The Colonel

by Alanna Nash

  For two years, a helpless Parker—always nervous at the prospect of advice Elvis might be getting from others—watched as some of his most important business partners went to Europe for private meetings with his client. First, Jean Aberbach and Freddy Bienstock visited Elvis on leave in Paris, and then in August ’59, Hal Wallis arrived in Germany to begin location shooting for G.I. Blues, calling on Elvis at Bad Nauheim. Wallis had asked the Colonel to accompany him on the steamer, but Parker deflected the invitation in several letters that suggested the producer might have more fun sharing his cabin with the more colorful members of - Elvis’s entourage. As to his conspicuous absence, “People thought it was strange,” Bienstock recalls. “But nobody asked him about it.”

  In an effort, perhaps, to help Parker rectify his passport problem, Gay, who had been an advisor to several U.S. presidents and organized Special Services shows for the Department of Defense in Europe, invited the Colonel to a number of his famous Vienna, Virginia, barbeques, attended by an array of well-placed politicians.

  Parker zeroed in on one in particular—Texas Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson—and in the fall of ’59, volunteered Eddy Arnold’s services when LBJ honored the president of Mexico, Adolfo Lopez Mateos, at his Johnson City ranch. Ordinarily, Parker, who continued to handle some of - Arnold’s bookings, would insult anyone who dared ask for a free performance. But he sanctioned this one for a different payoff—a chance to insinuate himself into photographs with Johnson and former president Harry S Truman.

  That began a nine-year correspondence between Parker and the future president and his family, including daughter Lynda, who would visit on the set of one of Elvis’s films. Almost immediately, Parker inducted Johnson into the Snowmen’s League, making a supremely useful ally. Two months after the Virginia barbeque, Johnson wrote to Parker using words that must have seemed golden: “I hope our paths cross again in the days ahead, and that you will always feel free to call on me as your friend at any time for anything.” Apparently, the Colonel did just that. A mere two weeks later, Johnson told him he was “certainly counting on you to give the office a ring when you get to Washington.”

  Parker had several reasons to visit the nation’s capital in late ’59 and early ’60. In August, he and Marie had gone to Hawaii for what appeared to be a simple vacation, especially as Marie had nagged him to take her there, only to develop a severe case of diverticulitis from eating raw pineapple. But Parker had more than just sight-seeing on his mind. In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had approved the creation of a memorial to the U.S.S. Arizona, the resting place for 1,177 crewmen who perished on the battleship in the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. Now the Colonel wanted to see if he might be able to use such a noble cause to his advantage, meeting with the chairman of the Arizona Memorial Committee, H. Tucker Grantz, to offer Elvis for a benefit show.

  With Grantz’s backing, Parker flew to Washington in September ’59 for a meeting at the Pentagon. There, he first met with E. J. Cottrell, the army information officer who was Parker’s chief liaison in Washington. Cottrell would soon fly to Germany to confer with Elvis about the benefit show. He reported to the Colonel that Elvis was homesick, but in good shape and continuing to do a fine job for his country. He would also arrange for Presley to lend his byline to a recruitment article for This Week magazine, later reprinted in The Army Blue Book as “What Elvis Presley Learned About the Army.” (“If I had only one piece of advice to give to a friend . . . I’d say don’t keep your troubles corked up. . . . Work harder, talk to a good friend. . . . Don’t jump with all four feet into a mess you’ll never be able to wipe away.”)

  Just what transpired during the Pentagon meeting isn’t known, but Parker tantalized Joe Hazen with the barest details in a letter. “My special meeting in Washington Tuesday for lunch was fun and I must tell you about it next time,” he wrote. “I did meet a new General and he now wants a snowcard into my club. This I told him would be rather hard to do as we have no way of knowing if he deserves one at this time.”

  Might the High Potentate have swapped a membership and the promise of an Elvis show for a secret from his past? Was the favor of destroying his own military records—or perhaps any mention of his illegality in the files of the FBI and the INS—too much to ask in return?

  There is no proof that he did. But with Parker, who used every ounce of human flesh for even the slightest leverage, it is inconceivable that he did not. What a high he must have had that day, this military deserter and illegal alien, with a general in the U.S. Army groveling to belong to his phantom club and addressing him as Colonel.

