Baby, Let's Play House

by Alanna Nash

  “It’s true,” Priscilla says. “It was a flamboyance that he didn’t have to do. It was a cry, I think. . . . From that point on, he began to self-destruct.”

  The self-destruction manifested itself in several ways, including a return to binge spending that rivaled his out-of-control habits at the ranch.

  Four days after signing the mortgage on the Palm Springs house, he bought a six-door 1969 Mercedes limo. He continued to indulge his taste in showy automobiles when he bought a 1971 Stutz Blackhawk—the first of its kind in Los Angeles—and gilded the lily in delivering it to George Barris for customizing. He’d buy more cars as the year wore on—another Mercedes for himself, and one for Jerry, and while he was writing checks, a house for Joe, too.

  Then there were the gun sprees. In three nights, he dropped $20,000 on firearms at Kerr’s Sporting Goods in L.A., four salesmen falling over themselves to keep up with him. He bought guns for anyone he could think of—girlfriends, the guys, even people off the street. And he became more obsessed with badges, with all the guys being deputized and armed at all times.

  It wasn’t just about power and control, or even for protection when death or kidnap threats came, as several did in Las Vegas, beginning that summer of 1970. Deep down, it was part of his paradox, his lifelong obsession with authority, going back to Vernon’s incarceration, his boyhood visits to the prison, and the shame that made his child’s face flame scarlet.

  The latter half of the year also saw more expenses as Elvis began adding to his payroll. First he brought RCA producer Felton Jarvis on the team, inducing him to quit his job and work directly for him. That June they holed up in the record label’s recently refurbished Studio B in Nashville and, as with the television special, blended players old and new. Scotty, D. J., and Floyd Cramer, among other stalwarts, joined newbies Norbert Putnam on bass and Jerry Carrigan on drums. James Burton, the guitarist from Elvis’s show band, held it all together as session leader.

  The first night, they captured eight songs in ten hours, running every style and tempo, and by the end of five nights, Felton had thirty-five masters in the can. Nothing rivaled the American Studio masterworks, but Elvis would never have such a productive recording streak again, and the quality rode high—a gospel-flavored cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water,” an impassioned rendition of Dusty Springfield’s ballad “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” and the modern pop of “I’ve Lost You,” Elvis’s next single. The song seemed to speak to his domestic situation, even as outward appearances indicated otherwise.

  Norbert Putnam was surprised to see that while the food was catered, and the players were told to order anything they liked, Elvis “was so sheltered that he never learned anything about cuisine,” and always ate the same thing—a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke. One night, Norbert told him that he learned to find the notes on the bass by listening to Elvis’s first records.

  “At the end of the conversation, he looked at me and took a deep breath and said, ‘Well, I guess it’s time to go be Elvis.’ And I got chill bumps, because he went from being this regular guy to having this voice come out. . . . He could go from this real deep baritone to a scream that Paul McCartney would love to be able to do, every night, and I don’t think he even thought twice about it. It was all natural to Elvis. It was subconscious.”

  That August Elvis made changes to his Vegas lineup. Joe Guercio came in as the hotel’s new musical director, and now there was a new girl onstage, too. Millie Kirkham, the venerable session soprano, had been subbing for Sweet Inspiration Cissy Houston, who took off for a solo career. But Millie needed to get back to Nashville. So Kathy Westmoreland signed on for what was supposed to be three weeks. She would end up staying seven years.

  At barely twenty-five, Kathy was classically trained and immensely talented—her high notes would summon angels—but though she was a top L.A. session singer, she was also idealistic and naïve, believing in storybook love.

  She’d been with Elvis’s band about two weeks when he invited her up to the suite. “I thought it would be a party, but he said he just wanted to get to know me. When I walked in that room, there were all these knock-out beautiful women waiting to meet Elvis. He came into the room and walked directly over and sat next to me.”

