Elvis Jungle Room = Witco??? - General Tiki

W woofmutt Member Seattilite Telstar Joined: Mar 26, 2002 Posts: 2639	W woofmutt Posted posted on Sun, Aug 20, 2006 1:25 AM Yes, it's Witco, and thank God it is cuz when I'm telling folks about Witco all I ever have to do is say "Yuh know Elvis' Jungle Room at Graceland?" and everyone always seems to know exactly what kinda furniture I'm talkin' about. Some Jungle Room legends and observations... In an August 14, 2005 piece on http://www.indystar.com Michael Schuman wrote: Graceland guides say Elvis furnished (the Jungle Room) on a whim when, while driving past a Memphis furniture store, he stopped his car and within a half-hour purchased every piece of furniture that reminded him of Hawaii. That included a sofa and chairs covered in faux fur, solid green carpeting for the floor, walls and ceiling, an easy chair with carved wooden snakes as arms and an artificial waterfall that often went awry, flooding nearby rooms. The room has become known as the jungle room, but Elvis never called it that. But on http://www.morbid-curiosity.com Elaine McCarthy wrote: The "Jungle Room's" birth is pretty interesting. Apparently Elvis' father (who appears to have more taste) went into town, while he was there he saw , what he called "the world's most ugliest furniture." When he returned to Graceland he told Elvis about it and Elvis ran to town to check out the hideous furniture. I guess it was love at first site, because he bought the whole mess and brought it back to Graceland along with lime green shag carpeting that he had installed on both the ceiling and floor. This room is where Elvis kept his friends waiting for him... Steve Pond wrote a standard opinion of the Jungle Room on http://www.rollingstone.com: They say the Jungle Room was Elvis Presley's favorite room at Graceland. It's decorated with huge, fur-upholstered furniture, thick, dark curtains, a sickly-green carpet, pseudo-Polynesian idols and a waterfall that regularly flooded the room. If you've been drawn to Graceland because of your respect for the artistry of its owner, coming face to face with the Jungle Room (or any of several other rooms that are just as garish) is unsettling: the initial reaction is to laugh it off and to put as much distance as possible between the man who decorated that room and the man who sang "That's All Right" and "Don't Be Cruel" and "Suspicious Minds." From http://www.hup.harvard.edu a more sophisticated take by author Karal Ann Marling in her book Graceland: Going Home With Elvis [The room displays] an ensemble of cypress-crotch coffee tables, green shag carpeting (on floor and ceiling), mirrors framed in the breast feathers of pheasants, flocked Austrian shades, Wookie-fur lampshades, and massive pine chairs and couches carved with chain saws in a style other stunned observers have labeled Polynesian Primitive, Early Goona-Goona, or Tahitian Provincial. Angry South Sea gods fume silently in every corner. Ceramic tigers prowl the artificial greenery... A recent article celebrating Graceland's listing on the National Register of Historic Places maintains that the Jungle Room only looks strange to the 1990s because times and tastes have changed: in another hundred years, we are told, the Tiki sofas will seem no more or less tasteful than a roomful of Belter Victoriana in the American Wing at the Metropolitan. But leaving the Jungle Room to the drowsy embrace of history suppresses the barefaced ha-ha-ha vitality of the place and the evanescent glee of a really good joke... The Jungle Room is an act of faith in serial novelty. Out with the old, in with the new, over and over again...When Elvis ensconced himself in his den to watch TV, he shot the set if his interest flagged... Diehard fans are sometimes disappointed by the formal rooms along the highway side of Graceland. They're beautiful, in a chilly blue-and-white way, but remote and overarranged...The Jungle Room feels different. Personal...'It's funny,' says the fan, 'but you can feel him there, like it fit his personality.' Nonbelievers prefer the Jungle Room, too, because the overt bad taste lets them recoil in horror and imagine themselves a notch or two higher than Elvis on the class scale. Or the maturity scale, for the Jungle Room affords a glimpse of a rich man spending his money like a ten-year-old with a huge allowance and an overactive imagination... Elvis's friend Liberace, whose many gilt-on-white estates overflowed with functional objects tortured into piano shapes, embraced an overemphatic fauxness that formed the basis for his stage act...His movie-star houses...were teasing advertisements for a public persona masquerading as a private one, or vice versa. There is no similar irony in Elvis's Krakatoa-style den. Only a rush of pleasure enhanced by the awareness that there were more jokes to come, more wacky stuff from Donald's to buy someday, more Saturday matinee fantasies to be lived out in the privacy of Graceland.* Check out lotsa Jungle Room images at images.google.com

Yes, it's Witco, and thank God it is cuz when I'm telling folks about Witco all I ever have to do is say "Yuh know Elvis' Jungle Room at Graceland?" and everyone always seems to know exactly what kinda furniture I'm talkin' about.

