Question on Elvis a hot potato for Minnesota governor in 1956

Question on Elvis a hot potato for Minnesota governor in 1956

 

 On December 11, 1956, Elvis's first movie, Love Me Tender, was in its third week in Minneapolis theaters. That morning the Minneapolis Morning Tribune ran a front-page story on how the state's governor, O. A. Freeman, answered a question posed by 11-year-old Linda Johnson. "I would like to have your personal opinion of Elvis Presley," Linda wrote the governor. "I love him."

 According to the Tribune, Freeman "straddled the fence on a burning national issue." His return letter to Linda read, in part, "I've been so busy with my duties here and my reelection campaign (a successful one) that I had never seen Mr. Presley until his recent appearance on the Ed Sullivan program. He is certainly a very unusual showman and apparently appeals to many people."

Tribune reporter Ed Goodpaster, who wrote the paper's story about the correspondence between the young girl and the governor, closed his article with the following observation.

"Freeman, no stranger to political differences of mind, realized that this, however, was a different situation. As one of his assistants put it: 'Political infighting hath no fury like a Presley fan whose blue suedes have been stepped on.'"