  He asked about her family life, and he was intrigued that her father had sung in such MGM films as The Great Caruso and The Student Prince, which spoke to his Mario Lanza fixation. He also liked it that she was petite, only five foot one, and that she’d been runner-up in the Miss Teenage America contest in 1962.

  They connected right off: He told her about his marriage situation (“I was a little uncomfortable with that”), and stated flatly and unemotionally that he didn’t have that much longer to live, that his family had died young. “He told me that he knew exactly how much time he had, that he was going to die at the age of forty-two, close to the age of his mother.” Kathy was taken aback but found herself attracted to his mind, his humor, everything about him. “He reminded me a lot of my own family.”

  When she gave him her virginity, she thought they might actually make a go of it: They carried around the same metaphysical books (“We were both on this search for the truth”), and he told her Priscilla had no interest in the spiritual dimension. Though he insisted he had an open marriage, “He kept on saying, ‘I wish she would divorce me so I wouldn’t have to divorce her.’ ” Kathy knew he had other girlfriends and that she would be sandwiched in between. But when he said, “I love you” and then moved on, she was dazed and hurt, even as she had called a halt to the affair at one point, finding no valid excuse for adultery. The friendship, at least, would remain, along with the professional association. Onstage he called her “the little girl with the beautiful high voice.” Offstage, she was “Minnie Mouse.”

  That same August he began seeing Kathy, he could no longer keep the strain of his life secret. On August 14, 1970, he told the Vegas audience that he’d been hit with a paternity suit. A Los Angeles waitress named Patricia Ann Parker claimed she had become pregnant with his child during his engagement earlier that year. Pacing the stage, Elvis angrily detailed why it couldn’t be true, using a vitriolic tone that shocked the majority of his audience.

  Twelve days later came a major kidnap-assassination threat, which sent Elvis and the guys into overdrive. The Colonel called in the FBI and private detective John O’Grady, a former head of the LAPD Hollywood Narcotics Detail, who was already at work investigating the Patricia Parker case. For the next several nights, the entourage stood ready to move in, while Elvis performed with a pistol in each boot. An ambulance stood at the ready. Even Red, now back in the fold, was frightened.

  “The lights were up in the audience more, and the curtains were closed,” Red remembers. “That was one of the strangest feelings I’ve ever had, because when he did his last song, he went down into a very low karate stance to make [himself] a small target, and Sonny and I came rushing out and stood in front of him, waiting for whatever was coming.”

  But nothing did happen, except that Elvis became more on edge, and crowed that he’d been more willing to take a bullet than let some son of a bitch bully him off the stage.

  It was about that time when Joyce Bova returned to Las Vegas, feeling odd about the way things had ended between them before they ever really began. On August 29, she surprised him, showing up in town with her friend Karen for support. She dialed Joe, who put Elvis on the phone. “You must be psychic, honey, I was just about to call you,” Elvis drawled, and he invited them to be his guests for the show.

  Afterward, in his private dressing room, he greeted Joyce warmly. “You’re even more beautiful than the last time I saw you,” he said as they hugged. “You’ve don’t know what it means to me, baby, having you here. But it sure took you long enough.”

  Elvis had made it clear that Joyce would be going up to the suite later on, and so she left him alone as he milled about with his other guests, including Ricky Nelson’s
wife, Kris, and James Aubrey, president of MGM Studios.

  Aubrey, a powerful Hollywood player known as “the Smiling Cobra,” and the inspiration for Jacqueline Susann’s 1969 best-selling book The Love Machine, was there that night on business, since he had green-lighted the documentary Elvis: That’s the Way It Is.

  Elvis had already spotted Aubrey’s date, Barbara Leigh, an exquisite twenty-three-year-old model and starlet, sitting in the front center booth. She felt as though Elvis were making eye contact with her, but she wondered, “Why would he be looking at me? He could have any girl in this place. Then I’d be damned if he wouldn’t be smiling at me again.” As soon as she stepped into his dressing room that night, “he couldn’t take his eyes off her,” Joe remembers. “Man,” Elvis said to Sonny, “that’s Venus sitting down over there.”

