Baby, Let's Play House

by Alanna Nash

  Live a Little, Love a Little, which features a cameo from Vernon as a rich hotel guest, was billed as a comedy, not a musical comedy. As such, Elvis sings only four songs, including a well-received psychedelic production number, “The Edge of Reality.” And in a second bit of rehabbing, he performs a fresh, modern rhythm number, “A Little Less Conversation,” written by a young Texan, Mac Davis, who had seen Elvis perform in his hometown of Lubbock on Elvis’s Louisiana Hayride tours.

  Davis had written the song for Aretha Franklin, but it fit a scene in the movie, and he was thrilled to be associated with Elvis in any way. He was deflated, however, when he showed up at the recording session: “You couldn’t carry on a conversation with him. There were at least four or five guys sitting around staring at you as if to say, ‘You’d better not mess up.’ I felt terribly uncomfortable.”

  The songwriter was twenty-six years old, seven years Elvis’s junior, and Elvis had been his hero since he’d first heard “That’s All Right (Mama)” on the radio at fourteen. “It turned me on, and I’ve been hooked on music from that moment on.” But in person, Elvis was “just like a big old kid, you know? It was like he never got past nineteen in a lot of ways.”

  “A Little Less Conversation” would become one of Elvis’s biggest postdeath hits, when in 2002 an irresistible dance remix by Dutch musician Junkie XL soared to number one in more than twenty countries. The revamped track—vibrant, dynamic, and techno heavy—introduced a timeless Elvis to a whole new generation of fans. To many who remembered the original rendition, which sold just over 100,000 copies, it was a revelation.

  “I told him it would be a number one hit,” boasts Celeste Yarnall, the actress Elvis romanced with it in the film. “It just took a few years.”

  The scene in which it appears pairs him with the pretty blonde “swaying my hips” at a poolside party. It’s one of his smoothest on-screen pickups: In the scope of a single song, he chats her up, lays the lyric on her, grabs her coat, and sings her out the door and into his convertible before the last note rings.

  Celeste was so entranced with “A Little Less Conversation” that when they wrapped the scene, Elvis took her over to the soundman. “The little lady loves the song,” he said. “I’d like to give her the disc.” The soundman frowned. “This is the property of MGM. I could lose my job.” Elvis told him not to worry. “I’ll take care of it.”

  The film picks up with Elvis taking Celeste’s character back to his house. “He’s hoping to get lucky,” as she puts it. “But he’s thwarted by Michelle Carey’s character and her famous vacuum cleaner, chasing me around with Albert the Great Dane by her side. It’s a very cute scene.”

  Celeste and Elvis had an equally droll first meeting in real life. Five years earlier, when she was a brunette and about to be crowned Miss Rheingold 1964, they were both shopping for luggage at the Broadway Department Store in Hollywood. “I turned around and there was Elvis and his entourage. He gave me this beautiful smile, and then every time I went around a corner, there he was again, with this little look. I won’t say we were playing peekaboo, but we were definitely making eye contact.”

  When Celeste showed up for a wardrobe check her first day on the set, producer Doug Lawrence told her Elvis wanted to meet her.

  “I turned around and there he was. I wasn’t expecting to see him, and I just about fell over. He was exquisitely beautiful. You had to see this man in person—the skin, the nose, the profile. And he had the most gorgeous sapphire blue eyes. One could never forget the color of his eyes.”

  They became “instantaneous friends,” she says, and almost pushed the relationship to a different level with one of their first scenes together, which called for them to kiss. They rehearsed it far more than they needed and drove the makeup people crazy—his dark makeup rubbed off on her, and her lipstick ended up on him, and his heavy beard made her face a mess.

  “One of the kissing sequences was covered from the crane. It was a long, long kiss, and Norman Taurog finally called out, ‘Cut, print, okay, lunch. One hour for the cast, half hour for the crew. Elvis, you can stop kissing Celeste. The girl’s gotta eat.’ The arc lights went ka-boom, ka-boom, and I could hear the crew starting to break up a little bit, but Elvis would not stop. He was kissing, and kissing, and kissing, and the set was getting dark. I started to laugh, so my mouth began to pucker, and he went, ‘What’s wrong, baby? What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘It’s lunchtime, Elvis.’ And he said, ‘Oh, okay. Come on, we’re going to feed you right now.’ He was adorable. He loved to play.”

