Robin Koon has perhaps the greatest party trick in all the land.
In an instant, Koon, who lives in Santa Rosa with his wife, Lynn, can pull his cellphone from his pocket and produce a photograph of him as a kid sitting on Elvis Presley’s back.
Still more: He’s got a photo that shows him with his twin brother, Gavin, holding hands with The King and another of the two pseudo-wrestling with him.
For Elvis fans — and we are legion — it’s a showstopping play. I was so gobsmacked and unprepared upon seeing the photos that my follow-up question came out something like, “What the?”
Turns out that when he was 8-years-old, Koon and his brother were tapped to star (star!) in a movie with The King. In the summer of 1961, Koon spent his days on a film set in the Florida sun, tossing footballs, playing with rockets and otherwise messing around with one Elvis Presley while they filmed “Follow That Dream.”
Speechless.
“What I remember was what a nice person he was to the people around him,” Koon said. “He treated people like you wanted to be treated.”
My long-held visions of Elvis happily intact, Koon and I decided (or I decided for Koon) that it would be fun to watch “Follow That Dream” together in his Santa Rosa home. After all, Jan. 8 would have been The King’s 91st birthday so we needed to celebrate.
Santa Rosa resident Robin Koon, left, watches the 1962 release of “Follow That Dream”, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025, starring Elvis Presley. Koon, along with his twin brother Gavin, were cast alongside Elvis Presley, Anne Helm and Arthur O’Connell, right. Robin is left middle. The film was made in Florida in 1961. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
Full disclosure, in case you haven’t guessed by now: I love Elvis.
I celebrated my high school graduation approximately 400 years ago not by spending a week at the beach with friends like a normal person but by flying to Memphis with my mom so I could tour Graceland.
Pre-internet, I researched (meaning I read Priscilla Presley’s “Elvis and Me”) and took notes on Elvis-related locales. Using a city map, we drove around Memphis finding Elvis’s junior high and high school, I believe two of his pre-Graceland homes, and touring Sun Studios, from which I may or may not have borrowed a drum stick that was on the floor.
We saw his car collection and walked through his airplane, the “Lisa Marie.” We went inside Graceland and I have photos of the jungle room, the stairs leading to his bedroom and of the slide on the play structure in the backyard that, according to our tour guide, showed bullet holes from some wacky shenanigans courtesy of The King and his pals.
I have been back to Graceland twice since that first trip and it never fails to thrill.
So trust me when I say I was excited to watch “Follow That Dream” with Koon. I also worked fairly hard not to be weird about it.
Koon has nothing but good things to say about The King and his experience filming the movie. In it Koon and his brother play Teddy and Eddy Bascombe, the informally adopted younger brothers to Elvis’s Toby Kwimper.
The movie — entertainment website IMBd rates it as Elvis’s second best film — follows the family’s attempt to homestead a plot of land on the side of a Florida highway only to become entangled with both state officials and the mob. Hilarity ensues.
“As a kid, it was fun,” Koon said. “It was not work, it was fun.”
Koon got the job by chance. His father was an art director in Hollywood where he was in charge of the stage sets for “The Lawrence Welk Show” and others. As Koon recalls, it was one of his parents’ friends who told the family that a casting director was looking for young twins to put in an Elvis movie.
Koon, who had no prior stage or film experience, recalls showing up to audition with his brother only to find a sea of twin boys of a similar age.
“You can well imagine, everyone is bouncing off the walls,” he said. “They had us do some readings, talked to us, asked us a bunch of questions. They were sizing us up — could we follow directions?”
Turns out the Koon brothers could.
“By the end of the day, they told us, ‘You are it,’” he said. “They picked us.”
Santa Rosa resident Robin Koon with a poster of the 1962 release of “Follow That Dream”, starring Elvis Presley. Robin Koon and twin brother Gavin, were featured alongside Presley, Anne Helm and Arthur O’Connell. The film was made in 1961 in Florida. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
Koon recalls being told that had and his brother had to grow out their astronaut-era buzz cuts. The mop-headed look was needed. He also remembers taking his first flight — the journey to a location near Clearwater, Florida, where he would spend about six weeks on set and living at a resort called Port Paradise with all of the cast and crew. Including Elvis.
“To be honest, we didn’t know who Elvis was. We had no idea,” he said. “To us he was just another adult on the set. We did not understand fame.”
But they did understand kindness. And by Koon’s recollection, The King was kind. And patient. And fun.
“He was a gentle person, no doubt,” he said.
Case in point: There is a scene in the movie in which the boys were expected to snap their fingers to a song being sung by Elvis as he sat at the foot of their bed. But the Koon brothers struggled to make their 8-year-old fingers cooperate. Director Gordon Douglas did his best to instruct. No luck.
“Elvis came over and sat down and said, ‘Well, just clap your hands,’” Koon said. “He could have been short tempered, ‘Come on, just do it,’ but he wasn’t. He tried to help us.”
In the final cut, Koon and his brother, mouths smeared with fake chocolate, sit in the bed and clap heartily as Elvis sings “Sound Advice.”
Koon recalls seeing both Elvis’s white Cadillac (with a TV inside) around the set as well as his white powerboat. He remembers singing scenes were later re-recorded in a studio but that Elvis would sing live to the song on set as the camera rolled. And he remembers he and Gavin teasing The King about the kissing scenes with actress Anne Helm.
At the time, he didn’t understood how the wider world perceived his co-star. The only inkling came during the filming of the dramatic courthouse scene which essentially closes the movie.
Filmed in a real courthouse in Ocala, Florida, the cast and crew had to be escorted out during lunch breaks. It was then that Koon saw Elvis fans packed cheek to jowl behind barriers trying to catch a glimpse of The King.
“We had to go through crowds of people,” he said. “That was the first time we saw everyone screaming….I think it sort of sunk in.”
At the close of filming in Florida, cast and crew were flown to a studio in Southern California, where sound work was done, some set scenes were shot and publicity photos taken.
And then it was over.
“We never saw him again,” Koon said.
Elvis went on to film “Kid Galahad” and 21 more movies. The Koon brothers, who made their debut in “Follow That Dream,” had parts in a few television shows but participated in no other films.
And that was that until Gavin Koon’s phone rang some four decades later.
It was 2001 and it was an Elvis rep on the line. Would the twins be interested in taking part in one of the twice-yearly events that mark, on Jan. 8 and Aug. 16, the days of Elvis’s birth and death?
The answer was yes and the twins have since been invited to VIP events at Graceland, speaker panels and even a fan-organized, Elvis-focused cruise. They have autographed bare arms and T-shirts, been given Butterfinger candy bars (watch the movie, you will understand), they met Priscilla and Lisa Marie and, according to Robin Koon, have been loved on by devoted Elvis fans.
“All the fans are really nice,” he said. (Yes we are.)
“We have had a lot of people who asked if they could touch us,” Koon said.
And that has led to tears, according to Lynn Koon.
“People touch them and then cry — cry for hours,” she said, somewhat bemused.
The King keeps a hold on people, even close to 50 years after his death.
“It’s interesting the way they talk about him, and I understand why,” Robin Koon said. “It’s in the present tense, not like he’s gone but he’s still here. His spirit, his influence is still here.”
That explains, in part, why people still line up to meet Koon and his brother — it’s to get one degree closer to The King.
“The power of one man’s influence is still in play today,” he said.
You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.