  Barbara and James picked a table in the center of the room, and when James got up, Barbara barely had time to look around before “Elvis swooped in and sat down next to me. He looked into my eyes and that was it! We were both in lust, or love, or whatever you want to call it. It was like a thunderbolt. He snuck a tiny pencil and piece of paper under the table for my number, and I had no problems writing it down. What girl wouldn’t have given him her number? He was the sexiest entertainer on the planet, and a beautiful soul. That was just too much to resist.”

  Later that night, James wanted to make love, but Barbara’s heart wasn’t in it. She was back in that dressing room, reliving her conversation with Elvis. It seemed unreal. As a kid, she’d seen him on The Ed Sullivan Show. He was so free and alive, but her family was appalled at such shaking and swiveling, and when she got up and tried to move like he did, she was quickly sent to her room. It was too much to dream that she would meet him one day, let alone that he would want to be with her.

  Meanwhile he was up in his new Imperial Suite, a blue-and-yellow penthouse that encompassed the entire thirtieth floor. When Joyce and Karen arrived, they found wall-to-wall guests, far more crowded than Joyce expected, though that was the norm according to Red. “There always were a lot of people up there . . . he wanted an audience of just people to talk, to unwind.” And, of course, on a typical night, “There was hundreds of girls.”

  Sometimes he’d have other performers like Tom Jones or Andy Williams over, or just his own backup groups, the Imperials and the Sweet Inspirations, and they’d sing with him. One night, he put on a stack of 45s and asked Myrna Smith to dance. Elvis never flirted with black girls—he made up an excuse when he thought Diana Ross came on to him from the rolled-down window of her limousine—and this was just a friendly spin around the floor. Yet he was still just as uneasy at the idea of dancing as he had been at his parties back at Lauderdale Courts.

  Myrna thought at first “that it was me shaking, but he was the one who was shaking! We finished the whole song. It was just a warm and comfortable feeling. He was so shy. It was great. Wonderful.”

  But on this particular night, he was not in such a fine mood. Elvis sat around telling stories, going through the kidnapping threat in detail, laughing, boasting, and then in an abrupt mood change, he got surly with Joyce in front of everyone when she mentioned going to see Engelbert Humperdinck. To make up for it, he came over and picked up her hand and led her to one of the seating areas in the living room. She noticed his leg quivering.

  “Happens sometimes, baby. When I’m winding down after a show, you know? It’s a back and forth thing. Part of the highs and lows . . . the cycles of having to get myself up to do the show, then coming back down again after.”

  But the tremor became more obvious, and then she noticed he was speaking much faster. He got up quickly and signaled the guys to start clearing the suite.

  Suddenly she felt his arms around her, and his mouth was at her ear. “I need you to be with me tonight, honey. Please go to my room. I promise I’ll be right there.”

  Joyce felt a hot, shaky rush of emotion—she wasn’t sure she wanted to do this—and then rose and led Karen into the bedroom to tell her privately that she wouldn’t be going back to the hotel with her. But before they finished, Elvis jerked open the door. “Well, did you tell her?” His voice was harsh, and he bored a hole right through her. Karen hastily made her exit.

  When he got inside, he was even more brusque: “You staying or what?” Joyce felt as if she’d been slapped in the face.

  “What?”

  “You’re standing there like you got one foot out the door.”

  His eyes were cold now, and she could hardly believe he was the same person. He had changed so rapidly, it scared her.

  “What’ve we got here, darling, a failure to communicate?” He shook his head at her. “I’m just using plain, simple English.”

  It went back and forth, not getting any better, and then he pulled open a dresser drawer and barked, “If you’re gonna stay, then stay! And get this on and get into that bed!” Then he stormed into the bathroom.

