Elvis reenacted Dr. Strangelove in the real White House situation room

Elvis and Nixon Meet

Did you know Elvis Presley was a Stanley Kubrick fan? He was such a fan that he did a scene from Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in the real life war room.

In 1970, Elvis and Nixon famously met, but Elvis didn’t just shake hands with the President. After his visit, he took an informal tour of the White House. Jerry Schilling, a longtime friend and associate (seen next to Elvis in the above picture), told the story during a conversation at the Nixon Presidential library:

Well, you know, another one of our favorite films was Dr. Strangelove with Peter Sellers. And I don’t know if you will remember, but they have this big war room, and one of the characters is Bucky Turgidson. I’m trying to think of the actor that played that part. And he is like the military commander. And Strangelove is like this guy in the wheelchair that Elvis could emulate, totally, and do that scene. But there was a great line in the movie, which we hadn’t seen in a long time, and Bucky Turgidson goes, ‘You can’t fight in the war room!’

So when we went down to the situation room, and it looked exactly like the war room, and Elvis turns over to me and says, ‘You can’t fight in the war room.’ And we’re dying laughing, you know. So it was that kind of movie, you know.

Yes, Elvis was enough of a Kubrick geek that he reenacted a scene from Dr. Strangelove. It wasn’t the last time he geeked out on Kubrick. In the 70s, the King liked to enter to the music from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Which would you rather see: Elvis doing Dr. Strangelove or 2001?