  Parker’s interaction with army officials buoyed Hal Wallis, who hoped Elvis might receive an early release to begin work on G.I. Blues. Paul Nathan, Wallis’s associate producer, learned in the summer of ’59 that the army was willing to accommodate the actor Russ Tamblyn, who had a picture waiting for him at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Nathan apprised Wallis and added in an interoffice memo that Abe Lastfogel “feels they would do the same for Elvis, if we notify them that we are ready to go.”

  But when Hazen spoke with Parker, the manager was adamant that no such request be made. Elvis must not be seen as shirking even one day of military service. Besides, despite the U.S.S. Arizona concert and the movie deals—which included, at Elvis’s request, two “serious” pictures at Fox—Parker was still finalizing his plans for Presley’s return.

  With Lastfogel’s help, he had just arranged a splashy television special to be called “Frank Sinatra’s Welcome Home Party for Elvis Presley.” The appearance would net Elvis $125,000, more than Sinatra would receive as the host, and expose him to an older audience. Cleaned up, tuxedo-clad, and defused of his rock-and-roll passion—in effect, neutered—Elvis would now be safe and palatable for adult consumption. After the Sinatra special, even the pompadour would be gone. What remained was negotiating a new royalty deal with RCA, the endgame to - Parker’s steady rationing of product.

  The Colonel hammered the last nail of the deal in place only two days before Elvis’s plane touched down at McGuire Air Force Base near Fort Dix, New Jersey. Under the terms of the contract, any soundtrack recording would count toward Elvis’s quota of two LPs and eight single sides each year. Both Elvis and the Colonel would receive a .75 percent recoupable royalty on top of the usual 5 percent royalty. And Parker, who was granted approval on all advertising, promotion, and publicity, would receive an annual $27,000 for supplying photographs for record covers and general “exploitational” support, over and above the cost of postage and materials. The last clause especially rankled RCA’s Anne Fulchino, who believed that Bill Bullock had let Parker into her office one weekend to appropriate all of her picture files and negatives, thus allowing the Colonel to charge RCA for property it already owned.

  Elvis’s consent on the contract was required but assumed, even as the overall deal benefited his manager more than him. To Elvis and Vernon, it didn’t matter—what they had was so much more than they’d ever expected. And the Colonel had kept his client’s name in the headlines for the two years he was away, something Elvis never thought possible. Often, Parker said, he used his own money to do it, all the while turning down requests to manage other artists as diverse as actress Natalie Wood and comedian Brother Dave Gardner, with whom the Colonel often supped in Hollywood. No matter that he had done so because Parker considered both performers too headstrong to control. All Elvis knew was that he and his manager were an unbeatable combination. And in the Colonel’s eyes, they were more than a team, more even than a partnership. It was not something either of them could easily explain.

  When newly promoted Sergeant Elvis Presley arrived at Fort Dix in the early morning of March 3, 1960, he was met with the fanfare usually reserved for returning war heroes. The band played “Auld Lang Syne” as he walked from the plane in the midst of a late-winter blizzard, beaming for the fireworks of flashbulbs as snowflakes pelted his uniform. Startlingly handsome, his features lean and chiseled, Elvis looked happ
y to be home, even as one reporter noted a suggestion of sadness when he smiled. “Go get ’em, Elvis!” somebody yelled, and he shot a lopsided grin.

  In truth, the nervous flyer was somewhat sedated, having spent a restless night in the arms of a new girlfriend, this one named Priscilla, and he had ingested a fair number of pills on the flight to steady his nerves. The Colonel quickly led him into a press conference, where he said about the only thing on his mind was to rest up at home for the next few weeks. The following day, Estes Kefauver, the Tennessee senator who made his reputation as a crusader against organized crime, now a friend of Parker, would read his “Tribute to Elvis Presley” into the Congressional Record, praising the singer’s willingness to become “just another G.I. Joe.”

