Me and a Guy Named Elvis

by Jerry Schilling

  That night back at the house, Elvis and some of us were sitting around, and talk turned to what a great performance we’d seen at the Jackie Wilson show. I mentioned that I couldn’t understand how a guy that talented hadn’t broken out bigger yet—why wasn’t he doing bigger concerts, and film and television?

  Elvis shook his head slowly. “Man, Jackie and I were talking about that today. He’s in a hard place.”

  “What do you mean, E?” I asked.

  “I told him he was a good-looking guy—he should be doing movies. He said he really wanted to, and he’d had some interest from the studios. But his manager won’t let him out of his nightclub commitments—I think there’s a lot of mob connections there, and Jackie just can’t break out of it. They won’t give him enough time away from the club dates to make a picture.”

  Thinking about Wilson’s situation later, I couldn’t help but see a parallel with Elvis. Elvis wasn’t dealing with people who’d break his legs, but he was in a position where the connections that had helped get him to where he was were getting in the way of doing the work he truly wanted to do. Seemed like no matter how talented you were, somebody could find a way to box you in.

  Colonel Parker had apparently been impressed enough with what he’d seen of me on the Hawaii trip that he thought I could be useful to him, so I became a loan-out to him one day a week, spending the day in one of the massive offices he had on either movie lot (his headquarters on the MGM lot was an entire dance studio converted to office space, complete with its own kitchen). Both spaces were decorated with Elvis movie posters and all kinds of Elvis merchandise. The office decor also featured a fantastic number of expensive ivory carvings and marble representations of the Colonel’s favorite animal, the elephant, most of them gifts from affectionate friends and business associates.

  You could never get too comfortable around the Colonel, but it was still a pleasure to watch him work. He’d call for a lunch meeting at his office with top entertainment executives—guys who were used to lunches at three-and four-star restaurants around town—and serve them his special “hobo stew,” or a homely plate of cold cuts. During those cold-cut luncheons, a big plate of ham always seemed to end up in front of the Jewish Abe Lastfogel, president of the William Morris Agency and someone the Colonel considered a good friend. Whatever offense Lastfogel might have otherwise taken was probably balanced out by the fact that the only nice piece of furniture in the Colonel’s office was a special leather chair with Lastfogel’s name engraved on it.

  The Colonel had a system of barking like a dog to summon his assistants—one bark for one particular staffer, two barks for another—which was funny unless you didn’t respond promptly to the bark, in which case you might be subject to a severe talking-to. And the Colonel was a primary catalyst for pranks and hijinks on the otherwise dreary film sets of this period. One of his favorite gags was to show off some alleged hypnosis skills. He’d put Billy Smith in a trance and instruct him to go sit in the director’s chair (a huge no-no in Hollywood). Or he’d pretend to put Red and Sonny and some of the other guys under his spell and tell them that they were dogs. They’d be down on the floor of the set barking and howling away, and the Colonel would puff away on his cigar with a contented smile on his face. On the one hand, he was playing the role of crazy uncle who wants everybody to have a good time. But it was also his way of reminding the cast and crew around him: I’m in charge, and will do as I please.

  I remember watching those guys down on all fours howling away, and thinking “I’m not going to do that.” I know the other guys felt that it was all in good fun, but it looked humiliating to me. I don’t know what would have happened if the Colonel insisted I join in, because I was never tested. To the Colonel’s credit, he was an expert at reading people, and instantly understood how far he could push someone. He never once tried to turn me into a dog.

  One day, I was working in the Colonel’s office when a young, good-looking guy came through the door with a big bag of something. He looked vaguely familiar to me, but before I could ask who he was or what he wanted, he yelled out, “Colonel—I’ve got some sausage from the President.”

  “Come on in here, George,” the Colonel bellowed back from his room.