  She knew he’d done that with lots of costars, but she says they soon had a deep connection and labels their chemistry “profound.” Beyond that, she won’t elaborate. “I am very private about our relationship and I want to keep it that way. But we just had a lot of love for each other, and it was a very special time.”

  Celeste was surprised that Elvis was more interested in hearing about her than in talking about himself. Still, she drew him out. He confided he was nervous about how fans would receive the film and his more progressive character. And he told her he was scared sick about the TV special, for which he was dieting on “cremated hamburger patties and shriveled-up peas with sliced tomatoes.” She loved it that he “could show his very highly developed feminine side” and thought he could only really be himself with the opposite sex.

  They were in the middle of filming in April when Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated, and they watched the funeral together in his dressing room trailer during lunch. Elvis took it hard. Not only was the “I Have a Dream” speech one of his favorite recitations, but Dr. King was shot in Memphis, practically a stone’s throw from Graceland. Elvis told Celeste the backstory of his own struggle—that he felt a tremendous brotherhood with the black community because he rose up from the poor and knew the hardships that poverty creates. He was also proud that blacks had embraced him as one of their own.

  “He sobbed in my arms like a baby. He was just devastated and desperately would have liked to attend the funeral. We choked down our lunch and sang a little a capella tribute of ‘Amazing Grace.’ ”

  Their relationship was hard to define, strung between the poles of pure friendship and romantic yearning. But they were both married, though Celeste and her husband would soon separate. “I was a good girl. I wasn’t a player. I wasn’t a party girl. Elvis had tremendous respect for me and he knew that I wasn’t anybody’s weekend girlfriend.” All the same, “He made me feel like I was the only woman in the world.”

  Elvis had that effect on many women, but in truth, he was seeing another girl on the same film. Despite the birth of his daughter and his new family unit, he continued to lead a triple life and to maintain the emotional triangle that had shaped him since childhood.

  Twenty-one-year-old Susan Henning, born in North Hollywood and reared in Palos Verdes, California, had been in the business since the age of six (Wagon Train, Father Knows Best). Her mother, the Swedish-born Golden Henning, was an actress, as was her older sister, Bunny. At fourteen, with her back to the camera, she appeared as Hayley Mills’s twin in the Disney movie The Parent Trap.

  Like Celeste and so many of Elvis’s girls starting with Carolyn Bradshaw, Susan was a beauty queen. In 1965 she won the Miss Teen U.S.A. title, which launched her successful modeling career. By 1968, with her blue-green eyes and Rapunzel-like blond hair, she was the quintessential all-American girl. More than that, in a bikini, showing off her long legs and bronzed tan in commercials for Pepsi and Sea & Ski, she seemed the embodiment of the California dream, a Beach Boys song come to life. Her perfect smile projected healthy sex appeal and promised fun in the sun, moonlight dances, and true-hearted entanglements.

  In Live a Little, Love a Little, the tall actress had a small part as Sally, the Mermaid Model, for which she wore an orange-and-yellow fish tail. In a waist-length blond wig attached to pasties, she also appeared to be topless. Elvis’s character photographs her sitting on a diving board at Marineland of the Pacific.r />
  They met just before shooting their scene, when, unable to walk on her fish tail, she was brought up for her introduction in a wheelchair. (“It was very awkward to be sitting in a wheelchair with a fish tail naked, but that was our moment.”) Still, they mostly waved from a distance, and didn’t do much talking on the set—the more dramatic moment came when a whale jumped out of the tank and ate her jelly doughnut.

  She went back to her dressing room afterward, and Joe knocked on her door and said that Elvis would like to see her, and the three of them took a ride up Marineland’s tall tower. She thought it was odd that Joe should accompany them, but romance bloomed anyway, and Elvis asked for her phone number as they spun around the top. She couldn’t believe how long and dark his eyelashes were—not knowing he dyed them—and when he pulled her close and slipped his hand over hers, she knew he would call. “It happened pretty quick. It was just a fun, happy, easy time.”

