Me and a Guy Named Elvis

by Jerry Schilling

  “Hey, man, you want a new truck?”

  “Sure!” said the electrician.

  “It’s yours.”

  The electrician got the keys.

  Elvis spent nearly a million dollars over the space of a few weeks, acquiring and gearing up that ranch. And, actually, there was a very understandable explanation for all that spending. Just before we began our horse-buying spree, Elvis had been sent the script for his next film, Clambake, which had every indication of being his lousiest production yet. I know it just bothered the hell out of him—his music was being messed with, his once-promising film career had been turned into a joke, and he didn’t see any way out. He knew he wasn’t looking his best—he’d put on some weight over the last couple months and this time was having a hard time dropping it. The idea of turning a ranch into a refuge for himself had to be appealing. His spiritual readings and his LSD trip hadn’t gotten him to the peaceful state of mind he was after—maybe he could spend his way there at the Circle G.

  He really did not want to go back to Hollywood this time. And as the deadline for returning to L.A. for filmwork loomed, Elvis announced that he needed a postponement in the production schedule because he’d ridden hard enough and long enough to develop some painful and incapacitating saddle sores. George Klein’s girlfriend, Barbara, worked for a medical group, and recommended a doctor from the group to come out to the ranch, examine Elvis, and provide prescription ointments for treatment. That doctor was George Nichopoulos, who would soon be more familiarly known as “Dr. Nick” and would become an integral member of Elvis’s inner circle.

  Elvis’s attempt at seclusion got the Colonel’s attention. He was furious that Elvis was going incommunicado and messing with business-as-usual. He put a good deal of pressure on Marty Lacker to guarantee that Elvis would follow through on the schedule and responsibilities that his film contract demanded. Elvis Presley was not going to be able to escape being Elvis just by riding horses, and he knew it. The more he thought about what he would be leaving the ranch to go back to, the more it must have torn him apart inside. But when he took enough of some of the pills prescribed to him, he didn’t have to think about anything at all.

  Late one night, Sandy and I were in our trailer, listening to a winter rainstorm pound away at the roof. At first I didn’t realize there was a knocking at the door. When I answered it, there was Elvis, standing in the pouring rain, looking confused and disheveled, and holding, somewhat improbably, a loaf of bread.

  “Jerry, I need you to come with me.”

  It was late, and I would have rather stayed in, but there was no way I could say no to Elvis when he was looking so vulnerable. I grabbed a coat, we got to his truck and headed off the ranch. We headed all the way back up to the Memphis suburbs, and Elvis seemed to know exactly where he was going. He got to the neighborhood of Southaven, turned down a street, and pulled up in front of a modest home. He told me it was the home of the pharmacist we dealt with most often in Memphis. He was there for a personal pickup. I’d known for a while that Elvis was taking too much medication, but I had no idea he knew where our pharmacist lived. We’d all been using the prescribed uppers and downers to keep up with the lifestyle we were in, and there had been a few scary moments: Alan Fortas, who had refused to give me any sleeping pills when I started with the guys because he knew the damage they were doing to his system, spun out of control one night in L.A. and had to be taken to the emergency room. He became so violent with the doctors and nurses that it was up to Richard Davis and me to restrain him so he could be sedated.

  But Elvis always seemed to be in control; you didn’t see him get sloppy or wild. And his usage always seemed tied to some work-related purpose—trying to keep his weight down, or trying to get himself to sleep so he could be up for one of those seven A.M. film-set calls. He thought of his pills as helpful medicine. But seeing the state he was in on that rainy night, and seeing how important getting ahold of some relief was to him, I became worried.

  Elvis gave everyone cause for concern when we got back out to L.A. One night at the Rocca Place house, Elvis fell in his bathroom and banged his head hard enough to give himself a concussion. It was pretty clear to everyone that the reason for the fall was not simply a loose electrical cord on the floor. Whatever Elvis was taking to try to blot out his frustrations was starting to have a clear, negative effect on him.

