by Alanna Nash
With his charm and charisma, Elvis had the ability to lead others on a natural high. But he was often on a different kind of high at the Circle G, as he was using barbiturates again to calm himself and tune out his father’s rants. He was also getting heavier into Demerol, the synthetic narcotic normally prescribed for severe pain.
Now Elvis wanted it more and more, in late 1966 flying Marty out to see L.A. dentist Max Shapiro, who gave him two prescriptions for Demerol, as well as other pills. Elvis also got pills from the studios, and when he’d run low, there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to replenish his supply.
One Sunday when his local Walgreens was closed, he halfheartedly suggested that Marty and Richard break in, and then had another thought: “Does anybody know where the pharmacist lives? He’s like a doctor. He’s probably got all kinds of stuff at his house.”
The man opened his door to find Elvis Presley standing there in a sheepskin coat and a cowboy hat. Stunned, he invited him in. Elvis chatted him up for a few minutes, explained his dilemma, and then followed the pharmacist into his bathroom to look in his medicine chest. By the time he left, Elvis was carrying a bag full of pills and promising to get prescriptions to cover them all.
What he needed, he thought, was a local Dr. Feelgood like Max Shapiro, but he hadn’t found him yet. And so he just went on self-prescribing, getting pills wherever he could, sometimes consulting the PDR for dosage and interaction, but more often, throwing caution to the wind.
Many times, he’d take two or three sleeping pills on top of his amphetamines, then get up after two hours of sleep and climb on his horse, a gorgeous Palomino he named Rising Sun. At times, Billy remembers, he comically rode around the ranch looking like Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou, leaning over so far the guys feared he’d fall off and hurt himself.
The pills gave him strange food cravings, and his latest kick was hamburger and hot dog buns, which he ate straight from the plastic bag, tied onto his saddle horn. The constant diet of white bread threw his insulin levels off and made him store fat around the middle. And though he had the movie to do at the beginning of March—Clambake would be his twenty-fifth—Elvis ate whatever he wanted, from cheeseburgers, to mashed potatoes, to sweets. He seemed to have something in his hand all the time, the guys noticed.
Normally, in Jerry Schilling’s view, “He ate out of depression. The movies were boring to him, and when he didn’t have a challenge, he always got depressed.” But now the reason was twofold: The ranch felt like perpetual vacation, offering a quasi–dream state for a boy-man in need of escape. Predictably, the weight piled on.
He was due in Los Angeles on February 21 for the start of the film, but instead, as a stalling technique, he arranged to go to Nashville to record the soundtrack at RCA’s Studio B. Though the distance was an easy four-hour drive, he arrived in a rented Learjet—shades of megalomania—and wore his cowboy clothes, replete with chaps, into the recording session. He demonstrated little interest in the movie songs and instead did twenty-one takes of an Eddy Arnold ballad, “You Don’t Know Me,” putting off recording most of the soundtrack until he got to Hollywood. However, when his second departure date arrived, he balked again, complaining of saddle sores.
Elvis was prone to minor skin infections, as he rarely bathed, taking mostly sponge baths, washing up with a rag and soap and rinsing off. Barbara Little, George Klein’s girlfriend, worked for a Memphis physicians’ practice called the Medical Group, and she recommended that Dr. George C. Nichopoulos come out to the ranch and examine him.
The forty-year-old Dr. Nick, as everyone called him, was a Pennsylvanian by birth, though he grew up in Anniston, Alabama, where his father, a Greek immigrant, ran a restaurant, Gus’ Sanitary Cafe. He’d received his medical degree from Vanderbilt University, but not without an interruption for academic probation. He came to Memphis from Nashville’s St. Thomas Hospital and was well liked by the Medical Group employees and patients, Barbara said. “He went above and beyond normal expectations when it came to the doctor-patient relationship.”
Dr. Nick’s ears perked up the first time he heard that Barbara knew Elvis, and he had asked her several times for an introduction. She and George had invited him along to Elvis’s last New Year’s Eve party at the Manhattan Club, but Elvis hadn’t shown up. Now Dr. Nick was only too glad to drive down to Walls, Mississippi, to see about Elvis’s behind.