Some Jungle Room legends and observations...

In an August 14, 2005 piece on http://www.indystar.com Michael Schuman wrote:

*Graceland guides say Elvis furnished (the Jungle Room) on a whim when, while driving past a Memphis furniture store, he stopped his car and within a half-hour purchased every piece of furniture that reminded him of Hawaii.

That included a sofa and chairs covered in faux fur, solid green carpeting for the floor, walls and ceiling, an easy chair with carved wooden snakes as arms and an artificial waterfall that often went awry, flooding nearby rooms. The room has become known as the jungle room, but Elvis never called it that.*

But on http://www.morbid-curiosity.com Elaine McCarthy wrote:

The "Jungle Room's" birth is pretty interesting. Apparently Elvis' father (who appears to have more taste) went into town, while he was there he saw , what he called "the world's most ugliest furniture." When he returned to Graceland he told Elvis about it and Elvis ran to town to check out the hideous furniture. I guess it was love at first site, because he bought the whole mess and brought it back to Graceland along with lime green shag carpeting that he had installed on both the ceiling and floor. This room is where Elvis kept his friends waiting for him...

Steve Pond wrote a standard opinion of the Jungle Room on http://www.rollingstone.com:

They say the Jungle Room was Elvis Presley's favorite room at Graceland. It's decorated with huge, fur-upholstered furniture, thick, dark curtains, a sickly-green carpet, pseudo-Polynesian idols and a waterfall that regularly flooded the room. If you've been drawn to Graceland because of your respect for the artistry of its owner, coming face to face with the Jungle Room (or any of several other rooms that are just as garish) is unsettling: the initial reaction is to laugh it off and to put as much distance as possible between the man who decorated that room and the man who sang "That's All Right" and "Don't Be Cruel" and "Suspicious Minds."

From http://www.hup.harvard.edu a more sophisticated take by author Karal Ann Marling in her book Graceland: Going Home With Elvis

[The room displays] an ensemble of cypress-crotch coffee tables, green shag carpeting (on floor and ceiling), mirrors framed in the breast feathers of pheasants, flocked Austrian shades, Wookie-fur lampshades, and massive pine chairs and couches carved with chain saws in a style other stunned observers have labeled Polynesian Primitive, Early Goona-Goona, or Tahitian Provincial. Angry South Sea gods fume silently in every corner. Ceramic tigers prowl the artificial greenery...

A recent article celebrating Graceland's listing on the National Register of Historic Places maintains that the Jungle Room only looks strange to the 1990s because times and tastes have changed: in another hundred years, we are told, the Tiki sofas will seem no more or less tasteful than a roomful of Belter Victoriana in the American Wing at the Metropolitan. But leaving the Jungle Room to the drowsy embrace of history suppresses the barefaced ha-ha-ha vitality of the place and the evanescent glee of a really good joke...

The Jungle Room is an act of faith in serial novelty. Out with the old, in with the new, over and over again...When Elvis ensconced himself in his den to watch TV, he shot the set if his interest flagged...

Diehard fans are sometimes disappointed by the formal rooms along the highway side of Graceland. They're beautiful, in a chilly blue-and-white way, but remote and overarranged...The Jungle Room feels different. Personal...'It's funny,' says the fan, 'but you can feel him there, like it fit his personality.' Nonbelievers prefer the Jungle Room, too, because the overt bad taste lets them recoil in horror and imagine themselves a notch or two higher than Elvis on the class scale. Or the maturity scale, for the Jungle Room affords a glimpse of a rich man spending his money like a ten-year-old with a huge allowance and an overactive imagination...

Elvis's friend Liberace, whose many gilt-on-white estates overflowed with functional objects tortured into piano shapes, embraced an overemphatic fauxness that formed the basis for his stage act...His movie-star houses...were teasing advertisements for a public persona masquerading as a private one, or vice versa. There is no similar irony in Elvis's Krakatoa-style den. Only a rush of pleasure enhanced by the awareness that there were more jokes to come, more wacky stuff from Donald's to buy someday, more Saturday matinee fantasies to be lived out in the privacy of Graceland.*

Check out lotsa Jungle Room images at images.google.com

Post #249897 by woofmutt on Sun, Aug 20, 2006 1:25 AM