Baby, Let's Play House

by Alanna Nash

  “I’d like you to have this,” he said, producing a gold medallion of Jesus.

  A Jesus charm might have been a mood killer for a dazzling actress who had come to Las Vegas to spend the night with rock’s reigning sex god. But Barbara had relied on faith to get her through the worst of her childhood, and now Elvis was sharing a part of his. God, Jesus, the Bible became the basis for their relationship. In time, they would get down on their knees and pray together, and the most vulnerable she ever saw him was when he was on his bed reading scripture and talking about what God meant to him. But in just that moment, a tear came to her eye, and she leaned over and kissed him.

  That first night, the kissing was the foreplay. “His mouth was round, full, and soft.” But during lovemaking, he reminded her a bit of his character from Jailhouse Rock. He kissed her over and over, eventually finding his way to the back of her neck. It sent chills through her. Then he kissed his way downward, touching and kissing her breasts, and working his way down her arm to the back of her hand. There, he briefly stopped, and they both broke out in laughter.

  He grabbed her again, and then they kissed harder, more passionately, almost frantically. “He was spontaneous, hungry, and made love with the enthusiasm of a teenager. It was a dream to be with him, to kiss him, to smell him, to taste him, and finally to feel him inside of me.”

  An hour later, they made love again. And then he started asking her about numerology. Did she know what it was? She didn’t have a clue, she told him. “Good,” Elvis said smiling. “When the pupil is ready, the teacher is willing.” Eventually they read all kinds of spiritual texts together, including Ram Dass’s 1971 book, Be Here Now. “He was an old soul,” she says. “I loved spending private time with him, because that is when you saw the real Elvis.”

  Yet in many ways, she held herself back with him. “I loved him with all my heart and soul, but didn’t fall ‘in love’ with him because I really wanted to be with Jim Aubrey. But Elvis was a gift, something good that happened to me.”

  From the beginning, he knew about her son, Gerry, who was six years old. He knew, too, that Barbara had given birth to him, that she was a mother. Yet “it never stopped him from wanting to make love with me or be with me. If one doesn’t talk about something then one forgets it exists, and in my case we didn’t talk about my son.” Nor did he mention Lisa Marie, because “I understood what he wanted, and a part of that was fantasy. Having children brings reality into any given situation.”

  The only time Barbara was aware of Priscilla was when she saw her things in the bathroom at the Trousdale home. But he did talk of Ann-Margret, mostly in the sense of how jealous he was of Roger Smith. Even though he had chosen Priscilla over the sensuous redhead, “It took him a long time to forget Ann-Margret . . . as Ann had moved on. When he spoke of her, I could tell it hurt his feelings.”

  Elvis and Barbara would see each other off and on for two years and keep their affair secret from almost everyone. Elvis bought her a brown 250C Mercedes, gave her guns so she could keep herself safe, and adorned her with beautiful clothes and jewelry. “I loved my little brown Mercedes. But Elvis was the most excited, because he truly loved to give. He loved surprising you when you least expected it.”

  Unlike Joyce Bova, she knew Elvis “had a girl for most every night and every occasion. But why not? He was the King. I can’t blame him. It kept his stories fresh. And he loved all women really. He appreciated us all.”

  Their relationship was unique for both of them. Soon she would be juggling not just Elvis and James, but also Steve McQueen, with whom she would make the 1972 film Junior Bonner. Elvis never asked her to stop seeing other men, and Barbara was the only woman from whom Elvis tolerated such behavior, otherwise insisting on complete faithfulness. He took pride in stealing James Aubrey’s girlfriend, but he couldn’t stand the idea of Barbara being with McQueen, whom he otherwise admired, as he did Aubrey. Elvis called McQueen “that motorcycle hick,” the tough-guy actor returning the barb with “that guitar hick.”

  “What’s ironic,” she says, “is that all three of us were hicks, and I mean that in the most affectionate way.”

  On September 9, 1970, Elvis began a pilot tour of six cities—Phoenix, St. Louis, Detroit, Miami Beach, Tampa, and Mobile—to resume his live concerts. With all tickets selling out within hours of going on sale—netting Elvis nearly $175,000 for six nights of work—he knew his rock-and-roll caravan would be on the move for some time. He was healthy, trim, and sexy, though his sideburns had grown into such huge mutton chops that they threatened to envelop his face.