  Doctors treated Elvis at the house, and a day later the Colonel came over for a short, private meeting with Elvis, and then a group meeting with Elvis and all the guys. Despite the Colonel’s stated policy of not getting involved in Elvis’s personal life, when the personal interfered with the business, he stepped right in. At the group meeting, he took charge and ripped into us. Right off the bat, Marty Lacker was told that he would no longer be co-foreman with Joe Esposito—Joe was now solo top man. And it was made clear that anybody who insisted on getting Elvis’s head “all fogged up” with talk of religion and spirituality would no longer be welcome—the Colonel’s way of dismissing Larry Geller. He went on and on, making it sound like it was us guys who had been wasting Elvis’s money, and making it clear that there would be cutbacks in payroll and expenses and that several of us would be let go after the current film was finished.

  The most disturbing part of the meeting was that Elvis was sitting right there, looking down at the floor, letting the “fat old man”—as he so often referred to the Colonel—cut us down. There’s no way this could have happened when Elvis was at full strength. Elvis truly needed the Colonel just then to make things right with the studio and get a messy situation under control. But the Colonel was also asserting himself in Elvis’s personal life in a way he had never dared to before. It’s one of the very few times I saw Elvis let the Colonel get away with that kind of power play, and it was depressing to watch.

  I went back to my room after the meeting and began packing my old suitcase again. I liked Larry Geller, I liked having discussions about spirituality with Elvis, and I knew I was seen as more of an independent spirit in the group. From what the Colonel had said, I assumed that I was one of the guys no longer wanted, and I wasn’t going to hang around if that was the case. Then Elvis walked in, still looking dejected. He seemed a little surprised to see me packing again, but there was no hug this time. He simply shook his head and said, “He wasn’t talking about you, man. He wasn’t talking about you.”

  In the midst of this strange and strained time, one thing was clearer than ever to me: I loved Sandy. We flew out to Las Vegas just a couple of days after that tense meeting with the Colonel and got married. I would have loved for Elvis to be my best man, but he was in Palm Springs still recuperating from his concussion (he’d asked for a second postponement in the Clambake shooting schedule because of his fall, and it wouldn’t have gone over well if he’d turned up in Vegas). Sandy and I had a simple, low-key ceremony with Joe and Joanie Esposito standing with us as best man and maid of honor, and we spent a weekend on the town as our honeymoon. Elvis paid for all of it as our wedding gift. Of course the weekend was all about the celebration of love between Sandy and me, but it was also nice to share the occasion with Joe and Joanie. Elvis had always been at the center of anything we did together, but here we were away from all that, and the time the four of us spent together felt very special.

  Back in L.A., we went to work on Clambake, which turned out to be just the kind of by-the-numbers production that Elvis now dreaded. Some of the guys tried to lighten the mood with some favorite on-set mischief—setting off firecrackers and tossing water balloons. But it started to look to me like we were a little old for balloon fights. And even though a well-timed firecracker might get a laugh, it was becoming harder to tell if people were actually having fun or just acting like they were having fun.

  On May 1, 1967, a few days after production had wrapped, Elvis and Priscilla became a married couple. It’s understandable that Elvis’s wedding would be treated with some secrecy—nobody wanted it to turn into a circus. But on
this most personal of days, the Colonel did not hesitate to run the show. His idea of a smooth event was one in which the guys were minimally involved. In fact, when the whole entourage finally got to the site of the wedding, the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, the Memphis Mafia found itself disinvited.

  The Colonel planned for Elvis and Priscilla’s ceremony to be held in a hotel suite, and announced that there was room for only Joe and Marty—doing their last co-foremen duty as co-best men—and George Klein, who had flown in from Memphis for the wedding. There was room for the Colonel’s friend, Aladdin owner Milton Prell—a stranger to Elvis. But not for us. Myself, Red West, Alan Fortas, Richard Davis, and our wives were expected to turn up only at the reception. Larry Geller was not even invited to that. Red was angry and hurt enough to kick in the door to his room, and simply skipped the whole thing, heading back to L.A. The rest of us were upset, but nobody wanted to do anything to spoil the day for the couple.

