of communications. "Things kept changing and people remember things differently. Someone who was there for a few weeks in 1957 has a far different perception than someone who was there for two weeks in 1964 or 1972. That's why we're about to start a major oral history project within the coming year--that way we'll have even more conflicting information.