In time, Dr. Nick would come to love Elvis like a brother, Barbara says. Elvis, who had genuine respect for physicians (he never called Dr. Nick by his first name), would also take a liking to the easygoing, white-haired Greek.
But most of all, Elvis liked what the physician might be able to do for him, since almost no one ever said no to Elvis about anything. Overall, pronounces Dr. Nick, “He was healthy then,” though the physician agreed to call Colonel Parker to explain just how painful Elvis’s ailment was, even as he recognized that a second postponement on the film stemmed more from patient preference than from medical necessity. The Colonel saw right through it, of course, and would forever regard Dr. Nick as an adversary.
In the following days, when Parker couldn’t get Elvis on the phone, he’d label Marty Lacker the same, issuing a stern warning to him to keep the lines of communication open. Otherwise, he wrote, “We will have some proper assignment, whether it be you or someone else, where we have a definite immediate contact at all times.” Elvis was to appear at United Artists Studios on March 6, or else.
In the interest of time—and because so many in the entourage were now too dependent on pills to safely drive cross-country—Elvis boarded a plane for Los Angeles on March 5. With him were Red, Marty, Billy, Charlie, Larry, Ray Sitton, and Gee Gee Gambill, the husband of Patsy Presley, who Elvis nicknamed “Muffin.” Joe was already in place in California.
On March 6, when Elvis met with director Arthur Nadel and producers Arnold Laven, Arthur Gardner, and Jules Levy, everyone at the studio was shocked to discover that Elvis weighed 200 pounds, up 30 from his usual 170. Parker immediately demanded a conversation with his client, instructing Elvis to do everything he could during rehearsals to get his weight down before principal photography began.
Elvis tried burning the weight off with Dexedrine, but on top of the sleeping tablets, the Demerol, his usual arsenal of mood-altering drugs, and restricted food intake, the medications made him dizzy.
Sometime late on the night of March 9, Elvis got up to use the toilet on Rocca Place, tripped over the television cord in the bathroom, and hit his head on the sunken tub. He was woozy the next morning, and the guys could tell something was wrong by the way he staggered to his chair and plopped down. “Oh, man,” he said, and held the back of his head.
“What’s wrong, boss?” Joe asked.
He told them what had happened.
“Feel this,” he said, and each of them went over. He had a lump the size of a golf ball.
“Man, I’d better get back into bed. I’m in bad shape here.”
“I’m calling the Colonel,” Joe announced.
Elvis braced himself for the fat man’s tirade, but no one foresaw how the incident would become such a firing pin in detonating Colonel Parker, or how it would lead to an inevitable powder keg of events.
The Colonel arrived at the house and phoned a doctor, who came out with several white-uniformed nurses. He examined the patient and said he would return the following day with portable X-ray equipment. Elvis could barely hold his head up, but the diagnosis would be only a mild concussion, not a fracture. Still, principal photography would have to be delayed by nearly two weeks, and Larry remembers that “a couple of men in suits came from the studio” to take a look.
Parker, fed up with Elvis’s undisciplined behavior, seized the moment to tighten control, starting with the entourage: “I want to see all of you out in the hall.”
He first approached Larry, whom he saw as his main target. “Mr. Geller,” he bellowed, hammering his words home with his cane, “get those books out of here right now! D
o you understand me? Right now!”
Then he turned to the others. He was purple with rage, his voice thundering.
“Goddamn you guys! Why do you let him get this way? He’s going to mess up everything! They’ll tear up the contract! I want one of you with Elvis twenty-four hours a day, sitting by his bed in his room. If he has to go to the bathroom, one of you walk with him. Do not let him walk on his own.”
He turned on his heel and thudded back in to his client. “Here’s the way it is,” he told him. “From now on, you’re going to listen to everything I say. I’m going to set down these guidelines, and you’d better follow them. Otherwise, I’m going to leave you, and that will ruin your career, and you’ll lose Graceland, and you’ll lose your fans. And because I’m going to do all this extra work for you, I’m taking 50 percent of your contract.”