  Elvis, though, tried to make up for some of the hurt feelings by essentially inviting us along on his honeymoon. When he carried Priscilla across the threshold of their new Palm Springs home—the so-called Honeymoon House—the first thing Priscilla saw on the other side of that threshold was us: me and Sandy, Joe and Joanie, and a couple of others. We were courteous enough to come in through a back door rather than trample the threshold before the newlyweds did. And after a day or two, when the beautiful couple headed off for their real honeymoon getaway, we were all right there with them at the Circle G Ranch.

  Maybe it was because the buying was all out of the way. Maybe it was because, having frightened himself with his fall, Elvis had gotten himself healthy again. Maybe the Colonel’s coming down hard had made him more determined to take back life on his own terms. Maybe it was because he was just so much in love with Priscilla. But whatever the case, when we all went back to the ranch again, it really was a magical time. Elvis was calm and contented. Priscilla was thrilled to be away from Graceland or the big L.A. houses. She was happy to be in a simple place where she could cook breakfast for Elvis and make his coffee—happy to be an attentive wife for her loving husband. She and Elvis actually moved out of the ranch farmhouse, giving it to Alan Fortas and his wife, Jo, so that Priscilla and Elvis could enjoy the closer intimacy of one of the house trailers. Sandy and I still had a honeymoon glow, too, and were thrilled to be in our little trailer. All the guys and wives were getting along with each other, and we really did start to feel like a big, happy family. A strange family, but a happy one. Somehow, after a false start, Elvis’s dream of a cowboy commune seemed to be working perfectly.

  My daddy came down to spend a little time at the ranch, and I think one of the sights that Elvis enjoyed the most was my father up on a horse. We’d all learned pretty quickly that the key to riding was to yield to the animal—to loosen up and let yourself move along with the horse. My daddy was never what you’d call a loose or yielding guy, and the sight of him sitting solemn and stiff-backed in the saddle, trying to maintain control of a Tennessee Walker, had Elvis laughing hard.

  There were more cookouts and picnics and frog hunts and football games, and this time the vibe at the place was just right. The days were easy and lazy and fine, and I didn’t get summoned for any more late-night trips to the pharmacist’s house. Things went well enough that a month later, when it was time to head back to Los Angeles for another typical film (Speedway), Elvis made a very surprising decision. Instead of kissing wives and girlfriends good-bye and heading to work on the usual cross-country drive, this time we would keep the good times rolling with a family caravan to California. The Schillings, Espositos, Smiths, Lackers, and Gambills become a happy-go-lucky motoring tourist group—the only such group to include Elvis Presley as its bus driver.

  I don’t remember anything especially dramatic happening during the production of Speedway, but by the end of the shoot, I’d made one of the biggest decisions of my life: I was going to leave Elvis. Not in anger, and not really because of anything about Elvis at all. I was happy being one of Elvis’s guys, but I was going to leave to answer a question that had been gnawing at me: Could I be something other than one of Elvis’s guys?

  During the film production, I started spending a lot of time with Bill Saracino, a top music editor at MGM. I remember being awed by the look of his workroom, with all the various reels of dialogue, sound effects, and music recordings spinning away, and I was greatly impressed with the skill and craft Bill applied to his work. I got excited by the mix of hands-on mechanics and artistic creativity that went into the film-editing process. I also thought it might be nice to have a job that depended solely on my own skills—that wasn’t tied to somebody else’s moods or impulses. Finally, I figured that if I couldn’t be Elvis’s pilot, maybe I could be his film editor.

  I sat up with him at the Rocca house one night, beating around the bush enough that he realized something was up.

  “Jerry, what’s on your mind? Just say it, man.”

  I was nervous. If Elvis fired somebody, he might later change his mind and hire them back. But I’d never heard of anyone telling Elvis they were leaving him and staying in his good graces. With the premium he put on loyalty, it seemed like if you chose to step out of the circle, you’d be gone forever.

  “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me Elvis. I can’t tell you how much. But I feel like I’ve got to do something else. I want to stay out here and work. For myself.”

  He nodded appreciatively.

  “I got it, Jerry. Tell me what you want to do. We’ll make a call or something.”