  It was actor George Hamilton, delivering some Texas sausage, care of Lyndon Johnson. The Colonel and the President had met back when Johnson was a senator and the Colonel had arranged for country star Eddy Arnold to sing at a private party Johnson was throwing. They hit it off right away, with the Colonel quickly inducting the senator into an exclusive, private club—the “Snowmen’s League.” Snowmen were those who were expert in the art of snowing—the ability to con, charm, fool, flim-flam, or otherwise pull the wool over someone’s eyes. Membership in the league was only open to those the Colonel deemed worthy (I still have my own league membership card). Hamilton was now dating Johnson’s daughter, and had also become very friendly with the Head Snowman. For all the Colonel’s bluster, you could never overestimate how well connected he was.

  On another day at his office, I got a glimpse of the more manipulative side of the Colonel’s management techniques. Elvis never wanted the Colonel around the recording studio, and the Colonel had no particular desire to be there (he’d send a representative like Tom Diskin instead). Of course, the Colonel kept tabs on everything that came out of the studio. Working in his office I overheard the Colonel talking on the phone with somebody at RCA (it was never hard to overhear the Colonel). He made a comment about a recording Elvis had just done, which had been circulated as an acetate but hadn’t been put out yet: “My wife, Marie, says she can’t hear Elvis with all that stuff going on,” the Colonel said. “It’s an Elvis record, but you can’t hear Elvis.”

  That’s how the records got changed. The Colonel would never be so heavy-handed—or traceable—as to try to override a mix Elvis had OK’d. But in his indirect way, he was making a demand. And that kind of conversation between the Colonel and RCA is what led to Elvis’s records not sounding the way Elvis wanted them to sound. Looking back, maybe I should have gone to Elvis and told him about that phone conversation right then. But at the time, I felt that trying to put myself between Elvis and the Colonel was only going to make things worse all the way around.

  I spent more time with the Colonel after he was loaned a house in Palm Springs by the William Morris Agency and decided that I should be one of the guys to drive him to and from L.A. These days involved a lot more than just driving, however. I had meals with the Colonel and his wife, I accompanied him for long sits in the sauna and steambath at the Palm Springs Spa Hotel, and I sometimes split a secret beer with him out in the toolshed behind his home (his wife disapproved of his imbibing). Getting that relaxed around the Colonel required a delicate balancing act. I knew that Elvis absolutely did not want the Colonel involved in his personal life. I had to be on guard as I sat in the car on those two-hour rides back to L.A., with the windows rolled up and Colonel puffing away on his cigar. Sometimes he’d sit in silence for forty-five minutes just staring out the window—you could almost hear his mind whirring away. But sometimes he would begin to ask questions, and I knew that the Colonel’s most innocent-sounding questions might lead to information being passed along that Elvis would not be happy about. The more the Colonel inquired about things that seemed unimportant, the more careful I’d be about my answers. I was starting to enjoy time with the Colonel, but I was always aware that my true loyalties were with Elvis.

  As much as the business and personal sides of Elvis were supposed to stay separate, the Colonel had a keen interest in having somebody he could depend on within Elvis’s inner circle, and he and Vernon had discussed putting me in the Elvis “foreman” spot during the period when Joe Esposito was gone and the Colonel felt that Marty Lacker was not communicating well with him. The most I heard about this was when Vernon offhandedly remarked, “Marty’s not getting the job done. The Colonel and I were talking about you.” The situation was resolved when Joe returned
as co-foreman, and frankly, I was relieved, knowing that Joe was the right guy for the job.

  Spending time with the Colonel on those drives, I picked up a couple of insights into his mercurial character. First, for all his psychological gamesmanship and sly personal politics, as a businessman, the Colonel was not a bullshitter. He told you what he wanted, told you what he’d give you, and when he said a deal was a deal, it was done. People could always say no to him. It’s just that most didn’t. Second, as much as he’s come to be seen as a heavy in the Elvis story—a reputation partly deserved—the odd thing is that he was fun to be around. As dominating as he could be, he was highly entertaining. Lastly, I came to realize that in some ways, Elvis and the Colonel were a lot alike: strong, smart, stubborn men who had become centers of power in worlds of their own making.

  By the fall of 1966, during the filming of Easy Come, Easy Go, Elvis and I were living with Priscilla and Sandy in the same house, and spending just about every minute of the long work days together. I suppose it was inevitable that at some point, the mix of professional and personal lives would become combustible.

