Elvis and Gladys (ISBN 1-57806-634-4) is a biography of rock and roll singer Elvis Presley by author and film industry insider Elaine Dundy. The book recounts Presley's early life, the role his mother Gladys played in his formative years, and his beginnings in recorded music and film.
The first hardcover edition was published in the United States in 1985 by MacMillan Publishing Company of New York. ISBN 0-02-553910-8. It was reissued in paperback in 2004 by the University Press of Mississippi. Widely acclaimed, the Boston Globe called it "Nothing less than the best Elvis book yet" and Kirkus Reviews described it as "The most fine-grained Elvis bio ever."[1] The New York Daily News stated "This is the Elvis bio that gets behind the hype and the myth. Nobody ever wrote better about the making of Elvis than Elaine Dundy."[2]
The biopic which depicted Elvis' relationship with Gladys is featured in the TV series Elvis (2005), which starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Elvis and Camryn Manheim as Gladys.
Dundy in the book claims that Elvis's great-great grandmother Nancy Burdine Tackett was Jewish, citing one of Elvis's third cousins, Oscar Tackett.[3] Some would later back this claim as well.[4] Nate Bloom has challenged the claim. Bloom states that Dundy reported the claim without verifying the story as a "fact". Bloom concludes that there is no mention of any Jewish ancestor in any of the available census records and the family never mentioned any Jewish ancestry to the orthodox Jewish Rabbi family they shared a house with in the 1950s.[5]
- ^ Reading the South Archived 2006-08-13 at the Wayback Machine – Center for the Study of Southern Culture Archived 2007-09-27 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Elvis and Gladys University of Mississippi Press
- ^ Elaine Dundy, Elvis and Gladys, p.21
- ^ White, Francine (June 23, 2022). "Uh huh, Elvis was a nice Jewish boy". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved January 26, 2024.
- ^ Nate Bloom (2012). "The Jews Who Wrote Christmas Songs".