Letters from Elvis may be the most important and revealing book ever written about ‘The King.’ It is based on material contained in hundreds of handwritten and authenticated letters that Elvis and his friends—Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte and Tom Jones—secretly wrote to their spiritual guide, Carmen Montez. Never has such an intimately revealing collection of letters surfaced about such a well-known celebrity.
The performer was adored, now it is the man who is being reclaimed.
Letters from Elvis is an explosive revelation of Elvis’s inner life, an exposé of heinous Hollywood crimes that targeted Elvis, a touching tale of friendship, an eerie ghost story, and a series of startling new Elvis mysteries. Because rigorous copyright laws prevent direct publication of the actual letters, the book also tells the story of the author’s thirty-year struggle to bring this new information about Elvis to light.
Letters from Elvis may be the most important and revealing book ever written about ‘The King.’ It is based on material contained in hundreds of handwritten and authenticated letters that Elvis and his friends-Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte and Tom Jones-secretly wrote to their spiritual guide, Carmen Montez. Never has such an intimately revealing collection of letters surfaced about such a well-known celebrity.
Product Details
Product Details
Published
January 26, 2023
Imprint
Calumet Editions
Language
English
Print length
310
ISBN-13
978-1959770824
Dimensions
6 x 0.78 x 9 inches
Praise
This book may actually be a deeply redeeming act and gift, one ordained from above for Elvis and our benefit—so that we may receive the privilege of seeing the humanity behind the Elvis image.
—Marilène Phipps, author Unseen Worlds
Gary Lindberg’s commentary throughout the book draws upon evidence gathered through painstaking research of public records, FBI files and other credible sources. I find his explanations thoughtful and well founded. Given recent revelations about the history of abusive behavior among Hollywood elites, it strikes me as quite plausible, that Elvis would have been victimized by the Katzman gang. Overall, I find this to be an intelligently written book that held my attention from beginning to end.
—Eric Sabety, verified review on Amazon
My heart was definitely breaking as I read it. Thank you, Gary, for writing this book and letting us all see this side of Evil, and what these monsters did to our boy!
—Karen Moore Leonhardt, verified review on Amazon
I found I couldn’t put the book down. As then I was swept away with this tale of Elvis’s life and the atrocities that were committed on him and his friends. It explains why he felt the need to surround himself with people he could trust to protect him. But even those some of those people betrayed that trust.
—LisaDC1963, verified review on Amazon
Elvis Presley wasn’t my era. Of course, I knew he was a historic musical icon. So when I read this complex book, my experience included varying degrees of curiosity, disbelief and skepticism. It’s a perplexing read; at times even mind blowing. Yet I have to say that it stirred in me a curiosity and a compassion about this iconic superstar.
—Erin, verified review on Amazon
I have never been a great fan of Elvis Presley, but after reading this book, I now have a deep respect for him. The author systematically proves the case for what happened to Elvis with corroborating and contemporaneous, first-hand accounts from four well-known actors, including Elvis.
Imagine my surprise when one afternoon I was handed a cache of unpublished letters written by Elvis to a secret confidante. The letters revealed a life unexposed to the public and many of his closest aides. The letters explained many mysteries of Elvis’s behavior and presented a wholly different personality than the façade created by the media and Elvis’s handlers. As I read these handwritten letters, tears often came into my eyes. More than once, I was struck by disbelief. This can’t be true! This could not have happened to a celebrity like Elvis! But the astonishing content of the Elvis letters would soon be corroborated by another collection of letters from three other well-known celebrities—intimate friends of Elvis.
The information in these letters has been like a ticking time bomb in my life ever since I became aware of it. After reading the letters, every time I come upon a new Elvis book or documentary I flinch because I’m reminded of the calling I’ve so far refused—a calling to reveal the startling truth about Elvis to a public that deserves to know and all those fans who were heartbroken at his rapid decline and early death.
According to the correspondence—which has been fully authenticated by world-renowned handwriting expert Charles W. Sachs—Elvis went through unrelenting hell during the five years represented in the letters, an almost unbelievable hell that has remained hidden from our view. The reason for the secrecy will become obvious as each section of this book unfolds. Now, with the exposure of the events related in these letters, all previous books will have to be read within the context of this one. At first, I struggled to accept some of the events described. I can honestly say that I’ve often wished they were a massively elaborate hoax, the motivation for which is lost to us, but I’m afraid they are no hoax—not at all. The Elvis letters are clearly in his own handwriting, and what he writes, whether you’re a fan or not, will sometimes create admiration, and sometimes horror.
A salient characteristic of contemporary society is to immortalize popular entertainers by transforming them into icons, thus stripping them of their privacy and humanity. Inevitably, society is shocked when the inner lives of these chosen ones are revealed to be chaotic and tragic—stars like Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Robin Williams, Prince, but perhaps none more so than the biggest entertainment icon of all, Elvis Presley. I’m sure that sociologists and philosophers can explain why few things advance a famous entertainer’s career more than dying young and tragically. Just as absolute power seems to corrupt absolutely, so it goes that absolute fame and the complications that accompany it overwhelms many celebrities.
When the hidden lives of celebrities are exposed, we are often shocked to find that they are human. Unfortunately, it is usually a profound disadvantage for stars to be seen as such, so their handlers go to extreme lengths to preserve the Olympian status of their clients, especially after death when the value of the celebrity’s assets can quickly collapse if mishandled.
Imagine, then, the risk of revealing the hidden life of Elvis Presley, one of the top-earning dead celebrities of all time. Imagine the resistance that might arise against anyone or anything threatening to change the status quo by revealing facts that might alter public perception of this supreme icon. Over two decades, the consequences of such resistance have frustrated all my attempts to reveal the astonishing information contained in these Elvis letters. Now that I’ve decided the time has come to go public with this story, I know that I’d better get it right.
I have a lot at stake in translating these letters into a book, including my reputation. I have worried for years that the letters may prove to be forgeries, and I carelessly missed the telltale clue. I’ve had nightmares that facts contained in the letters and reported by me would be proven by an astute reader to be untrue. I’ve been extremely anxious over the possibility that undetected contradictions may exist in the body of letters, destroying my reputation for thorough analysis.
As a necessary part of due diligence our team made requests for FBI documents pertaining to Elvis under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). We quickly learned that government agencies take their time in fulfilling these requests, sometimes many months, and then often deliver only a handful of available documents making additional time-consuming requests necessary. In our case, after scores of requests, we ended up with hundreds of pages of documents, many of them highly redacted for reasons of “personal privacy, national security, and law enforcement” according to the FOIA website.
A stack of FBI documents related to Elvis and released to us under the Freedom of Information Act.
The FBI has reportedly documented hundreds of threats on Elvis’s life, yet most of the pages delivered to us related to a single legal case in which con men attempted to swindle the entertainer out of millions of dollars in a plot involving a jet aircraft owned by Elvis. Either this case consumed a disproportionate share of FBI attention for some unknown reason, or the FBI withheld a lot of information from us.
After reading the hundreds of letters and surveying the cache of FOIA-released documents, I was dismayed at how the attempts to take advantage of Elvis seemed to never end. It took me a few years to appreciate the eerie timing of the attempted aircraft scam. I’ll describe the mysterious details of this elaborate con later.
My fears of missing important details, failing to connect disparate but related facts, plus a touch of OCD, are the reasons why I have checked, rechecked and cross-checked everything that was checkable, including competing theories and alternate explanations for reported events, of which there are many. And then our obsessive fact-checkers did it all again. I do not want to be made a fool.
