RN pictured with Elvis and Bud Krogh.

Working with HR (Bob) Haldeman and Bud Krogh, I was part of the team that made Elvis Presley’s visit to the White House on December 21, 1970 happen. The letter Elvis left at the front gate was delivered to my office very early in the morning. My secretary Nell Yates immediately brought it to my attention. I contacted Bud Krogh who was the staff person on Drug Policy and began the process of “staffing out” the letter. The memos and actual details of the visit are a part of Bud’s book, The Day Elvis Met Nixon.

The Nixon/Elvis meeting turned out to be one of the most historic visits by any personality to the White House. As many know the picture of the President and the King meeting in the Oval Office is the single most requested image ever from the Nationa Archives!

Recently, Bud Krogh and I did an extensive radio interview with the UK’s Radio One. The program will air on the 75^th birthday of Elvis in January and will document the story of the historic visit.

One of the most interesting points about the visit is the confidentiality that surrounded the it. Elvis did not want the meeting publicized because he thought he could be more effective in helping to stop drug use if he did not look like a White House agent. Elvis kept it confidential and so did the White House. No word leaked out for two years. As I recall, it was ultimately journalist Jack Anderson who printed the story and no one knows who was the ultimate leaker.

Imagine this, Elvis entered the White House through the Executive Office Building, went to lunch in the White House mess, was introduced to several secretaries in the West Wing and no one ever mentioned it to the press. That would never happen in today’s White House.

“Langella explains that he ‘totally trusts his intuition’. There are certain historical truths you have to respect. From there I concentrate on what is going to make people laugh, cry and feel. Instead of history, this is more about the human condition and that is hopefully what will prove fascinating to moviegoers.”

Last Friday night I went to the movie. For me it was “fascinating”. Langella delivered a characterization of the President that was only in a small part accurate. The theatrical representation was out of sync with Nixon’s age at the time of the interviews. The on screen Nixon that Langella portrays is old, slumped, moves in an over-the-top exaggerated and halting manner that denotes a man obviously weighed down by guilt and remorse. However, putting those criticisms aside, I enjoyed the movie. Actually, I think it does Nixon a service in many ways. The dialogues accuracy I will leave to others. But, the remorse that RN expresses, his admissions of error and letting the country down, was moving. As I recall, it was an accurate representation of what he said at the time and, I believe, how, in his heart-of-hearts, he really felt. I sat watching and wanting words of remorse to come out of his mouth and they did. That was a “victory” for the President. We know, for all the Nixon “haters” it will never be enough. But, for the twenty-five year old and two thirty year olds who saw the movie with me—his admission seemed to be enough. Without prompting, my friends also locked on the fact, as implied in the movie, that there was much more to President Nixon than Watergate. An additional plus, the freakiness of the Reston, Jr. character helped create empathy for Nixon and illustrated the hatred the left cannot surrender.

No matter how you cut-it, Ron Howard makes great movies. My view, for younger generations, Frost/Nixon helped position RN in a way that will lead to a more objective analysis of President Nixon’s public life in the decades ahead.