An Appreciation: Elvis Presley photographer Alfred Wertheimer (1929-2014)

The first thing that springs to mind about my encounter in 2010 with Elvis Presley photographer Alfred Wertheimer, the man who shot the celebrated intimate images of Presley on the cusp of stardom in 1956, was the marrow-deep passion about his vocation.

I interviewed Wertheimer, who died Sunday at 84, in conjunction with a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition of his photos that the Grammy Museum hosted at that time. Wertheimer came out from his home in New York to attend the show’s gala opening, but did he stop to revel in all the adulation being heaped on him and the revealing photos he’d shot more than half a century earlier?

No, he had his camera around his neck and will snapping shots of all the activity and people surrounding him, ever-determined to document the event. He was endearingly unassuming about his photographic accomplishments and spoke matter-of-factly about the Presley photos and other assignments he’d spent his life chasing.

The call to shoot Elvis shortly after RCA Records had bought his contract from Sam Phillips’ tiny Sun Records label in Memphis sparked one of the many illuminating and entertaining anecdotes Wertheimer told about the assignment that would stay with him the rest of his life.

An RCA publicist called one day in 1956 and hired him to take some shots during the CBS-TV variety show hosted by big-band leaders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.

“I thought it would be great -- Tommy Dorsey was one of my heroes,” Wertheimer told me. “I told her I loved all that stuff: Benny Goodman and the big bands. She said, ‘I don’t want you to cover Tommy Dorsey. I want you to cover Elvis Presley.’ There was a long silence, then I said, ‘Elvis who?’ ”

Even though Wertheimer was contracted to get shots of Presley only at the TV show, he found Presley compelling enough to stay on — at his own expense — and take the train Presley was riding back to Memphis for a concert a few days later.

He wound up shooting hundreds of photos of the singer with virtually unrestricted access. As soon as fame hit, Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker, slammed the door on that kind of access to his client.

Wertheimer’s experience as a photographer during his stint in the U.S. Army a few years earlier sharpened his eye for capturing intimate moments with the singer reading fan mail, grabbing a kiss with a fan backstage and checking out pressings of the recordings he’d just made in New York on a portable record player during the train ride back home.

Wertheimer said the vast majority of those photos, except a few that RCA wound up using in a promotional campaign in 1956, never saw the light of day until Presley’s death in 1977.

“For 19 years ... I did not get one single phone call for an Elvis Presley photograph,” Wertheimer told me four years ago. “But from that moment on, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing.”

The show was still up a few weeks later when the Grammy Museum hosted one of its regular question-and-answer and performance sessions with Ringo Starr. I walked through the show with the Beatles drummer — who also has had a lifelong fascination with photography -- and watched his delight at seeing the unguarded shots of one of the Beatles’ most important musical heroes.

I also figured it would be enlightening to get Starr’s take on what he saw because he was one of the very few people who could identify with what Presley would soon be experiencing.

“The start of all our careers was like that,” he said, strolling through the exhibition. “We didn’t expect any problems, and then suddenly it gets wild. And it did.”

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