Me and a Guy Named Elvis

by Jerry Schilling

  I was standing with Elvis in a trailer on the MGM lot when we learned of one of the year’s most heartbreaking events. I was still looking to get into film editing, but had continued taking on acting roles and extra work to make some money. When Elvis began work on Live a Little, Love a Little over at MGM, he hired me as his stand-in and photo double. Again, the script was uninspired and the production was hurried. The most notable details about the film are that Vernon made a cameo appearance as a high-class subject for the commercial photographer Elvis played, and I had another chance to get wet with an Elvis costar—that’s me in the Paradise Cove surf with Michele Carey at the end of the film (also of note—a little throwaway song Elvis sings to costar Celeste Yarnall, “A Little Less Conversation,” became a global number-one hit thirty-four years later).

  But what I remember most about the production is that on April 4, I was with Elvis in his trailer, hanging out between scenes. He had a little TV in there that was usually on in the background, and the set grabbed our attention when a newscaster interrupted the programming with a news bulletin from Memphis. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and killed.

  I was confused at first. We knew that the mayor of Memphis was refusing to meet with striking sanitation workers, and that Dr. King had gone to the city to try to mediate the situation. But how could something so awful and wrong happen in the city we loved? The confusion quickly gave way to sadness. This had happened in our town. And in a terrible way, it made sense—we were well aware that beneath all the good music for good people that had come out of Memphis, there had always been an ugly racial tension. It had been there in the separate drinking fountains, in the separate counter at John’s Little Kitchen, and in the struggles of Sam Phillips. It had been there in Mrs. Doolittle’s reaction to “Sixty Minute Man,” and in the early, angry reactions to Elvis. Now, with one hateful bullet, that sort of ugliness was being exposed for the whole world to see.

  Elvis didn’t often speak openly about race or politics, but he had been greatly inspired by Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and had committed much of it to memory. I’d heard him recite those beautiful, hopeful words many times. I looked over at Elvis now and saw that he was staring hard at the TV. There were tears in his eyes.

  “He always spoke the truth,” he said quietly.

  By the end of April, I’d finally gotten a chance to work as a film editor—or, more accurately, in an editing department. I found myself reporting to the basement of one of the post-production buildings at ABC Television, where it was my responsibility to scrape the labels off the cans of film that had come back from overseas syndication runs. I’d been trying to get in over at ABC for months and the guy who finally hired me, Jim Taylor, admitted that he’d been reluctant at first to give me a job. “I knew you were one of Elvis’s guys,” he said. “I didn’t think you could be serious about working as an editor.”

  Scraping labels in the basement wasn’t exactly the mix of artistry and craft that had attracted me to editing in the first place, but I liked the routine of a steady day job and enjoyed earning my living through my own hands-on work. Sandy took a job at the Casual Corner, a women’s clothing store in Century City, and we started to settle into a happy, humble domestic life. And after a couple months of scraping, I got bumped up to a position with a team of assistant editors, cutting together the footage for the network news. I got to put some of my old backfield moves to use, running fresh footage from cameramen’s helicopters down to the editing bays.

  I didn’t see much of Elvis for a while, but I stayed in touch with Joe Esposito and some of the other guys. I heard that Elvis had taken them back to Hawaii for a vacation trip. I also heard that he had signed on to do his first television special, which was being shot all through June over at the NBC studios. I couldn’t get away from work for any of the tapings, but I felt like I was represented by Sandy, who went one afternoon with Priscilla, Pat Parry, and Joanie Esposito. Sandy reported that Elvis looked great and sang some of his older hits. I hoped that Elvis was having a better time making his special than he had making his last few films.

  “Come on out to Arizona. And let your beard grow.”

  The call from Elvis was an invitation to join him on location for production of a film that sounded like it might actually be exciting—a gritty cowboy tale in the mold of Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns, to be titled El Charro! He wanted me to work again as his stand-in and photo double. It meant a lot that he was keeping me a part of things, and I had to admit that even though I liked working on my own, it wasn’t easy to hear about something like that Hawaii vacation trip without wishing, just a little, that I’d been a part of it.

