You’d think anything involving the penis of noted heartthrob Elvis Presley would be a pretty big fucking deal, but apparently some obvious Elvis wood has been on full display for the world to see for decades now and we all somehow missed it. According to a recent report from the New York Post by way of the Mirror, the star can be seen clearly pitching a tent during a dance scene with actress Laurel Goodwin in the 1962 musical comedy Girls! Girls! Girls! — and no one bothered to edit it out.
Former Elvis manager Joe Esposito detailed the incident in his 2016 memoir, claiming the star blamed the ill-timed erection on his pants. “Damn pants were rubbing me the wrong way and I couldn’t stop the feeling,” the star reportedly told Esposito.
@ep_memories_3577 Elvis Presley got erection filming ‚Girls! Girls! Girls!‘ — and it wasn’t edited out. However, Elvis apparently turned himself on as well after getting „excited“ while shooting a dance scene with actress Laurel Goodwin during the 1962 musical comedy „Girls! Girls! Girls!“ The steamy scene (try to find) was described in „Good Rockin‘ Tonight,“ a memoir by Presley’s former manager, Joe Esposito. „Damn pants were rubbing me the wrong way and I couldn’t stop the feeling,“ the „Burning Love“ singer supposedly told Esposito of the tentpole moment, the Mirror reported. The spontaneous arousal occurred while Presley was grooving with Laurel to the song „The Walls Have Ears.“ „The dance scene with Laurel was complicated … at some point during all the wiggling and jumping, those pants really rubbed him the wrong way, and Little Elvis, as he called it, became erect,“ Esposito recalled. The Mississippi-born star was apparently so shocked at the manhood-moving moment that he ran over to Esposito and exclaimed, „Did you see that? Did you see what happened below the belt?“ „Geez, I hope they don’t have to reshoot this,“ Presley supposedly lamented, while his manager was certain „Little Elvis“ wouldn’t make the final cut. However, when the „Blue Suede Shoes“ crooner sat down to watch the rough cuts, he noticed that the incident was left in. Despite the scene’s inappropriate nature, „Girls! Girls! Girls!“ director Norman Taurog had decided to use the existing cut because of how complicated the scene was to shoot, according to the Express. „Hot damn! Will you look at that? I was hoping it wouldn’t show because the pants were black,“ Esposito recounted his client telling him at the time. „But there it is, sticking out like a sore thumb … well, sort of like a sore thumb. The manager added: „I couldn’t believe it when the movie came out. There was Elvis, dancing around the apartment with Little Elvis at attention and aimed directly at Laurel!“ #elvis #elvispresley #epmemories3577 #graceland #priscillapresley #lisamariepresley #youngelvis #memphis ♬ The Walls Have Ears – Elvis Presley & The Jordanaires
Elvis, for his part, was pretty frazzled by the incident, reportedly running over to Esposito after the scene wrapped asking if he’d noticed “what happened below the belt.” Based on the final cut of the scene that remains in the movie to this day, it seems pretty unlikely that anyone wouldn’t have noticed, and yet, for some reason, no one bothered to reshoot the scene or even edit out Elvis’s uninvited co-star.
“I was hoping it wouldn’t show because the pants were black,” Elvis reportedly told Esposito after seeing the final cut. “But there it is, sticking out like a sore thumb … well, sort of like a sore thumb.”
“I couldn’t believe it when the movie came out,” Esposito recalled. “There was Elvis, dancing around the apartment with Little Elvis at attention and aimed directly at Laurel!”
While I, too, am surprised that no one responsible for making this movie did literally anything to hide Elvis’s boner from the world, I am honestly more shocked that this very obvious onscreen Elvis boner isn’t a more recognizable fixture of our cultural consciousness. Everyone knows about the priest’s boner in the original version of The Little Mermaid, and that’s just a cartoon. How did we miss a real, live, surprise boner from the King himself? Were 1960s audiences just so scandalized by the sight of Elvis wood on the big screen that everyone just looked the other way? Were people more mature back then and able to handle the sight of an obviously unplanned erection without turning into middle schoolers?
We may never have answers. What we do have, however, is an unedited Elvis boner, and the comforting knowledge that even the biggest star of the 20th century — one literally best known for grooving in tight pants with beautiful women — is not immune to the occasional inconvenient boner. Stars, they really are just like us.
