Me and a Guy Named Elvis

by Jerry Schilling

  The Colonel talked about all that the Hilton had done for Elvis—how Elvis was being ungrateful. Elvis responded that he did appreciate the way he’d been treated in the Hilton showroom. But that wasn’t the point. The bigger question was: When was he going to get out of that showroom? Why hadn’t the Colonel done a damn thing to make an international engagement happen?

  Apparently, Elvis had already spoken about his ideas for a karate film with the Colonel, because that became a part of the escalating argument, too. Elvis felt the Colonel had brushed off the film idea without any thought toward making it happen. Elvis didn’t put it in so many words, but his complaint was clear: He wanted to make some kind of artistic stretch, but the Colonel couldn’t see past bottom line and business-as-usual.

  The Colonel’s tone indicated that he had no confidence in Elvis’s abilities to handle the business of filmmaking. And I think he may have undercut Elvis out of self-interest. What Elvis saw as professional growth, the Colonel saw as a threat. I still had some sympathy for the position the Colonel was in—to his way of thinking, he’d made tremendous things happen for Elvis. The strength and smarts in all the deals he’d made for Elvis couldn’t be disputed. But he didn’t ever seem to fully understand that Elvis wasn’t going to measure himself in profits made—he had creative desires that needed to be nurtured and fulfilled. The language of creativity was a foreign one to the Colonel, though, and this showdown had been a long time coming.

  The two went back to the issue of overseas touring, and the argument finally came to its climax. The Colonel shouted, “If you want to go over there, you’ll do it without me.”

  Without hesitating, Elvis shot back, “That’s just what I was thinking. You’re fired.”

  There was a stunned silence in the room as the Colonel stormed to the door, pausing only to shout out a final point: “If you’re going to fire me, you’re going to have to pay me what you owe me.”

  I didn’t think the night could get any stranger, but when I finally got back to my room I got a call from the Colonel requesting me to come to his room down on the fourth floor. There I saw a sight that would have been comic under any other circumstances: The Colonel was in his pajamas and robe, with his reading glasses down at the end of his nose, furiously pecking away on a typewriter that seemed old-fashioned even then. He looked like a character out of a Dickens novel—the embittered, vengeful schoolmaster.

  He’d been at work drawing up a to-the-penny accounting of everything he felt Elvis owed him and would owe him as contracts that the Colonel had negotiated were paid off. The Colonel had sheets and sheets of figures worked out, all of which tallied up what Elvis was required to pay him if he wanted to walk away from their partnership. Whatever anger or hurt the Colonel felt was simply being channeled into hard, cold business. It just seemed sad to me that he was playing the kind of hardball with Elvis that he normally played on Elvis’s behalf.

  When the Colonel had his papers in order, he handed them to me to deliver to Elvis. This was one of the most unpleasant tasks I carried out in all my years with Elvis, mainly because of the mixed emotions it brought up. I’d always wanted to see Elvis’s creativity and artistic ambitions fully encouraged and supported. I wanted him to tour overseas, and I wanted him to make his karate film. But I also knew how hard the Colonel had worked for Elvis, and I’d often wondered if anyone less than the Colonel could have handled this powerful, unique talent.

  Over several days, the tempers of that night settled into an uncomfortable silence. Vernon began to worry about the consequences of the split, wondering how they would ever pay off the Colonel, and whether they really could get along without him. Elvis had meant every word he said, but he wasn’t happy about dealing with the continuing fallout. The Colonel took a Snowman’s approach to the situation—he made a play for sympathy, sending messages through the room-service waiters that he was ill and looking quite sickly.

  The Colonel had a few reasons not to feel so well. By now, all of us were aware that he was a flamboyant and reckless gambler. Although he would squeeze every possible dollar out of business deals, he thought nothing of dropping thousands of dollars in one night at the casino. A kind of fever gripped him when he gambled. I once saw his good friend and associate George Parkhill crumple over right beside the Colonel at a roulette table, the victim of a stroke. As casino security put Parkhill in a wheelchair and sped him away for medical assistance, the Colonel’s eyes never left the game—it was a losing night and nothing was going to break his concentration. It was hard to tell exactly how much money the Colonel was throwing around night after night—he always played with unmarked chips. But the way he played, there was no way he was coming out ahead.