  On hand to greet Elvis that morning at Fort Dix were Steve Sholes; Jean Aberbach; nineteen-year-old Nancy Sinatra (who brought two lace shirts as a promotional stunt for Elvis’s upcoming TV special with her father); various William Morris representatives; and Hal Wallis, who had momentarily distracted the Colonel, allowing a Life magazine photographer and his assistant to move in and pose Elvis outside the C-in-C barracks for a cover shot. The Colonel, always quick as a cat, suddenly appeared and planted his full girth in front of Elvis, barring the view of the cameraman. Unless they had a check for $25,000, Parker said (“You don’t think I’m going to let you put my boy on the cover without us getting paid for it, do you?”), Life would have to wait.

  Starting at 3:00 A.M., “the Colonel went through that day like a force of nature—just this fierce constructive energy,” says Robert Kotlowitz, now a noted novelist, but in 1960 a thirty-five-year-old RCA classical music publicist ready to jump to magazines. He got the nod to accompany Parker to Fort Dix because he was the only one back from lunch when the Colonel came in to arrange the trip, Parker storming through the office, stopping briefly to call an army recruiting officer and float the rumor that Elvis would re-enlist. Kotlowitz had seen how Bill Bullock took orders from him, but even on a military base, the manager was in charge. “None of the relationships I saw were in any way conventional or even normal,” he says. “You did what he told you to do, or if you didn’t, he was finished with you.”

  Soon, Kotlowitz would see a very different side of the Colonel, as Elvis spent two days at Fort Dix and then began a welcome-home train trip to Memphis, courtesy of RCA. Parker wanted the pleasant young publicist to come along, and told him to be at the Trenton, New Jersey, station to make sure the train arrived on the right track and to prevent anyone from boarding their private cars. But first he uttered a warning: under no circumstances should Kotlowitz tell anybody what time this train would be stopping in any town—they’d be deluged with reporters and fans, and everything would be a horrible mess. “Of course,” Kotlowitz says, “every little village we went through, there were two thousand girls out there at two o’clock in the morning. He’d tipped off every stationmaster by saying, ‘Presley’s coming through at 2:15 A.M. Do not tell press.’ ”

  Parker, however, hadn’t just alerted the press—he’d had his staff call them collect and invite them aboard. One reporter who accepted was David Halberstam, who beautifully captured the freewheeling atmosphere for the Nashville Tennessean. Elvis, he wrote, was “like a happy young colt. . . . He wrestled with some of his bodyguards, winked at the girls in the station, and clowned with his ever-faithful manager and merchandiser, Col. Tom Parker. ‘Man, it feels good to be going home,’ Presley said. ‘So good.’ Then he put a hand over the Colonel’s receding hairline and said, ‘Andy Devine [the tubby Hollywood character actor], - that’s who it is. Andy Devine.’ ‘Quit pulling my hair out,’ the Colonel said. ‘I’m just massaging it for you,’ Presley said. ‘Every time you massage,’ [the Colonel countered], ‘I have a little less left.’ ”

  When the train reached Memphis, Kotlowitz was ready to fly home to New York. But Parker asked him to stay—Elvis was traveling to Nashville for a recording session, and then he’d take another special railroad car to Miami to do the Frank Sinatra television special. Certainly RCA would want a press representative along, he said, though Kotlowitz’s main function was to be an audience for the Colonel, who seemed to have adopted him. “On the train, he would wake me up every morning by standing on my bed, straddling me, and ringing this cowbell. I knew I was ‘in’ when I saw him doing that, and it was wonderful. I had the time of my life. But we were an unlikely couple, let me tell you.”

  The next time Kotlowitz heard from Parker, some two months later, the manager invited him to join Elvis and the entourage in Las Vegas, that “sunny place for shady people,” as the old-time mob called it. Parker kept his gambling to minor stakes, as far as Kotlowitz could tell, but the Colonel never liked to let any of his young acolytes see him stay too long at the tables.

  A year before, he had written to Hal Wallis about his exploits in Vegas and at the dog tracks in Phoenix and Tampa (“One of the dogs may sue us for betting on him while he had piles”), having lost the $50 that Wallis had him place as an “investment.” But lately, he had again become preoccupied with the spin of the roulette wheel, the siren call for his favorite diversion, his “road game.”

