Shotalot: R.I.P. Robert Goulet

The Rock Turtleneck flag is at half-mast today in tribute to Robert Goulet, who passed away yesterday at 73 while awaiting a lung transplant. The New York Times obituary will tell you how he shot to fame as Lancelot in the 1961 Broadway production of Camelot alongside Julie Andrews and Richard Burton. How women would swoon over his rich baritone and throw their hotel room keys onstage. How his style of entertainment was rendered obsolete by the Beatles. How he enjoyed many years of success as the embodiment of a Las Vegas lounge lizard. How he won a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy.

But to Rock Turtleneck readers, the obituary is a flat-out disgrace, for it ignores perhaps his greatest accomplishment as an entertainer.
It was Bob Goulet, after all, whose performance on a television special so incensed Elvis Presley, the King had no choice but to grab his pistol and shoot some lead into his 25-inch RCA TV.

The Memphis Commericial Appeal asked Goulet about the Elvis association in 2004:
GOULET: “They [presumably the Memphis Mafia] told me that he had about a hundred sets in the basement. And he'd shoot the damn thing out - you know he was on pills and he didn't know quite what he was doing and he'd BANG! and they'd look at each other and say, "Get another set!" They mention me all the time. I don't know why. I remember once we sat together backstage for two hours. And he was a charming, delightful, delightful man. And at one point I said, "That's a beautiful ring you have there." He said "You like it?" I said, "It's beautiful!" He took it off his hand and put it on mine. He gave me his ring.”
TCB, RG.