  Elvis turned to karate to work off the frustration over the standoff, flying in Khang Rhee from Memphis. I can still picture Master Rhee hopping up and down on the couch as he and Elvis used the suite’s living room as a dojo. And when they kicked and punched through all the wooden demonstration boards Master Rhee had brought with him, they began breaking up the furniture.

  The situation would eventually resolve itself more quietly than it had begun, but not before Elvis made a real effort at working without the Colonel. He had Lamar Fike contact Tom Hulett about booking some road dates, but Tom had been brought into the Elvis world by the Colonel and wouldn’t work against him. Elvis felt the one thing he could do for himself was go out and tour, and tried to follow through, but no one he contacted wanted to step into a manager’s role. I think Tom and whoever else Elvis spoke to must have realized that there was really only one person strong enough to successfully manage Elvis Presley—the Colonel.

  In the end, no legal action was taken to sever the partnership between Elvis and the Colonel, and within a couple of weeks Elvis had moved on to Palm Springs and the Colonel was overseeing negotiations over the completion of Elvis’s next RCA album. But Joe and I wouldn’t be around for any of that. Elvis had promised to send Joe and me on a European vacation, a trip that he thought would help us clear our heads after having gone through divorces. Days after the blowout with the Colonel, we told Elvis that considering what was happening, we were canceling the trip to stay with him. He wouldn’t hear of it.

  “We’ve been through a rough engagement,” he told us, “and you guys deserve it even more. You’re going to go.”

  I got excited about the trip, and was looking forward to a mix of high culture and carefree fun—I was ready for both after some of the heavy times over the last year. But I could sense that Joe wasn’t quite ready for this kind of escape. The wounds of his divorce were too fresh, and his split with Joanie weighed heavily on him. That said, Joe was a solid traveling companion, and proved to be an expert driver on European roads. Over three weeks, we made our way through Greece, Italy, Belgium, France, and England. We got to see the Vatican, the Louvre, and the statue of David in Florence. We discovered the pleasures of French wine and Belgian ale. On nights when Joe was not up for exploring a city, I went out by myself. In Innsbruck, Austria, I found myself alone in an elevator with Mick Jagger. I said hello, thinking I’d tell him how much Elvis had dug the Stones’ early covers of American blues tunes. But he ignored me, and for the twenty or thirty seconds in which we stood just inches away from each other, made no acknowledgment at all that there was another human being in his vicinity. Didn’t spoil my night. I just stepped out of the elevator thinking, Screw you, Mick.

  Joe and I ended up in London, spending time with James Darren (“Moondoggie” of the Gidget films) and his wife, Evie, who were friends of Joe’s. I took the opportunity to upgrade my wardrobe with several shopping trips to King’s Row and Carnaby Street. The whole trip was just what Elvis had wanted for us—a great escape. I hadn’t realized quite how claustrophobic our lives had become until I got over to Europe—I almost felt as if I’d been holding my breath for months and was now finally breathing again. Even Joe was loosening up a little by the end of the trip. We were refocused and reenergized. And we were going to n
eed that energy, because back in the U.S., things were only getting heavier.

  After Sandy and I had split up, Elvis had offered me a room in the Monovale house, which I gladly accepted. I was at that house on October 9, 1973, when Elvis and Vernon headed to a courthouse in Santa Monica so that he and Priscilla could finalize the arrangements of their divorce. There’s a well-known photograph of Elvis and Priscilla leaving the courthouse that day, in which they are walking arm in arm. That shot says a lot about the relationship between the two. Even after going through a divorce, there was still a love there that they both felt.