  At ABC, I was moving up again, joining editor Bud Tedesco’s staff to assemble preview footage of the network’s upcoming shows so that they could be introduced, and sold, to the network’s affiliates. That work didn’t start until the fall. And I used vacation days and some favors from my bosses to get enough time off to accept Elvis’s invitaion and become a bearded cowboy that August at the Apacheland Movie Ranch in Apache Junction, Arizona.

  When I got out to the location, I could see that the production was in trouble. This hadn’t been set up as the typical soundstage shoot, and a better-than-usual cast had been assembled for the film, including Ina Balin, Victor French, and Barbara Werle. Elvis had had some hope that this might be a meaningful film. But the edgy script that had caught Elvis’s interest was being rewritten and toned down, the crew seemed to be broken into factions, and, to top it all off, the stuntmen had gone on strike—a pretty big problem for a film full of gunfighting, fistfighting, and horse-riding.

  I was asked if I wanted to do some stuntwork in addition to my photo-double duties. Thinking of the much higher day rate that stuntmen made, and all my experience in the saddle at Graceland and the Circle G, I said yes. I was part of a big scene in which a group of desperadoes on horses try to cross a river while being shot at by a cannon. We were to ride through the water as two large, precisely timed charges of real dynamite buried in the river went off to create the effect of incoming cannonballs. Everything about the scene was carefully thought through—except the strength of the river’s current. On “action,” we charged into the water, and the first blast went off right in front of us—it was much bigger than what had been described to us, and spooked both horses and riders. While everyone tried to rein in their mounts, the river pushed us toward the second charge, which turned out to be not so precisely timed—it didn’t go off until we were right over it. The scene was a disaster—with both people and horses getting hurt. But with our schedule and budget, there was no chance for a second take. The scene made the final cut.

  As the shoot days limped along, it was still great to spend time with Elvis and some of the guys (Charlie Hodge had a role in the film as “Mexican Peon”). One morning, I was up at dawn, before any of the other guys, for an early call. I headed over to the ranch cafeteria for a quick breakfast, and saw that one other person had gotten there before me. He was an older man with long silvery hair, dressed all in black. I’d never met him before, but I knew right away that this was Billy Murphy, a semilegendary character actor and buddy of John Wayne’s and Robert Mitchum’s, who had spent a lot of time with Elvis in the early L.A. days. Seemed like everybody that had met Billy Murphy had a great, oddball story about him, and I’d heard Elvis tell enough Billy stories that I had no doubt about who I was looking at. I walked over to his table.

  “Mr. Murphy?”

  “Sit down, mister,” he said, almost as if he’d been expecting me. There was no mistaking that “mister”—I’d heard Elvis say it just the same way countless times.

  “What are you doing here? How’d you get here?” I asked.

  “Got in the Saint. Followed the sun,” he said. This was pure Billy—part philosopher, part poet, all cowboy. It was a while before I learned that “the Saint” was his trusty, beat-up old car.

  Billy hadn’t made any arrangements with Elvis�
��he’d just shown up on the set, on his way to another Arizona location where a Robert Mitchum film was being shot. As soon as I had a chance, I got over to the location house where Elvis was staying and told him Billy was out here. Elvis was excited by the news. As always, he loved a character, and Billy was much more than that—he was a truly unique personality that Elvis enjoyed spending time with. Elvis asked me to make arrangements with the assistant directors to get Billy into a few scenes of the film.

  A couple days later we were shooting a night scene, and Elvis was in a director’s chair off to the side, watching the action. He called me over, and pointed to Billy, who, in the scene, was walking down the Western street with a distinctive cowboy strut.

  “Jerry—take a look at Billy over there. You see that walk?”

  “Yeah, E.”

  “I used that walk in my TV special.”