It was Parker’s most outrageous attachment of Elvis’s earnings. Officially, his commission had been 25 percent, although the Colonel had long been taking 50 percent of many of Elvis’s business deals, and usually more from side agreements, double-dipping, and perks under the table.
Now he prepared a new agreement and backdated it to January 1, 1967. In setting down terms for what he called a joint venture, Parker would continue to collect 25 percent of Elvis’s standard movie salaries and record company advances. However, his company, All Star Shows, would now receive 50 percent of profits or royalties beyond basic payments from both the film and record contracts, including “special,” or side deals. The commission would be deducted before any division of royalties and profits.
Three days later, when Elvis was feeling better, the Colonel called a meeting at Rocca Place. Priscilla and Vernon had flown out from Memphis, and sat in the living room with Elvis and the guys, already knowing what was about to happen.
Elvis spoke first. “Fellas,” he said. “The Colonel has some things to say. And he’s speaking for both of us. What he’s going to tell you is coming straight from me.”
Parker struggled to his feet and then delivered his power play: Number one, from now on, Joe was to be the lone foreman. Number two, there would be no more discussions about religion. “Some of you,” the Colonel mocked, looking around the room, “think maybe Elvis is Jesus Christ who should wear robes and walk down the street helping people. But that’s not who he is.” The guys should not allow Larry to be alone with Elvis, he directed. And number three, due to larger-than-normal expenses, everyone’s salary would be cut back. Furthermore, several people had better start looking for jobs.
Everyone looked at Elvis in disbelief. Most of the guys made only $200 a week. How could they keep their apartments on less than that? But Elvis offered no answers, simply staring at the floor. No one had ever seen him so passive and defeated, and they wondered why he let Parker get away with it.
In the end, no one was actually fired. But every relationship Elvis had was strained—with the Colonel, with his father, with Priscilla, with the guys. Jerry Schilling, who got married that same week, would soon leave to take an apprenticeship as a film editor. And the following month, on April 30, Larry would also leave voluntarily. “It was like taking my arm off, it was so painful.” But he did it rather than cause Elvis more strife with Colonel Parker.
Early in May, Priscilla persuaded Elvis to gather the religious books that the Colonel had banned and dump them in an abandoned well at Graceland. Then he poured gasoline over them and lit a match.
However, five years later, Elvis would intimate to Larry that he had tricked her. They built a bonfire, yes, but “I threw in maybe two or three books . . . there is no way I would have burned all of those. That’s what the Nazis did.” Larry found out it was true: “He didn’t burn the books, because I saw them. All the books that I gave him . . . I’m talking many, many books . . . were still there.”
Though nearly everyone would drift in and out of the entourage through the years, Elvis’s intimate circle was shrinking. It was the beginning of the end of the group, and it made him feel vulnerable and adrift. He had never quite accepted his stepbrothers, who were still adolescents. Dr. Nick remembers that in conversations with Elvis, “There were many times that he wished that he had a brother or a sister. He wanted to be part of something. Wanted to have a family.”
But he did not want to be told when to have it, or with whom.
He had always felt close to Shelley Fabares, who costarred with him for the third time in Clambake. They had a mutual respect and an easy understanding that went beyond words: “He was a private person who had no privacy. My experiences working with him were wonderful. I really loved him, and thought he was terrific. We had a fabulous time doing each film, even though some of them were mind-numbingly stupid. Sometimes we’d hear each other say lines, and look at each other and say, ‘Is there any possible way to make these sound real?’ We laughed from beginning to end.”
Their friendship might have become something more, as she had the petite physical build that he liked, and she was also an occasional recording star: Her single “Johnny Angel” topped the charts in 1962, only to be ousted by Elvis’s “Good Luck Charm.” But whenever Elvis played up to her, according to Sonny, Shelley always stalled him.