  Often, he would get the itch and decide overnight to go, telephoning Freddy Bienstock to fly out from New York. “He would lose fortunes,” Bienstock remembers. “Besides the roulette table, he would stand at the craps table and lose and lose. He couldn’t stand it. One time I said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ And he got furious and said, ‘Don’t you tell me! It’s my money!’ I never said anything anymore.”

  “I think the reason for his gambling and going to Vegas was primarily to look like a big shot,” says Julian Aberbach. “That’s the way they treat the [high rollers], and that is the way they get them.”

  Undoubtedly, Parker wanted to rub shoulders with all the ruling lords of Vegas, particularly as he began to gamble all around town. George Wood and Hershey Martin of William Morris’s variety department were Lastfogel’s emissaries to the mob, providing much of the talent for the night clubs and showrooms of the Mafia-owned hotels. The Colonel got to know Martin, a Damon Runyonesque character, during Elvis’s ill-fated engagement at the New Frontier in ’56. Now he asked Martin to introduce him to Jack Entratter, the co-owner of the Sands Hotel. Entratter booked only the biggest and classiest entertainers for the Copa Room, but with an illegal twist—paying one amount specified under the contract, and another in money meant only for gambling.

  By the early ’60s, the Sands was known to be controlled by more mobs than any other casino in Nevada, an estimated sixteen from Brooklyn to L.A. Entratter’s connections were legendary; he’d been the manager of the Mafia-owned Copacabana in the ’40s when it was New York’s most popular nightclub. There, Entratter, six foot, portly, and flashing a crooked smile, first became friends with Frank Sinatra, a relationship that ushered in the Rat Pack’s dominance at the Sands. Since Parker never dealt with underlings, only the top power people everywhere, it was the syndicate-owned Wilbur Clark he chatted up while gambling at the Desert Inn, and Jack Entratter, known as Mr. Entertainment, that he sought out at the Sands, the hot spot for high rollers from Texas, New York, and Hollywood. On more than one occasion, he dined there with another William Morris client and the host of Presley’s “Welcome Home” special, Sinatra himself.

  Parker would find more and more reasons to go to the mob paradise of Vegas, which was also becoming a favorite playground for Elvis. But the Colonel was always careful to stop Presley from appearing in photographs with the “wise guys” who wanted to brag about an association. It was one thing for Elvis to be photographed with Prell, who through some kind of arrangement—believed to be only a wink and a handshake—served as Mafia protection, buffering Elvis from the more obvious and frightening mob leaders who would otherwise demand performances, payments, and more. In fact, Elvis would spend his twenty-seventh birthday in Vegas, at one point posing with Prell while cutting a ridiculously tall cake, festooned with two confectionary Hotel
Sahara marquees (TO ELVIS FROM MILTON PRELL) to commemorate the occasion. But beyond Prell, whose reputation was cleaner than most, Parker drew the line. - He’d seen what the appearance of such friendships had done to Sinatra.

  “The Colonel demanded everything to be squeaky clean,” says one former RCA employee, “But it would have been impossible for him to do some of the things that he did without the Mafia—in the music business, in television, and in the movies—because until the early ’70s, it was as important to have a working relationship with the mob as it was to have a lawyer and accountant.”

  Elvis had gone back to Las Vegas immediately after completing G.I. Blues with Juliet Prowse in June 1960. Prowse, a sometime girlfriend of Sinatra, pursued a career as a dancer in European nightclubs before coming to Hollywood, and her brief sexual trysts with Elvis stirred his fantasies of wicked nights in Paris.

  Parker had succeeded in emasculating Elvis’s dangerous hooligan image of 1956, but underneath it all, the seemingly conservative, sanitized Elvis had come home from Europe a more licentious man than the boy who’d left. The showgirls of the Lido and the Moulin Rouge in Paris were far more decadent than the Vegas dancers he’d known, and his familiarity with pills, especially uppers, was so educated and obsessive that he talked seriously of buying his own drugstore for a steady supply.

  Furthermore, other members of his entourage, especially Lamar Fike, who’d accompanied him to Germany, also shared his fondness and encouraged his indulgence. “He got just wild as a goat in ’60, because he was loose from the army, which he hated with a passion,” says Fike. “After the service, the biggest change, other than becoming harder, was that he became much more what people thought he should be.”