  From the Memphis truckers’ neckerchiefs to James Dean’s upturned collar to Billy Murphy’s strut, Elvis always had a knack of borrowing from the best—and the most unlikely—and making it his own.

  After Charro! wrapped, Elvis wanted to head to Las Vegas for a couple days of fun, and he asked me to come along. We still had matching beards, matching hair, and, quite frequently, matching miniature Villager Kiel cigars. Our first night in Vegas we went down to a blackjack table, and when management spotted us, they put up some red velvet ropes around us. Of course, this only called more attention to us. And I guess maybe the matching beards confused a few people, because suddenly there was a woman at my side asking me for an autograph. I don’t know who she thought I was, but I was trying to ignore the request. I figured I didn’t need to be signing autographs when I was standing next to Elvis Presley. The woman was insistent, though, and it seemed like the situation might get uncomfortable. Suddenly, Elvis gave me a nudge, and, with his cigar held in this teeth, said, “Go ahead. Sign it.” I turned to the lady and signed the first “Jerry Schilling” autograph of my life. Turning back to Elvis, I think I saw just the barest hint of a smile as he pushed his next stack of chips out on the table.

  Tanned. Thin. Dangerous. And singing straight from the soul. Elvis was back, with a vengeance. I was sitting in a small conference room at NBC, watching a rough cut of Elvis’s TV special. It was just Elvis, myself, Joe, and Charlie, along with producer/director Steve Binder and a network executive. I don’t know what I’d expected this show to be, but from the first moment to the last it was obvious that Binder had allowed it to become the kind of artistic challenge Elvis had been so hungry for. For the first time in a long time, somebody had let Elvis be Elvis—rather than the tame, nice-guy-next-door he’d had to play in so many films—and he rose to the occasion in a spectacular way. The special’s loose story line was guided along by Jerry Reed’s “Guitar Man,” and the set pieces combined gospel music, modern dance, karate moves, and—always—Elvis in peak voice. There was an informal jam that teamed Elvis with Scotty Moore, D. J. Fontana, Charlie Hodge, and Lance LeGault, as well as Alan Fortas, who contributed what he could by tapping on the back of a guitar case. There was also a solo performance, during which Elvis ripped through some of his old favorites. In both sequences, Elvis was in black leather pants and jacket, and, at thirty-three, looking better than ever. This show didn’t have a studio feel, a network feel or a Colonel feel—the whole thing had a true Elvis feel to it. And yes, there was a little Billy Murphy in his walk.

  The special ended with a song written for the occasion, a plea for peace and brotherhood called “If I Can Dream.” The shock and hurt of the loss of Dr. King, and then Robert Kennedy, was still heavy in the air, and Elvis gave himself over completely to the stirring music and the simple message of hope. It was a breathtaking performance, and the pain, the power, and the heart that went into it made one thing very clear to me in that little conference room: The guy who had created all that excitement back in the fifties could still, in the turmoil of 1968, move you to tears with his awesome, undimmed talent. Nobody had originally talked about this as a “comeback special,” but Elvis had turned it into one.

  We all shared our positive feedback with Elvis after the screening, and I know that meant a lot to him—I don’t think he really knew how good the show was until he’d seen it cut together that night. But he was still a little pensive. It had been a long time since he’d put himself out like this to the public, and I think he was actually nervous about what the public’s reaction would be.

  His nerves probably weren’t helped much by the Colonel’s opinion of the special. Right from the start, the Colonel had disagreed with the approach Elvis and Binder had taken, and he still wasn’t won over by the results of their work when he had his own screening at the network. Originally, he’d envisioned the program to be more along the lines of a traditional Christmas special—Elvis singing holiday standards à la Bing Crosby. But Elvis and Binder had stuck to their guns. And when the show aired in early December, it was a critical success and a ratings smash that delighted old-time fans and let a whole new generation of fans see what really made Elvis “Elvis.”