  “No, Elvis. It’s all right. I’ve been talking to some guys at the studio. I think I’m gonna take a shot at becoming a film editor.”

  He nodded some more, slowly, staring out the window.

  “Film editor. That’s a good move.”

  No explosion. No ill will. Nothing petty. It felt like maybe he was just a little sad that I wouldn’t be around. And walking out of that room became the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life.

  “Thanks for everything, Elvis. I really mean it.”

  He didn’t say anything. I knew he wanted me to stay, but—as a friend—he wasn’t going to stop me from doing what I felt I had to do.

  Life was suddenly a lot smaller, and a lot harder. But not unpleasant. Sandy and I moved out of the Rocca Place house and into a small one-bedroom apartment in Culver City a block away from MGM (I figured being close to a studio couldn’t hurt my career transition). I didn’t have any illusions that breaking into the editing profession would be easy, but I knew I was smart enough and hardworking enough to support us somehow. Sandy was entirely supportive of the move, and I think she was actually happier to be in a place, however humble, that we had to ourselves. A place away from the guys’ world around Elvis. And I don’t think either one of us really missed the luxuries of Bel Air—there was something very satisfying about stocking our own refrigerator, cooking our own meals, and paying our own phone bills.

  We would survive—I didn’t have any doubts about that. The only doubt that nagged at me concerned Elvis. We’d made it through fights and all kinds of friction, but I wondered if I could step away like this and still be considered his friend. He’d built a world where his friends, the people he cared about, were close around him. If I wasn’t right there with him, was I going to be a part of his life at all?

  A couple weeks later, on a Friday evening, I hadn’t made much progress in my editing career, but Sandy and I were starting to get very comfortable in our small apartment. The phone rang.

  “Jerry—you do that editing on the weekends?”

  “No, E. Actually I haven’t really started yet.”

  “OK. I’m coming by to pick you up. We’re going to Palm Springs.”

  The biggest fear of my life—losing Elvis’s friendship—just disappeared as we spoke. I was still a guy he wanted to share a weekend with. An hour later he did come by, and with Sandy’s very understanding blessing, Elvis and I were off to
the desert. I had a loving wife, a wide-open job future, and a great friend. I could certainly live with that.

  Being a friend of Elvis didn’t help me get a job as an editor—there were some strict union rules in that line of work that weren’t going to bend for anybody. However, some of the friends I’d made on Elvis sets—first and second assistant directors, stunt coordinators—were willing to get me some gigs on other sets. I began a brief but exciting career as Jerry Schilling, Actor. Over the next several months I put together a list of credits that included extra work on Rat Patrol and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and photo-double work on The Outcasts for actor Don Murray (probably best-known for costarring with Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop). I was a two-faced alien on Star Trek, and a muscle-bound policeman on Get Smart. I got chewed out on that set by guest star Don Rickles when a karate chop I hit him with was a little too realistic for his tastes. He scared the hell out of me, but ended his tirade by flashing a big smile and letting me know that he was just putting me on. I began taking acting classes with Paul Mantee at the Melrose Theater, and had the honor of sitting through a master class with Rod Steiger. Finally, some connections on the MGM lot—particularly through assistant director Claude Binyon—got me a chance at a few speaking lines and some actual acting in Ice Station Zebra.

  It was on that set that I got a taste of everything Elvis had been missing in his films. I watched director John Sturges sit with his stars—Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan—and discuss how a scene was going to work and how they’d approach it. Everyone took their roles seriously and obviously cared about doing great work. I realized what a raw deal Elvis had gotten—how often he was treated as if his talent didn’t matter, and how often things were just rushed through on his set.

  I really enjoyed watching Rock Hudson work—he had that same kind of ease and natural talent as an actor that Elvis had as a performer. Rock had a powerful star presence, but he always came across as a regular guy—tough, funny, charming, and much more comfortable playing poker with the crew and the stunt guys than talking with the studio suits. Elvis looked great all the time, but he made sure he looked great. Rock looked great without doing anything—whether he was neatly put together in a Navy uniform or in jeans and a T-shirt with his hair messed up. He also loaned me his car so that I could get to the dentist to have a cracked tooth fixed.