  Their physical chemistry was obvious. They were both extraordinary-looking, and together—she so fair, and he so dark—they seemed the ideal complement, shadow and light, yin and yang. As they began spending time together, they talked about their biggest disappointments and fears, and what they both hoped to find in life. He was more articulate than she would have guessed, and she was surprised to learn he was a deep thinker. He told her about his restlessness, his search for inner peace, and they both acknowledged their frustrations over their careers, Susan confessing “there were times when I would cry that nobody loved me for anything but my body.” They also bonded over faith. They talked about scripture, and about how “people abused religion,” and they recited the Lord’s Prayer together, soulfully, feeling each word.

  Mostly they tried to shut out the world. Sometime between finishing the film and beginning the NBC special, he sent a Learjet for her and took her for a getaway in Arizona, where he had shot Stay Away, Joe on location. Later there would be a trip to Las Vegas.

  Because he was married, and because he was Elvis, they largely stayed in the room, especially in Arizona. They were playful together, almost innocent. He called her his “Teen Queen,” which made her smile.

  To amuse him, she began transforming his lubricious raft of hair into a variety of impossible dos—the surfer style, combed over to the side, and Elvis’s favorite, the butler style, parted down the middle. “He laughed so hard. He just thought that was the funniest thing to see the hairstyles that I would come up with. I would show him the mirror and he would make a silly face and chuckle.”

  Aside from their obvious interests, they had family things in common—they both worshipped their mothers, and they were both the parent of a young daughter. Susan’s child, Courtney, was just over a year old, and Lisa Marie two months. “He was very proud of her, and at the time I wasn’t married, and my daughter was the apple of my eye.” They showed each other pictures of their babies but did not dwell on what anchored them at home, because “it would have brought a different reality into it, and take away what we had.”

  She didn’t get the feeling that he was running from anything (“I think he was enough of his own person that he did what he wanted”), and he told her that he and Priscilla weren’t together. It was true, in a way—they were married in name only, and Priscilla spent most of her time at the Hillcrest Road house. Susan thought maybe he was only telling her what she wanted to hear, but either way, they simply concentrated on the moment.

  Through the years, Susan has been tasteful in describing the relationship, using words such as sensuality, and passion, and saying only, “you can use your own imagination about two people who are in love.”

  But now, for the first time, she forthrightly states, “It was definitely a physical relationship” and offers such information only to clear up a falsehood that has permeated Presley lore since the 1970s: that Elvis would never have sex with any woman who had borne a child. He was usually squeamish about intimacy with anyone who had given birth, but the more complicated truth was that Elvis did not desire sex with any woman who had borne his child, which effectively killed any chance he might have had for a happy marriage of many issue with anyone, not just Priscilla. He couldn’t really explain it, but he knew it had something to do with Gladys and Jessie, and beyond that, he didn’t want to talk about it.

  In any case, Susan did not need to worry. Her fair coloring would have separated her from both Gladys and Priscilla in Elvis’s mind. And on at least a subconscious level, it was a plus: Her Scandinavian heritage would have reminded him of one Ann-Margret Olsson.

  Elvis’s ability to build walls and compartmentalize his relationships—husband, father, philandering sex star—was never stronger than during the time surrounding what is now commonly referred to as “the Comeback Special,” in part because he was so frightened and in need of emotional succor.

  He spent Easter with Priscilla at their new rental house on Camino del Norte in Palm Springs, and then two weeks later, the couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary at home in L.A. with a catered party from the Deli Restaurant. Elvis sent Priscilla a bouquet from Sada’s Flowers in Culver City, but his card—“Love, Elvis”—was anything but effusive.

  Elvis wanted a family, but he was conflicted about Priscilla’s role in it. It was as if in birthing Lisa Marie, she had served her function. And Priscilla knew it. She had already started becoming her own person and building a new life—taking dance lessons, using the pseudonym “C. P. Persimmons,” and softening her look, letting down the beehive and throwing out the hideous black eyeliner. She needed to get away from everything that symbolized the suffocating lifestyle she had led as Elvis’s overly made-up concubine.