  The Colonel advanced the dates, going into each city the day before, and the old gang came back to do their jobs—Joe in overall command, Charlie stage-managing with scarves and water at hand, Lamar running lights, Richard handling wardrobe, and Sonny heading up security. Dr. Nick was now on the payroll as tour physician.

  On the first night, Elvis met an attractive, long-haired brunette named Sherry Williams, who turned eighteen in his hotel room after the show. She lived in L.A., but she had a friend who had met Elvis before and wanted someone to make the trip to Arizona with her. Sherry was actually more of a Beatles girl, but she knew Elvis was interested in her, because “he would be talking to someone and glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. I could tell then that there was some kind of connection.”

  Before the evening was over, Jerry slipped her a card with Elvis’s contact number on it. But she never called it—Elvis was thirty-six and nearly twice her age, and it just didn’t feel right. Then a month later, Charlie called her friend and invited her to Palm Springs, asking her to bring along the girl from the Phoenix show. Sherry spent a few days there, sleeping on the couch, and then went back later in the fall and winter.

  As a teenager, she was confused about it all and felt overwhelmed on her visits. Charlie and Joe were nice to her, but the rest of the guys intimidated her. She’d had no male role models in her life and didn’t really know how to act around men that age. Then she tried talking to Ricky Stanley, because he was more of a peer, but she later learned that Elvis didn’t like any of the entourage—not even his stepbrother—talking with his girlfriends. It wasn’t allowed. He wanted all her attention.

  “It was a very complex relationship . . . he was a lot of things to me: a friend, a brother, a father. He wasn’t a lover yet, [but] he filled a lot of shoes. He and I talked about that a lot.”

  Late in the fall of 1970, perhaps spurred by the threats in Las Vegas, Elvis’s obsession with law enforcement took a pathological turn. In Denver that November, he spent more time talking with the off-duty policemen assigned to protect him than he did with his entourage and band. He made lifelong friends of detectives Ron Pietrafeso and Jerry Kennedy, who at his request, got him his own blue policeman’s uniform.

  Like many collectors, he wasn’t content with just simply reaching a certain level, and each time he obtained a long-desired badge, he was already in pursuit of the next one. He talked his pals on the Denver police force out of an honorary shield, and then a real one, just as he had Shelby County Sheriff Roy Nixon back in Memphis. He was especially intent on acquiring Sheriff Nixon’s official deputy badge, as it permitted him to lawfully carry a pistol.

  But after seeing a Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) badge that belonged to John O’Grady’s friend, Paul Frees, no other badge would do. Sooner or later, he would have one.

  Offstage, his dress was beginning to reflect his compulsion. Not only did he actually wear the Denver police uniform on occasion, but when Regis Wilson’s brother, Jim, joined Elvis’s crowd at the Memphian one night, he was shocked to see that Elvis “had on a jumpsuit with guns in a holster, like a cowboy would wear.”

  And that December, as best man at Sonny and Judy West’s wedding, he festooned his black velvet bell-bottomed suit with a large belt with gold eagles and chains. Then he strapped on an additional belt with a large gold buckle and a sheriff’s star, as well as his own officia
l deputy badge that Sheriff Nixon had just given him. To that, he added two guns in a regulation police shoulder holster. Finally, he stuck a pair of pearl-handled pistols in his waistband, and a derringer in his boot.

  To complete his look, he carried a fifteen-inch Kel-Lite flashlight. Before they went into the church, Marty practically had to wrestle it from his hands. It was daylight—he didn’t need a flashlight to see—but the black metal Kel was official police issue. “Goddamn,” he cursed. “I hate to give this up.”

  Even without it, says Marty, he was a strange sight—his hair long and curled up in the back, his black suit set off by a white tie, his eyes covered with amber glasses: “I’ll bet he was the only best man in the history of Memphis to go to the altar with five guns on him, just to stand up for a groom.”

  Each badge seemed to spawn another gun-buying spree, and his desire for firearms and all their accoutrements—he had customized gold handles made for his Colt and Berretta pistols—seemed to know no end. Marty called it his “super-spy period.”