  Joyce stood there stunned, the black silk pajama top he had flung at her still hanging from her shoulder. She could barely think straight. But then as she looked around at the suite, overblown and gaudy, she knew there was really only one thing to do. She brushed the flimsy top off and stepped on it on her way to the front door, slamming it so hard that the security guard jumped up and reached for his holster.

  So much for reconciliation! She hoped Elvis would come racing after her and apologize, but he didn’t. The Muzak mocked her as she rode the elevator down, but as she walked out to the street, at least she had one consolation: She had walked out on Elvis Presley.

  Joyce hadn’t even gotten on the plane to Washington when Elvis searched for the scrap of paper with Barbara Leigh’s phone number. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Tall, with dark hazel eyes and high, Indian cheekbones, she not only had the smoldering brunette sensuality that Elvis loved, but she was also a southerner who had come up hard.

  Born Barbara Kish in Ringgold, Georgia, she spent her early years in a children’s home before marrying, moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and having her son, Gerry. When the marriage collapsed, she fought her way to Los Angeles, where she didn’t know a soul. Elvis felt at home with southern women, and he had talked with her long enough that first night to see that wounded streak in her. That appealed to him, too, and Barbara could tell that it had.

  “I do believe he liked my vulnerability, as my image might have been something more sexy and alluring. In reality I was just a country girl struggling to survive and accept what life brought me, both good and bad.”

  The next evening, as she was walking into her apartment in Hancock Park, the phone was ringing. She and James had driven from the airport to a beach party in Malibu, and she was late getting home. She knew it was Elvis.

  “I’ve been calling you for days, darlin’,” she heard in the familiar voice. “Where you been?”

  “Oh, Elvis,” she laughed. “I’ve only been gone for a day.”

  “Yeah, well, it feels like you’ve been gone for days!” His voice was teasing, sexy. Then he turned serious. “I’d like to see you again. When can you come back?”

  She was in the middle of shooting a film, Pretty Maids All in a Row, with Rock Hudson. She couldn’t get away for a week. Still, he persisted. What about the weekend? She had plans with James, but she didn’t want to tell him that. Finally they settled on Thursday, but she’d have to be back Friday.

  When Joe picked her up at the airport, he informed her that she couldn’t attend the first show: Jim Aubrey was there with actress Jo Ann Pflug. Barbara had no right to be angry—she was doing the same thing he was—but she was still fuming when Joe took her to the suite Elvis kept specifically for his ladies-in-waiting, which had a round pink bed atop deep, pink carpeting. She assumed it was a dais of seduction, but Elvis would make love to her in his own suite, “where all his stuff was. He needed to be around his medications and his books and the boys.”

  Until then, she cooled her heels, watched TV, called her answering service,
thought about what she was doing there, and tried to shore up her flagging spirits. Finally Charlie Hodge arrived and escorted her upstairs to the penthouse. Elvis took her hands and kissed her softly, yet quickly.

  “I melted.”

  She was surprised to find that the entourage never disappeared, and that the suite was filled with gorgeous women, all competing for Elvis’s affections. Since Elvis had invited her there, Barbara didn’t think she should have to do the same, but he had distinct expectations.

  “Elvis wanted a woman’s undivided attention. He wanted his woman to wait on him and take care of him, and be right there next to him. One had to ask permission to go to the bathroom, because he wanted to know where his woman was at all times.”

  She leveled with him that she didn’t appreciate all the other girls around, that it was exhausting and a little demeaning. He said he understood, but she also knew that she had to either accept it or leave, and it was a difficult toss of the coin.

  At 3 A.M., he took her to his bedroom, and this time the pajamas were red, not black, and offered instead of thrown. They carried the vague scent of what Barbara thought was Old Spice. He showed her the guest bathroom, and then retired to his, and when she came out, he was waiting for her. She sat at the foot of the mammoth bed, and then Elvis held out a surprise for her.