  It was a day early in the shoot—maybe one of those still-photography days that Elvis hated—and he was in a lousy mood. He was sitting in his makeup chair in his dressing room, and he was being crabby to all the guys around him that day, but when he went at me something snapped. I knew when it was smart to defer to Elvis, to let him vent. But this time he brought Sandy into it. I don’t remember exactly what his complaint was, but one of the guys had told Elvis that Sandy had said something to Priscilla that made her suspicious about Elvis’s behavior. I knew that Sandy was too smart, and by nature too sweet, to have done that. I tried to stay calm.

  “Elvis, she loves you and she wouldn’t do that,” I said. “You know that.”

  The words didn’t seem to sink in at all.

  “Yes, she did,” he said.

  I could tell that he didn’t have a real gripe with Sandy—that he was just being disagreeable. But I was feeling protective of Sandy, and I just wasn’t in the mood to defer. Instead, I exploded.

  “No, Elvis, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just in a bad mood.”

  There was no faster way to move Elvis from a bad mood to a worse mood than by telling him he was in a bad mood. He got out of his chair. Fast.

  We stood face-to-face hollering at each other, waiting to see who would back down first. But neither of us backed down. We just got louder. I’d been holding a briefcase when we started yelling, and now I flung it across the room hard enough to smash it open against the wall. Elvis stepped back just long enough to pick up a huge glass ashtray off an end table and hoist it up in the air. I didn’t know if he was going to smash that, too, or if he wanted to bring it down on my head, but I decided I didn’t want to find out. I wheeled around, and started walking. And walking.

  I was so enraged at Elvis that I didn’t want anything to do with anything connected to him, and that included his cars. Rage has a curious energy to it, and apparently I was angry enough to walk from the Paramount lot to the Rocca Place house—a ten-mile hike. I don’t remember making the decision to do so—I just remember that by the time I hit Hollywood Boulevard and took a left toward Bel Air, it occurred to me that after twelve years of knowing Elvis, this was our very first argument. It also occurred to me that my plan not to have anything to do with him had a serious flaw in it—I was, after all, walking home to his house. If I kept on walking, I wasn’t just quitting a job—I was walking away from everything I thought I’d wanted, sending myself back to square one. I guess that thought made me even angrier, because I kept on going, stomping over the stars of Hollywood Boulevard. I decided I’d pack up and get Sandy and myself out of Elvis’s life as soon as possible, moving on to a big question mark of a future.

  The flash of anger in my eyes must have done something for my looks—at one point on Hollywood Boulevard I was stopped by a guy who pulled up alongside the curb and announced that he was a scout for a modeling agent. I’d been in Los Angeles long enough to know a line when I heard one, and it didn’t help my mood to think that I could be mistaken for a male hustler. I kept walking, though I did take note that the guy’s front seat was covered with industry trade papers and head shots.

  The car pulled around the corner and a moment later the driver was walking toward me, looking apologetic, saying again and again that he didn’t want to give the wrong impression, but would I be interested in an agency audition? My head had cleared enough to allow a coherent thought to come through: If I had really just quit working for Elvis, I could use a job. The more the guy talked, the more legit he seemed, and when he offered to walk me over to a modeling agency down the street, I accepted. Moments later I was sitting in the reception room of the Nina Blanchard Modeling Agency, waiting to be seen by Nina Blanchard herself. The name meant absolutely nothing to me at the time, but I later found out that this was the top agency of its day, and nobody could ever expect to simply walk in off the boulevard. and get a meeting. But there I was.

  Ms. Blanchard liked my look—I guess there was still enough rage in my eyes—but was a little irritated that I didn’t have a head shot or résumé to give her. She wanted me to come back for a proper audition when I had all the required paperwork together. I thanked her, headed back out to Hollywood Boulevard, and kept walking to Bel Air.

  When I finally got back to the house, I stewed around for a while, going over the fight with Elvis. Every time I ran it through my head, I ended up just as angry. But more and more, sadness was creeping in, too. I could find another job somewhere, but maybe I’d just lost my best friend. I started packing, and thinking about how I’d explain the move to Sandy. I’d gotten the suitcase about half full when I realized Elvis was at the door.