  Through the fall and winter of 1968 I went back to steady work as an editor at ABC, though I did take advantage of a couple of days off to walk from my apartment over to the MGM lot, where Elvis was working his way through his final film for the studio, The Trouble with Girls (I couldn’t get the time off to be a stand-in, but I did score a couple of days’ work as a “Deputy Sheriff”). Soon after that production wrapped, Elvis headed back to Memphis to begin some new recording sessions. Reenergized by the reaction to the special, Elvis was now eager to start making quality records again and, after some encouragement from George Klein and Marty Lacker, he decided to shake things up. Rather than lining up another round of the usual recording process in L.A. or Nashville, he teamed with a young, hot producer named Chips Moman at Moman’s low-budget American Studios in North Memphis. In that small, run-down facility—not so far from Humes High and Leath Street—Moman, who’d been a creative force behind many successes at Stax Records, quickly proved that he also knew how to let Elvis be Elvis. Those North Memphis sessions would produce some of Elvis’s best work, including “In the Ghetto,” and “Suspicious Minds.”

  In the spring, Elvis was spending a lot of time in Palm Springs, and I developed an interesting weekend ritual—I’d spend the week as a hardworking, low-paid apprentice editor, but at Friday quitting time I’d drive over to Santa Monica Airport to be flown out by private plane for a weekend in the desert with Elvis and the guys.

  The Colonel had been the first big advocate of weekends in Palm Springs—he was out there doing business, and encouraged Elvis to come out for weekend getaways. The idea of being able to keep a close eye on Elvis had an appeal to the Colonel, but the appeal of Palm Springs wasn’t so clear to us guys at first. It seemed like a town of old folks that didn’t have much to offer. The desert destination grew on us, though. There was fun to be had out there—everything from an active nightlife to a shooting range to a run of giant sand dunes that we used for afternoons of wild dune buggy rides. For a while, Palm Springs was a great getaway for all of us, with Elvis and Priscilla and the guys and their wives enjoying the place as a mix of romantic hideout and family resort. Sometimes, Elvis, Priscilla, Sandy, and I would go over to the Colonel’s house in the late afternoon to spend some time with him and his wife. These get-togethers were generally pleasant—unless Elvis and the Colonel decided they needed to head out by the pool for a private meeting, in which case I’d be stuck playing Yahtzee with the girls, watching Marie Parker cheat her way through game after game and listening to her constantly reprimand Priscilla for dressing too sexy.

  We traveled a little farther for a getaway in May of 1969, when Elvis and Priscilla invited Sandy and me and several other couples to join them for a Hawaiian vacation. I lined up some days off to make the trip, and was very happy to find myself back at the Ilikai Hotel, where I’d been staying when I first met Sandy. In between our nights at the Ilikai, we also stayed in
some beach houses on the other side of the island. By the end of May, the Circle G Ranch would be sold, but that Hawaiian trip had some of the easy, carefree feel of some of the best ranch times. One night, Priscilla, Sandy, and Joanie Esposito decided to make a taco dinner for everyone over at Elvis’s beach house. Something must have sparked that competitive spirit in Elvis and me, because we decided to have a taco-eating contest. I thought I had him beat when I wolfed down twelve of them, but he went on to edge me out by putting away a thirteenth.

  Toward the end of the trip we decided we needed to treat the wives to something a little fancier than competitive eating. We wanted to give them a special night out and a chance to get dressed up, so we made plans to dine at the Ilikai’s rooftop restaurant, Top of the “I.” We had a great meal in a private alcove in the dining area up there. There was good food and a lot of laughter, and even though he was out in a fairly exposed public place, Elvis was relaxed and enjoying himself.

  Toward the end of dinner he got up to use the restroom and asked me to come along with him (even back at the Memphian, he always brought someone along on a bathroom trip—he didn’t want to get cornered when he was at his most vulnerable). We were on our way back to the table when he suddenly left my side and headed for the maître d’s station. Apparently, he’d noticed that there were a number of people lined up there, waiting to be seated. Elvis walked directly over to the station and addressed the first person in line.