  It was obviously a hard time emotionally for Elvis, and all of us around him wanted to be as supportive and understanding as we could. But less than a week after the divorce proceedings, back in Memphis, something we’d all feared finally happened: Elvis suffered a physical collapse. He’d been having breathing troubles at Graceland that Linda Thompson felt were serious enough to warrant calling in Dr. Nick. After a couple of days of monitoring Elvis at the house, the doctor felt his situation was critical enough to check him into Baptist Hospital.

  As much as Elvis trusted his personal doctors, he hated the idea of hospitals. To make him more comfortable there, Sonny, Al Strada, and I took on the odd task of preparing a room in an isolated wing of the hospital as though it were the bedroom in the suite at the top of the Las Vegas Hilton. The windows were blacked out with aluminum foil, phone lines were set up, special arrangements were made for the food that Elvis would want, and an extra bed was brought in so that Linda could stay in the room with him. A room directly across from Elvis’s was reserved so that Sonny and I could take turns spending the night at the hospital.

  There was something awful and scary about watching a guy who had once been such a perfect physical specimen just fall apart. Elvis was undeniably overweight now, and had respiratory problems, intestinal ailments, liver dysfunction, and early-stage glaucoma, all of which had been induced or exacerbated by his work schedule and his overuse of prescription medications. I had to admit that, getting him checked into the hospital, I also felt a sense of relief. Maybe a hospital stay was what it was going to take to wake him up and get him strong again.

  The doctors at the hospital were puzzled by some strange bruises on Elvis’s body, which he said were from acupuncture treatments he received in Los Angeles. Months before, my back had gotten extremely sore—a lingering condition from my football injuries and motorcycle accident. Elvis had insisted that his acupuncturist could take care of the pain, and promptly took me not to the doctor’s office, but to his home in Beverly Hills. I didn’t know anything about acupuncture—Elvis was again ahead of his time in embracing this form of treatment—but I was willing to give anything a try to be able to stand up straight. Obviously I couldn’t see exactly what the doctor did to my lower back, but after a half-hour session I walked out of there feeling great. The doctors at Baptist couldn’t figure out how acupuncture needles could leave such bruises, and Dr. Nick tracked down the acupuncturist to make some inquiries about his procedure. It turned out that this doctor was helping the acupuncture process along by administering shots of Demerol, a powerful painkiller. Suddenly I understood how my back pain had disappeared. The doctors at the hospital realized that in addition to having his other ailments treated, Elvis was going to have to be carefully weaned off a doctor-created opiate addiction.

  We knew that it wasn’t going to be enough simply to treat Elvis’s physical troubles. His psychological dependency on his medications had to be treated, too, if he was truly going to get well. But this was a touchy area. Elvis needed to maintain his dignity, and no one was sure how he would react to any attempt to get inside his head. One of the team of doctors treating Elvis was Dr. David Knott, a drug-addiction specialist. Joe, Vernon, and I talked with Dr. Nick, who consulted with the doctor. It was decided that Dr. Knott would give Elvis all the treatment he felt was necessary, but he would be presented to Elvis as a liver specialist. Even in his diminished state, though, Elvis was a sharp guy. I was in his room one day when Dr. Knott came by, talked to Elvis a bit, checked some charts, and then left.

  “You know,” Elvis said calmly, “Dr. Knott’s a psychiatrist.”

  Elvis did get well. He got off the medicines that weren’t doing him any good; he lost weight; he started sleeping better; and he even started eating better (though it was hard for the cooks at Graceland not to want to spoil their “patient” by serving him his favorite dishes). After a couple months of rest and recuperation, he looked good and had better energy than any of us had seen in a while.

