Impact of the movie in Mexico

This movie opened at Mexico City's flashiest cinema, the "Cine Las Americas" in March of 1959, when Elvis was in the Army. For the previous two years in Mexico, since his first record release there in March of 1956, Elvis had been a sort of God and Devil incarnate, the result of the tremendous popularity of both his records and previous movies, as well as his huge influence on the music scene in Mexico, the latter the result of rock groups being created, and local rock singers popping out like pop corn, but most importantly by RCA's decision to build the largest record plant in Latin America, at the outskirts of the capital city, a work then in progress largely because of the huge demand for his records there, on the one hand, and his being banned from radio airplay, since April of 1957, a decision taken following the publication of an article in which he'd been quoted as saying he'd "rather kiss three African American girls than a single one from Mexico", on the other.

So, that was the situation before the opening of "King Creole", the theatre management limiting itself to paying for a single ad on the newspaper, on the day before, in lieu of the typical two weeks' barrage of coming attractions, newspaper announcements. So, as the more than 1,000 people entered the cinema, the two opposing sides, those who believed the newspaper story, and those who didn't, took one side of the theatre each, and before the movie even started, a sort of fight erupted. The movie went on, but by the time it had ended, a huge confrontation followed, with more than three dozen landing in jail, and several injured. One kid died. The Mexico City Government, which had started the radio airplay ban two years earlier, decided to settle all matters privately and the incident did not see the light of day, in any newspaper. The Government then proceded to ban Presley from rocord stores. That's two bans, and counting.

One of those who attended the opening, a top Mexican counter-culture writer by the name of Parmenides Garcia Saldaña, published a book called "Rey Criollo" ("King Creole"), which only saw the light in 1968, after the student riots which coincided with the Olympic Games being held there. Then, three years later, the ban (which went on to include a third ban, for his films not being able to be shown, in Mexico City, after a similar incident took place at the same theatre, at the opening of "G.I. Blues", in 1961), was finally lifted with the showing of "That's the way it is", which opened in Mexican theatres in July of 1971. Incidentally, since production of "Fun in Acapulco" was scheduled at the end of 1962, and he was still banned there, the Government declared him "persona non grata", the result being the Paramount crew travelling to Acapulco and Elvis staying in LA, to film his scenes there.

The entire story was then told in the late 90's in a book entitled "Refried Elvis", which coincided with the death of the man ACTUALLY responsible for the first ban, Mexico City's "Iron Mayor", Ernesto Peralta Uruchurtu. It was he who had sent a letter to Elvis, in 1957, on behalf of one of the two biggest media tycoons, requesting for him to sing at the tycoon's daughter's 15th birthday party. Because Elvis was to play Vancouver, on the girl's birthday, he declined and returned the blank check ( drawn against a US bank, no less), the tycoon had annexed to the Mayor's letter. Since the tycoon had told everyone in Mexico that Presley was to sing at his daughter's party, and Presley declined, he then out of spite asked the the most read columnist in Mexico, Francisco de Leon, to fabricate a story of Presley badmouthing Mexican girls. And it worked, appearing as it did on his so called "6pm" column, which was published in April of 1957 at Mexico's largest circulating daily, "Excelsior". Nothing could ever be so damaging.

Now, since he was the rival media tycoon to the one who was behind the building of the RCA plant (LOL), he killed two birds with one stone, with the only person profiting from all this nonsense being, believe it or not, Paul Anka, who as the second major star in the RCA roster, remains to this day the only singer to have outsold Presley 6 to 1 in any Latin American market. Lest I forget, there was another victim to this entire affair. And that was the Beatles, who were banned by Uruchurtu, in 1966, from playing a Mexican stadium. Uruchurtu could not afford to let people know about the 1957 story, so he banned them too, if only to be as politically correct as he's been when he banned Presley. The Beatles, like Elvis, were said to be a bad infleunce on Mexican youth, so he banned them too.

And to think that I attended Chubby Checker's concert in Mexico, in 1963 and didn't even know about the Presley ban!! I was 12, and had noticed Presley records could not be found, or heard on the radio, but thought it was the result of his decline in popularity. When my family and I moved to Brazil, in early 1964 and I saw that his popularity was INTACT there, inspite of the Beatles, I sort of blamed it on Mexican ¨"nationalism" (LOL), but did not suspect anything about the real reasons for Presley's popularity in that country being what it was.