When Robert Mitchum considered Elvis Presley for ‘Thunder Road’

Robert Mitchum’s second son Chris vividly illuminates the family Christmas party where Elvis Presley jammed on piano with his dad and considered being in “Thunder Road,” a moonshine-fueled chase romp that’s since gained cult classic immortality. Meanwhile, in the accompanying lead photo…a week after the issuing of the ultimately enormous No. 1 single “All Shook Up” b/w “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin,” a 22-year-old sizzling Presley is seen at the Saddle and Sirloin Club in Chicago, Illinois, on March 28, 1957, during a press conference hours before commanding the stage of the International Amphitheatre. Presley had not performed a tour date in over four months, instead concentrating on the filming of his second movie, director Hal Kanter’s entertaining “Loving You.” Image Credit: eBay / For Elvis CD Collectors message board

The Chris Mitchum Interview, Part Two

Since your father Robert Mitchum offered Elvis Presley a leading role in Thunder Road [1958], did you get to meet the King of Rock ’n’ Roll?

Actually my parents saw Elvis before he was well known. They were down in New Orleans staying with Frank and Isabell Monteleone, who owned the Monteleone Hotel in the French Quarter in New Orleans. On the weekend, they went to their place in Pass Christian, Mississippi.

The Monteleones said, “There’s a little club about a half hour from here. They’ve got this singer there, and we ought to go up and see him.” It was Elvis Presley. I think he had a contract to work at that little club one week a month. When they got back to the Monteleone Hotel they ran into Colonel Tom Parker. They urged him, “You oughta go up and see this guy.” So the Colonel went, saw Elvis, and signed him.

[Author’s Note: Esteemed music biographers Peter Guralnick and Alanna Nash have documented that Parker’s Jamboree Attractions advance man Oscar Davis discovered the 19-year-old Presley and the Blue Moon Boys on October 30, 1954, less than four months after his career launched with debut single “That’s All Right” b/w “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” at the Eagles Nest mini nightclub in Memphis upon the invitation of Presley’s early manager Bob Neal. Davis was in town on a 10-day barnstorming tour with country superstar Eddy Arnold and eventually drove to Parker’s Madison, Tennessee, home to report how impressed he was by Presley’s dynamic stage presence. Parker attended Presley’s January 15, 1955, appearance on the Louisiana Hayride, an influential Shreveport-based country radio program akin to the Grand Ole Opry that booked Presley on Saturdays beginning the previous October when he first ventured outside Tennessee. By February 6 the groundbreaking artist met his future Svengali in person in a café across the street from Memphis’s Ellis Auditorium. Presley scholar and For Elvis CD Collectors message board member Dr. John Carpenter notes, “Biloxi is just 22 miles east of Pass Christian, about a half hour drive. I’ll wager that the Montelone couple took Mitchum to see the Elvis phenomenon at Keesler Airman’s Club in Biloxi. Elvis performed there June 27–28, 1955, and later that…