“He went after her from the first picture. He thought she was adorable. But she said to him, ‘I’m dating someone,’ and she said it was serious, so he backed off. But that chemistry was still there. So the next picture he went after her again. He said, ‘Are you still goin’ with that same guy?’ She said, ‘No, I’m not.’ Elvis said, ‘Great!’ Then she said, ‘I’m engaged to him now.’ So the final picture: ‘Are you still engaged to that guy?’ She said, ‘No, I married him.’ After a while he said, ‘You were weakening, weren’t you? And you had to get married to stop it, right?’ ”
In April, rumors swirled about Elvis’s own imminent marriage, and while gossip columnist Rona Barrett thought they were true, few others paid any attention. Sonny, working in the film industry at the time, dismissed the rumors out of hand, since no one in the group had mentioned a wedding to him. And Larry did the same. Whenever Elvis and Priscilla decided to marry, he was to share best man duties with Joe and Marty. Surely Elvis would have mentioned it if he were planning a ceremony, Larry thought, even though he had left the group.
What they didn’t know was that Parker, Vernon, and Priscilla had formed a triumvirate, threatening to ruin Elvis if he didn’t shape up. That included getting on with the marriage.
Vernon figured if his son settled down, he’d stop the incessant spending at the ranch, and he wouldn’t need so many of the guys, whom he considered leeches.
Priscilla thought if Elvis had a ring on his finger, the philandering might stop. She was so starved for his attention that she had faked suicide on Perugia Way with an overdose of Placidyl, the same drug that put her in a coma-like state her first Christmas at Graceland. The dangled promise of marriage was the only reason she stayed, and Elvis had already postponed the nuptials twice.
And Parker, always seeking control, wanted to keep his client an employable commodity. At thirty-two, Elvis was too old to live in such a crazy, free-spirited manner, and eventually the studios would hear about it. Parker would always disavow personal knowledge of Elvis’s drug use, but he did know that Elvis’s recklessness had to stop.
Furthermore, if Elvis were to marry, it would reinforce his Hollywood image as a pure purveyor of family entertainment. (“He’s a clean-cut, clean-living man,” director Sam Katzman had described him.) In spring 1967 the nation was undergoing a radical social shift, divided over the Vietnam War and awash in all things counterculture, hippie (the Summer of Love was right around the corner), and psychedelic. Parker was intent on offering Elvis as a noncontroversial alternative to the fray and insisted that his placid persona remain intact.
And so the three of them—Colonel, Vernon, and Priscilla—went to work, sharing their secret only with immediate family.
At 9:41 on the morning of May 1, 1967, Elvis and Priscilla said “I do
” before Nevada Supreme Court Judge David Zenoff in Milton Prell’s private suite at the new Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The justice would remember that Priscilla “was absolutely petrified, and Elvis was so nervous he was almost bawling.”
Afterward, the newlyweds held a press conference in the Aladdin Room, where Priscilla’s stepfather told the press, “Our little girl is going to be a good wife,” and Elvis turned to his father for answers to questions he didn’t like. “Hey, Daddy, help me!” he said good-naturedly. But Vernon only smiled. “I can’t reach you, son,” he said. “You just slipped through my fingers.” Owner Prell laid out a $10,000 champagne breakfast with suckling pig and poached salmon, and then the couple flew to Palm Springs on Frank Sinatra’s Learjet to begin their honeymoon.
The Colonel arranged every detail, from the room to the rings, calling on his high-powered friends and connections. Elvis and Priscilla went along with it for the sake of expediency and secrecy, though later Priscilla would write “as we raced through the day, we both thought that if we had it to do over again, we would have given ourselves more time . . . I wish I’d had the strength then to say, ‘Wait a minute, this is our wedding, fans or no fans, press or no press. Let us invite whomever we want.’ ”
But Priscilla and Elvis had also allowed the Colonel to pick the attendants and the guests, who numbered fewer than twenty. The suite couldn’t accommodate any more, they said. So while there was room for George Klein, who flew in from Memphis, there was not enough space for Red, or Jerry, or Alan, or Richard. Charlie knew about it—he drove the Colonel from Palm Springs—but there wasn’t room for him, either. Some of the guys were invited to the breakfast, but others had to save their congratulations for a second reception to be held at the end of the month at Graceland, where Elvis and Priscilla would wear their wedding finery once again.