  He was back for a two-week engagement at the Hilton in January of 1974, and this time the shows were strong and exciting. The gatherings in Elvis’s suite after the show were upbeat, too, and he was the host to some remarkable mixes of people. I remember one night up in the suite, Elvis decided to give Liza Minelli a complete beginner’s guide to karate. A small group of us moved to Elvis’s private bedroom, where I became Liza’s practice partner while Elvis provided the instruction. Liza was game, and handling her kicks and punches was a lot of fun. But what made the night even more memorable was that the small group watching the lesson included Chubby Checker, famous for dancing “The Twist,” and Linda Lovelace, famous for doing what she did in Deep Throat. Linda was there with her boyfriend, David Winters, who had worked as a film choreographer for Elvis. Much later that night, Linda and David were arrested at the Dunes Hotel on drug possession charges. It seemed clear that the couple had been set up and were being harassed because of Linda’s notoriety, at a time when Vegas had become interested in cleaning up its image. They didn’t know who to turn to, so they called Elvis. He offered to post bond for them, but the charges were dropped before that was necessary.

  By March, we were out on the road for the first of four national tours that year. When Elvis was in good form, it was easy for good feelings to trickle down to the rest of us, and as we all went back out on the road, I realized that I was falling in love again.

  The Sweet Inspirations, Elvis’s trio of female backup singers, were comprised of Myrna Smith, Sylvia Shemwell, and Estelle Brown (Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother, was part of the group at Elvis’s 1969 Las Vegas engagement). Any of the Sweets could have been remarkable lead singers on their own, but I thought Myrna had a phenomenal talent. I also thought she was gorgeous, and I loved watching her on stage. For a long time I didn’t know what to say to Myrna, but any chance I could I engaged in some low-key flirting. We were both shy enough, though, that I don’t think we would have ever gotten past the flirting stage if it weren’t for Sylvia Shemwell. I was spending more and more time around the Sweets on the road, and I guess Sylvia could tell how much of a crush I had on Myrna. One night I was talking to the singers in their dressing room when Sylvia said, “Hey, Jerry, if you’re not going to ask me out, why don’t you take Myrna out?”

  That was all the icebreaking I needed. I’ll never forget the look of surprise on Elvis’s face when I told him I was going to date Myrna. He didn’t make any attempt to sugarcoat his reaction. “She won’t go out with you.” The way he said it, it sounded like there was a part he was leaving unsaid: “She wouldn’t go out with me.”

  Elvis had an extremely special relationship with the Sweet Inspirations. He was with them in their dressing room after almost every show, and I think he opened up to them in ways that he didn’t with anybody else. I know Elvis was also attracted to Myrna, but he valued her much more as a friend than as a potential romantic partner. He may have also been a little intimidated by her—Myrna would tell me later that the one time she and Elvis danced together at a party, she could feel him trembling.

  In the summer of ’73 we’d had some interesting transportation on tour—Elvis chartered Hugh Hefner’s Playboy jet—the DC-9 Big Bunny—as his tour plane. With my marriage over, I’d actually had some romantic liaisons with a Bunny attendant. But given a chance to live a life of debauchery, I always preferred to go with my romantic streak. Falling in
love always had more appeal than just falling into bed. And as Myrna and I began to spend more time together, my crush quickly blossomed into Sweet love. Myrna and I began really dating, going out for dinners and going to see shows together on nights we weren’t working with Elvis. Vernon’s marriage to Dee Stanley was over, and he had just begun a romance with a nurse from Denver named Sandy Miller. Myrna and I double-dated with the couple the very first time they went out together—we all went to a Diana Ross show. It was rare for Elvis to allow little Lisa to go out without him, but he allowed Myrna and me to take her out on another of our dates. We attended a Jackson 5 concert at the Sahara in Lake Tahoe a day after Elvis had ended his engagement there, and after the show I introduced five-year-old Lisa to a teenage Michael Jackson.

  Myrna and I got serious very quickly. When she wasn’t working with Elvis she spent a lot of time at her home in Newark, New Jersey. I decided that when she did come out to Los Angeles, I wanted her to be able to stay with me. I remembered how concerned the Colonel had been about living arrangements when Sandy and I lived with Elvis and Priscilla as unmarried couples. It seemed to me that to be with Myrna, the best thing to do was to move out of Elvis’s house and get my own place. But when I told Elvis that I was going to start searching for an apartment, he almost looked hurt.

  “You got a place at my house. What’s wrong with that?”