Simply Elvis Tour Group From The United Kingdom Visits the Old Courthouse Heritage Museum in Inverness Florida
By: Steve Steve Hrycaj, Citrus County Historical Society
On Saturday ,April 27,2024, the Simply Elvis Tour Group from the United Kingdom, with 39 members plus 2 British Tour Guides , came to Inverness, Florida to visit the locations of the Elvis Presley Movie,” Follow that Dream” .They had already visited Graceland and were on the Tour Bus that had just came in from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to Florida.
With the renewed interest recently on everything Elvis Presley ,his life, his movies as well as his music ,its no wonder everyone, it seems, wants to know all they can about Elvis. One of the best and on going traditions is retracing his starring roles in all 31 feature films by visiting the Elvis Movie locations thru out the United States .
The Wrap,an entertainment publication , recently listed and ranked all 31 Elvis movies from ‘The Worst to the Very good. Our movie, “Follow That Dream “,was listed as the Third Best Elvis Movie!
How about that!
The Simply Elvis Tour group had been to Yankee Town, Inglis area ,where they filmed by the bridge at Bird Creek , the Homestead, and beach and fishing scenes in the morning . Then the Bus brought them to Downtown Inverness at 12:30M . They went into the Valerie Theater first , where they were greeted by Commissioner Holly Davis and Inverness City Councilwoman Jacquie Hepfer.
The Tour Group finally made it across the street to of The Old Courthouse Heritage Museum , by 1PM ,where they had filmed the last 14 minutes of the movie on the second floor Courtroom.
They were regaled by Steve Hrycaj, Inverness Cultural Heritage Council Chair, an arm of the Citrus County Historical Society, on the importance of Elvis making making the film, Follow That Dream .
Citrus County, for unknown reasons, did not have any available Blue prints, or correct photos on hand to share when it was time to reconstruct the Courtroom to its former historic glory ,after they did a huge remodel in the late 60’s and early 70’s. The room was modernized, along with the Courtroom ceiling that was dropped so that you could not even see the balcony at all. Plus they removed the curved Tempered glass offices on both sides of the room.
Based on the film and movie stills , and the way Elvis was filmed from the back and shot from the front, we were able to reverse engineer the entire entire second floor Courtroom like it was back in the early 1920’s and former glory!
For Us at The Old Courthouse Heritage Museum, Elvis “Never Left The Building!”
The Simply Elvis Tour had a great time taking photo op pictures on the second floor and the judge’s bench as well as thru out the building with all the 6 Elvis cut outs!
Then they were kind enough to go to our Museum Gift Shop and almost literally buy out all our Elvis Merchandise !
Then on to Stumpknockers for a late lunch .
Thank you to Terry Natwick , Discover Crystal River, for coordinating the group on their tour thru out Citrus County. This was the third time in 9 Years that this Tour Group has come thru Citrus County!
And of course, Thank you to the Simply Elvis Tour Group from the United Kingdom!
We hope you enjoyed your visit to Citrus County and Inverses Florida ! See you again soon
