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| Elvis Presley meets with five winners of an essay contest on May 25, 1956. Judy Fesenmyer (now Hayes), then 16, of Denby High is second from left. Directly to the right of Elvis is Diana DiGregorio, also 16, a student at St. David’s, and Joann Menegaz (now Borri),14, of Regina High. Do you recognize the others? (Photos courtesy of MRPI Collection) |
Dawn Buchanan recognized her mother, Delores Pipski, as the Kim Novak lookalike blond who Elvis has his arm around in the cocktail party photo. Buchanan alerted her mother, and both called The Detroit News.
Pipski was Delores Miklas then, a record librarian at WWJ Radio, which was downtown then. She was often invited to backstage parties by her bosses, and as an Elvis fan was especially happy to go to a party for him at the Fox. She worked a whole day at WWJ, then changed into a special dress and walked over to the Fox.
The singer hit it off with the record librarian, as is clear from the photo. "Most of the people at the cocktail party were older, there were only a handful of people he'd be attracted to, and me being 18 ..." Pipski says. Elvis' manager Col. Tom Parker took her aside later and invited her up to Elvis' dressing room. She went. There she and Elvis had a more private talk, in between his interviews with teenaged reporters. And yes, when they moved to a more secluded area, they kissed. "He was a hot kisser," Pipski recalls, with a laugh. "He was so gentle and sweet. We looked out the window of the lavatory and waved to the kids waiting below for the next show. We had a few smooches. I don't want to talk about that," she laughs.
Then the King asked her if she had any eyeliner. She didn't have any. "And I said 'Your eyes are beautiful just the way they are.'"
Clearly smitten with the Detroit girl, Elvis invited her back to his hotel. Col. Parker showed her where the car would pick her up. "He said, 'After the show he wants you to go with him.' But I watched the beginning of his second show, then I got cold feet. I knew there'd be hanky panky," Pipski said. She was just one girl in one city, and Elvis was on his way up, she muses.
Pipski married a year later and had six daughters, but she always loved Elvis's music. She preferred him in those earlier, innocent days, sensing a change when he "went Hollywood," that she didn't like. "When he first sang it was just beautiful," she said, of his 1956 persona.
Joann Menegaz Borri found out that photos of her and Elvis were in the paper and on the web when several of her friends recognized her photo in the News with the Detroit Times essay contest winners.(Their prize was to meet Elvis backstage before his Fox Theatre shows). Borri called from her North Carolina home. She was just 14 and about to enter Regina High School when she won the essay contest. She never told the nuns at school, "They would not have approved," she says.
"He was so down to earth, Borri said of Elvis. "He was the first star I ever met, and he wasn't a bit flamboyant. He loved music, he was consumed by it, and he loved singing and playing the piano for us. I remember sitting on the bench next to him, and he said 'Come on, sing!' I said I couldn't, and he said 'Anybody can sing!'" One of the songs he played, teasingly, was Pat Boone's "Love Letters in the Sand."
At some point Joann's mother got a message through that she needed to speak to her. When Elvis heard that she'd left her mother waiting outside, he protested, "You don't leave your mother outside!" He went with Joann out to the stage door and shook her mother's hand. "Do you know, when my mother was in a nursing home and had dementia...she could still remember that she shook Elvis' hand," Borri says.
Judy Hayes was also kissed by Elvis at the Fox in 1956, and for years, it been both a point of pride and the cause of much teasing from her six children. "I should have gone for it; I could have been Priscilla," she kids, referring to Elvis future wife.
Hayes, of Yale, Mich., now 71, was Judy Fesenmyer then, 16 and a sophomore at Detroit Denby High School when she won the essay contest sponsored by the Detroit Times (The Times closed in 1960, bought by The News).
Hayes remembers being amazed that her essay was chosen. I think they probably just picked five winners out of a hat, she says.
On Tuesday, The News ran several never-seen photos of Elvis in Detroit, including one of the five teen contest winners seated around a table with Elvis. We asked readers for help in identifying anybody in the photos.
The pictures of Elvis relaxing and performing in Detroit were unearthed by author Michael Rose, who is writing a book, "Spring of '56," about Elvis' breakout year, when he signed to RCA and exploded in the culture. Reviews of his May 25, 1956, show confirm that the Detroit press dismissed Elvis as a freak show, a hip-swiveling ex-truck driver. The word "hillbilly" was used to describe him in most reports, with no shame.
Two of Judy Hayes' six children, Scott and Pat, recognized their mom in the photo of the teen winners.
Hayes' memories of that meeting with the King are understandably vivid. She recalls being escorted backstage before the 4 p.m. show — Elvis also performed at 7 p.m. and 9:45 p.m., all seats $1.50 — to a room in the backstage basement. There the teenager was kissed twice by her idol, once on the forehead and once on the cheek.
Because Hayes' son Scott plays guitar and has a full head of hair, he's always teased that Elvis was his father, that he was born nine months after the photo of his mother and Elvis (Scott was actually born in 1964).
At the backstage Pepsi party, Hayes thought Elvis was "uppity," but quickly realized he was bashful. "They had a piano in the basement of the Fox, and he played the piano a little bit," she says. "He talked to us … we were so excited. In one photo, he's got his arm around me." That photo was taken to school, oohed and ahhed over. Much-fingered and tattered, it's in her home safe.
At one point Elvis was waving his arm around with a Pepsi in his hand, spraying some pop accidentally on his hair. Hayes also remembers that as handsome as he was, she wasn't so sure about Elvis' color choices.
"We were brought up to be color-coordinated back then," Hayes says. "He either had on black pants and brown shoes or brown pants and black shoes, plus a red shirt and a green jacket. I thought, 'OK … this is what everybody is going crazy about?'" Aida Carlesimo called in to identify her cousin Diana DiGregorio, who is sitting directly to Elvis' right in the photo of the contest winners. DiGregario has passed on, but Carlesimo, who was three years older (at 19) and had taken Diana to the Fox that day, remembers well how her cousin got to meet Elvis. "She was excited," Carlesimo recalled. "I remember she had pictures of him all over her ceiling and in the bathroom."
Joann Borri has some inside information about that "Pepsi party." Although the Detroit Times billed it as a Coke party backstage,Borri says Elvis preferred Pepsi and insisted that it be served. "He said 'Up north you all like Coke, but in the South we like Pepsi.'"
Reader Marshall Saltzman e-mailed in to say he thought that the boy sitting immediately to Elvis' right might be his friend Bob Schneider, but he can't be entirely sure without seeing the photo blown up. Schneider, Saltzman says, was a student at Mumford High and won tickets to see Elvis. He died in a car crash a few years later, Saltzman says.
Several News readers phoned or e-mailed in attempting to identify the downtown arcade where Elvis was shown shooting a toy gun. Several thought it might be the Penny Arcade, but reader Douglas Denhardt believes it was an arcade located in the lower level of the Fox.
Denhardt admits he played hooky from school one day to go to the Fox to see "The True Story of Jesse James" starring Robert Wagner in 1957. "My brother-in-law took me to see the movie, and I remember all these arcades and games down by the men's room," Denhardt says.