  That same day as the Presleys’ anniversary, May 1, Colonel Parker took a meeting at his office at MGM with executives from NBC and the Singer Sewing Machine Company, which would be the show’s sole sponsor. “Would TV serve to refurbish that old magic, the sort of thing that gave old ladies the vapors and caused young girls to collect the dust from Elvis’s car for their memory books?” TV Guide would ask.

  That was the question on everybody’s mind that day, though no one spoke of it in precisely those terms. Parker told fifty-year-old Bob Finkel, one of four executive producers under exclusive contract to NBC, that he wanted the special to follow a Christmas theme, in effect, casting Elvis as Bing Crosby or Andy Williams. The producer said he’d like to explore other options but broached the subject gently. Parker said Finkel could push the creative margins, as long as Elvis sang a Christmas song to close the program, and that they controlled the music publishing throughout. Later, he would have more specific ideas.

  The Colonel suggested that Finkel stop by and meet his client, and the executive producer made his way over to the star’s trailer on the lot. He was stunned at what he saw. Elvis was in a declining period, yes, but “most stars had trailers that were a half a block long. Elvis’s was like a little Andy Gump. It didn’t seem to bother him, either. We shook hands and talked, and I said I was happy about the show. He looked at me very carefully and I guess made a judgment, and the next thing I knew we were in business.”

  Having appointed himself Parker’s keeper and chief distracter, Finkel knew there was no way he could produce and direct the show, too. Thinking he should bring in someone who was closer to Elvis’s age, and to whom the singer could relate, Finkel placed a call to Binder-Howe Productions.

  Twenty-nine-year-old Steve Binder was a TV wunderkind, but he’d grown up with blue-collar roots, working in his father’s Los Angeles gas station. He had a rock-and-roll heart, having directed NBC’s prime-time musical-variety series Hullabaloo, a quality, big-budget showcase for the top pop acts of the day, and The T.A.M.I. Show, a 1964 concert film with James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and the Rolling Stones.

  Only weeks before getting the call from Finkel, he’d produced and directed a Petula Clark special that sparked a national controversy. While singing a duet of “On the Path of Glory” with Harry Belafonte, Petula touched Harry’s arm. In an era when r
acial mixing could still raise eyebrows, the show’s sponsor, Plymouth, requested that “the touch” be edited out, fearing it might offend southern viewers. Binder and Clark not only held their ground but also destroyed all other takes of the song, insisting the show be broadcast uncensored. It aired on April 8, 1968, to high ratings and critical acclaim, and made history as the first time a man and a woman of different races had physical contact on American variety TV.

  The Elvis special would also be unique, but for different reasons. At the time, it was the first prime-time network show devoted to one star. Today it is also recognized as the first “unplugged,” or acoustic concert given by a rock-and-roll artist who usually performed with electric instruments. More important to Elvis’s artistic growth, the show marked the first time he would buck the Colonel. But neither Finkel nor Binder saw it coming.

  “We didn’t know we were doing anything historic,” says Binder. “This was just another special with somebody we never listened to, because his records were not our thing. We’d only been exposed to him by Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan, and Milton Berle, though we’d been amused by his publicity and the stories about Colonel Parker.”

  But Binder’s business partner, Dayton Burr “Bones” Howe, who had been the music supervisor on Binder’s TV shows, had some history with Elvis. He was currently producing records for such sunshine pop groups as the Fifth Dimension and the Association. But after college at Georgia Tech, he moved to Hollywood for a career as an audio engineer and found work at Radio Recorders. There, he worked on Elvis’s early RCA records as the assistant to engineer Thorne Nogar.

  Howe recalled how Elvis had really been his own producer, that while he rarely recast a song from the style of the demo, he had remarkable ears for the mix, asking that a guitar lick be brought up here, or a bass thump toned down there, and he never wanted his own voice to stand apart from the instruments.

  He also remembered how much fun Elvis had been in the early days, how he’d flirt with girls in cars at the stoplights, rolling down the glass just as the light turned green and taking off his dark glasses (“It’s him, it’s him!”), or talking them up the fire escape at the Knickerbocker Hotel. Sometimes he’d invite teenagers from nearby Hollywood High right into his recording sessions (“Hi, what’s your name? I’m Elvis”).