Elvis - who's seemingly rocking some sort of gold lamé pyjamas here! - shaking his hips on-stage during his 6 p.m. show at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto on April 2, 1957.
Presley's two concerts at Maple Leaf Gardens were among only five he ever performed outside of the U.S.
A frenzied audience (reportedly composed predominantly of women, ranging in age from four to 64!) screamed and cheered in approval as Elvis glided across the stage, seductively cradling the microphone and stopping to rock his hips in rhythm to the music.
Not everybody there was impressed though!
Yap, Toronto Star music critic Hugh Thomson wrote, in a scathing review of Presley’s performance ...
“It goes without saying, he has all the appeal of one-part dynamite and one-part chain-lightning to the adolescent girls, but to one like myself who is neither a girl nor adolescent, I could only feel he was strikingly devoid of talent.”
Thomson continued to seethe ...
“One rock ‘n’ roll ballad sounded just like the other, and the basic theme and appeal were sex, which Elvis lays on with the subtlety of a bulldozer in mating season, you might say. He is Mr. Overstatement himself. He has to knock himself and his audience out at every beat.”
(photo from the York
University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections,
Toronto Telegram fonds, F0433)
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