  I stopped what I was doing. There was a very awkward moment, with both of us trying to not really look at the other, and neither one knowing what to say. But just being that close, and that quiet, I felt something shift a little. Had he been a jerk? Yes. Had I overreacted? Probably. We both had nasty tempers. But now we were both cooled down. The guy standing at the door was the guy I’d been enraged at all day, but now that he was right there, I had no desire to pick up where we’d left off. And I could tell from his downcast gaze and uneasy stance that he wasn’t in any kind of fighting mood. We could both feel that the emotions in this room were a lot different from those left behind in the Paramount dressing room. We just weren’t sure what to do.

  Elvis was never much of a hugger—we guys were much more likely to get hit than hugged by him. But without a word he came across the room, put his arms up, and we joined for a quick, easy embrace. In a flash, I realized that I really didn’t want to go anywhere.

  We were still silent—I didn’t feel like rehashing the fight or sorting it out, and I know he didn’t, either. I just quietly started reaching into the suitcase and putting my clothes back in the drawers of my dresser. And, quietly and carefully, Elvis began to help, gently moving a few things from suitcase to drawer. This was a guy who didn’t pick up his own clothes—to have him put away a pair of my socks meant a lot.

  It meant that, for the moment, Hollywood was going to be short one male model.

  8

  RISING SUN

  The phone rang at our apartment one day about a week before Christmas. I recognized the voice right away.

  “Jerry, come on over. Meet me in the dining room for breakfast.”

  Typically, everybody around Graceland just grabbed breakfast whenever and wherever they were in the mood for it. An invitation to a breakfast in the dining room was unusual. But a little while later, I was sitting there with Elvis, digging into eggs and bacon. I could tell he had something to say that he felt was important, but I had no idea what it might be. We talked about nothing in particular for a while, and then he got to his point.

  “Jerry, I want to buy something special for Priscilla for Christmas. I want to surprise her with a horse.”

>   “That’s a great idea, Elvis.”

  “Well, do you mind if I buy Sandy one too, so the girls can ride together?”

  “Man, are you kidding? Sandy would love a horse. Sure, go ahead.”

  He drained the rest of his coffee cup. His face lit up with a big smile.

  “You ever gone horse shopping?”

  An hour later we were heading out toward the Memphis airport on a horse-buying mission. Elvis was at the wheel of a big old pickup truck he’d bought for Graceland, and we headed out to see a local horseman, William Spence, who had a wide variety of horses for sale (Spence had a Graceland connection—he’d managed the horses there for the previous owners, and ran the Graceland Farms Saddle Club on some adjacent property). When we got to Spence’s place, I discovered that Elvis had another reason for bringing me along on this trip. I wasn’t just there to OK a gift to Sandy—I was going to be Elvis’s official jockey.

  I didn’t know a damn thing about horses at the time, but Elvis had been badly spooked by a runaway ride during one of his early films, and he wasn’t eager to get up in the saddle again. So I was the one who got up on each of the potential gift horses. I quickly learned some of the crucial, equestrian basics: a Western saddle gave you something to hold on to, while an English saddle left you no choice but to pray that the horse didn’t hate you. I was sitting on horse after horse at farm after farm, just getting bounced around and trying like hell to stay on. And the harder I tried to stay on, the harder Elvis laughed. I started to get the feeling that he wasn’t even really looking at the horses anymore—he was just laughing his head off watching me.

  Eventually, we found the two perfect gift horses—a beautiful black quarter horse for Pricilla and a chestnut sorrel horse for Sandy. And our brief, exciting life as cowboys began.

  Elvis had come up with a perfect gift; Priscilla and Sandy were thrilled with their horses and began riding together frequently. Petite Priscilla was deceptively athletic and a real natural rider—she often rode bare-back on her horse, Domino. One of the loveliest sights around Graceland at the time was that of Priscilla and Sandy riding together, both of them with beautiful long black hair that blew in the wind and bobbed to the rhythm of the ride.