Free Screening Room by Alan Lightman Page B

could munch through a cotton bud, he began giving Paul Schaffer a new Cadillac every year for his birthday. Paul would drive up in his sparkling Caddy to the corner of Main and Beale looking shamefaced and offer to take people to lunch. Any year that Paul didn’t adore the color, Elvis would give the car to someone else and buy Paul another one.”
    After his success cutting grooves at Sun Studio, Elvis began making movies. His first film was
Love Me Tender
in 1956, followed by
Loving You
and
Jailhouse Rock
. Elvis enjoyed seeing his own movies, but not in public theaters, where he was always mobbed by fans. So he would come to private showings at a mini movie theater, a “screening room,”built by my grandfather M.A. and attached to his house on Cherry Road. It was there that I met Elvis myself, in 1960. The movie was
G.I. Blues
, one of the films Elvis made while serving in the armed forces.

    ( photo credit 17.3 )
    I remember Elvis walking in with two beautiful young women, one on each arm, and installing himself and his girlfriends on the couch in front. Apparently shy, Elvis hardly said a word for two hours. I was only eleven or twelve years old and not acquainted with the music of Elvis Presley, but I had begun to get wind of the excitement and mystery of the opposite sex, and one guy with two girls made an enormous impression on me.

KD Dance
    M.A.’s screening room was a family treasure. Although my grandfather built it in the 1940s to preview new films, and it was indeed used for that purpose, the screening room also became the preferred venue for parties, small musical events, and illicit romantic liaisons. About the size of a large living room, it had a little glass case with chocolate mints and other candies, M.A.’s many bridge trophies on a shelf, and photographs of M.A. with Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, and Gary Cooper. For seating, there were twenty plush seats in the back and a small couch in front. The screening room had its own bar, stocked with bourbon, absinthe, and gin; a little refrigerator; and a bathroom with a shower and clean towels. M.A.’s maid Hattie Mae, who cleaned the place, died with a thousand secrets.
    The screening room was also the site of my mother’s high-adrenaline dancing lessons. These she taught twice a week, in the afternoons; she would have taught more, except that her students had no more spare time or energy. Under Mother’s tutelage, an entire generation of Memphis teenagers in the fifties and sixties learned the Viennese waltz, the fox trot, the cha-cha, the jitterbug, and various modern dances. The space wasn’t really big enough, but the demand was large, and the young people were willing to bump into each other as they thrashed about inclose quarters. When I was thirteen or fourteen, I attended the dance classes myself, and I have vivid memories of my mother flying about like a beautiful bird—barefoot, gorgeous, and light, yet in complete command. I felt proud, even though I myself was awkward on the dance floor. Mother had far more stamina than any of her students. She could swing, twirl, and shake for three hours or more with an almost demonic energy. In a given session, she would use up a half-dozen male partners, strapping young men who were reduced to panting and slumping in chairs. Mother had an extraordinary metabolism. She burned up a colossal number of calories during the day, then ate all through the night. She slept very little. She once went to a sleep clinic in Maryland to discover the reason for her insomnia. Upon entering the clinic, she announced to the doctors that she slept only three hours per night. The doctors replied that she must be mistaken; even insomniacs slept more than three hours per night. They wired her up with electrodes. After a few days, the MDs told her that yep, she was right, she slept only three hours a night. For the rest of each night, she would pace around the house, make to-do lists for the