  The customizing of things also became another obsession, though he had always liked seeing his initials on things, starting with the rifle he got as a boy. It was an aggrandizement that spoke to his vanity, just as he could never pass a mirror without stopping to check himself out. (“He just had to make sure he was still the King,” says Barbara Leigh.)

  Around this same time he started incorporating EP into 14-karat gold, goggle-shaped eyeglasses designed by Dennis Roberts and made up to his prescription at Roberts’ Optique Boutique on Sunset Boulevard. But that wasn’t enough. He wanted something uniquely Elvis, not just for himself, but also for the guys—something that showed they were a group, his group, exclusive and powerful.

  He was on a flight with Priscilla one day when together they began sketching out the design for a 14-karat gold charm with the letters TCB laid atop a zigzag lightning bolt: “Taking Care of Business—in a flash.” He took the design to Schwartz and Ableser jewelers in Beverly Hills, to be made into pendants, and that fall, he picked up the first two dozen on gold chains. In time, he would add TLC, or “Tender Loving Care,” pendants for the ladies. Patti Parry would treasure hers like nothing else: “My TLC has never been off my neck since he gave it to me. I clean it, and I had it reinforced, but it’s going with me, you know?” Soon, the TCB symbol would appear on his eyeglasses, too.

  On December 19, 1970, Vernon sat out in his office at Graceland, tallying up his son’s recent expenses, and then walked in the house to take Elvis to task. On top of all the guns and jewelry and the ten Mercedes he had bought as gifts, including one for Vernon himself, Elvis had offered to pay for Sonny’s wedding. Vernon told him it had to stop. They had a terrific fight, Priscilla joining in to support her father-in-law’s point of view.

  Elvis didn’t feel well—he was taking penicillin for an eye infection—and now outraged that the very people who lived large off his money would try to dictate how he spent it, he stormed out of the house and sped off, ending up at the airport. There he did something he had never done before in his life: He boarded a commercial airliner by himself and left the city without anyone knowing where he was or where he was going.

  Though he hadn’t seen Joyce Bova since August, when she slammed the door on the penthouse suite in Vegas, Elvis decided he had to see her and her twin, Janice. He wasn’t sure why, exactly, but unconsciously he seemed to feel Joyce was the only one who could sympathize with his plight and offer relief.

  “There are two reasons for Elvis to hunger for that sort of connectivity with the twinned twins,” says Peter O. Whitmer. “First, there are psychological phenomenon so odd to a singleton that only another twin would understand with unconditional regard and agreement. Second, it undoubtedly transported him back to an emotional state that was far more static than the one he was actually in.”

  An easy analogy conjures three survivors reunited after a terrible accident. If two were still a pair, and the third had lost his “other” in the tragedy, no one could understand that phenomenon better.

  For Elvis, going to see Joyce “was a temporary fix, a Band-Aid, that must have soothed him from the inside out,” in Whitmer’s view. To even envision any kind of “reunion” with them might have been the most healing phenomenon ever for him. Yet as they were the “united” ones, he was still somewhat an outsider to them, ever to remain so.

  When his plane landed in the nation’s capital, Elvis arranged for Liberty Limousine Service to take him to the Hotel Washington, where he registered as Jon Burrows, using his own address in Memphis. However, he had thrown away Joyce’s telephone number after their altercation at the International that night, and now he didn’t know how to find her, either at home or at work through government listings. Realizing he had no way to locate her alone (“He couldn’t take care of himself, so I don’t know how he got here on an airplane,” Joyce says), he checked out of the hotel, and went back to the airport.

  There he booked a flight to Dallas, where his stewardess was based. But in arranging for his ticket, he got into a hassle with the agent, who noticed his gun and followed him on the plane and demanded he hand it over. Elvis refused to give up his weapon. Embarrassed, he got up and left, only to have the pilot come apologize and invite him back on the plane.

  In Dallas, he discovered that his girlfriend was apparently out on a flight. Now flummoxed and hungry, but uncomfortable going into a restaurant by himself, he dialed Jerry about midnight in Los Angeles. Jerry was working at Paramount as a film editor, and Elvis woke him up.

  “Jerry,” Elvis said. “I’m coming into Los Angeles.”

  His friend was half asleep and didn’t know who it was, partly because it was that unusual to hear his voice on the phone, since “there were always people to do those things for him.”

  “Jerry,” he said again. “It’s me. I’m going to be in Los Angeles at 2 A.M. Get a car. Call Gerald and meet me at the airport.” Still groggy, Jerry said, “Fine,” and wrote down the TWA flight number. Before they hung up, Elvis cautioned Jerry to tell no one where he was. He wanted Vernon and Priscilla to sweat a little.

  Gerald Peters, Elvis’s new limo driver, swung by Jerry’s apartment and on the way arranged permission to drive out to the plane. When Elvis walked off, Jerry could see “he was really prepared. He came down the steps with a little cardboard box. I said, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘Well, I had to get some stuff for traveling.’ He had toothpaste, a toothbrush, a bar of soap, and a little washrag.”

  Once they got in the light, Jerry noticed that Elvis’s face was “all swollen up, and he was in really bad shape.” He had a rash on his face and neck, worsened by the chocolate he ate on the flight.

  “Elvis, what happened?”

  “I got a real bad reaction to penicillin,” he answered. “Let’s call a doctor right away.”

  While Jerry was on the phone arranging for a physician’s house call at 2:30 A.M., Elvis started chatting up a flight attendant, and then said they had a stop to make.

  “Jerry, we got to take her by her place.”

  “Okay,” Jerry said, shaking his head. “But I got a doctor up there on Hillcrest for you.”

  Suddenly the stewardess was more important than Elvis’s ailment. It was “one of those real cold, misty nights,” as Jerry remembers, but even after they got the girl home, they sat in the car for an hour so Elvis could talk to his date.

  The doctor stayed all night, monitoring his patient, so Jerry stayed up, too. The next morning, Elvis was much improved and announced they were going to Washington. “He didn’t tell me why he wanted to go, and I didn’t ask him.” But Elvis needed Jerry to help him find Joyce. He also wanted to see about getting a narcotics agent badge, like Paul Frees’s.

  Gerald drove them to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Elvis cashed a check for $500. Then they boarded a nonstop flight from LAX to Washington National that would get them in about 6 A.M.

  The airline boarded them first, and then the rest came on—
“heavy Christmas crowd, guys in uniform from Vietnam on the way home for the holiday,” as Jerry remembers. One soldier stopped and shook hands with Elvis, and then the two started up a conversation. Suddenly Jerry felt Elvis nudging him in the side.

  “Where’s that money?”

  “I got it. It’s safe.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Elvis, this is our expense money.”

  “Jerry, he’s going home for Christmas.”

  “Yes, but we won’t have any money for tips.”

  Elvis looked deflated. “The guy just got back from Vietnam.”

  So Jerry reached in his pocket, and Elvis handed the soldier the money and wished him a Merry Christmas.

  Later in the flight, Elvis told Jerry he intended to see Deputy Director John Finlator, who was John O’Grady’s contact at the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. He wanted that badge, and he wanted it bad. And then, flying through the clouds, Elvis had another idea: He would write a letter to President Richard Nixon.

  Woozy eyed and shaky, using the pull-down tray as a desk, he told the president that he was writing in his capacity as a concerned American, and that he had met Vice President Spiro Agnew in Palm Springs only several weeks before and expressed his fears for the country. As he wrote the president, he was especially concerned about such subversive elements as the hippies, the drug culture, the Black Panthers, and the Students for a Democratic Society.

  However, such groups “do not consider me as their enemy, or as they call it, The Establishment,” he wrote. He knew so because he had done “an in-depth study of drug abuse and Communist brainwashing techniques, and I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can and will do the most good.” All he needed, he said, was for the president to make him a Federal Agent-at-Large. And he would stay in Washington as long as it took.

  The irony, Jerry says, is that Elvis “felt a certain amount of responsibility” for the way drugs were taking over the music business, “and he wanted to do something positive. He never said he wanted to be a narc.” His thinking was that if he were “talking with someone in the entertainment field and he knew it was a bad drug situation, he wanted to scare them out of that type of environment without busting them. He liked to have credentials, and he wanted to be able to show them a badge.”