Elvis Presley

by Williamson, Joel

  Two Virgins and Barbara Leigh

  Meanwhile, Elvis was getting high on the Comeback Special and its sequels, and he was even needier sexually than usual. One of his aides said they fed him a steady stream of women to keep his confidence up. In August 1970, he suddenly stumbled into an incredible triangle of ravishingly beautiful young women. Two of them were twenty-five years old and self-proclaimed virgins—an impossible dream for Elvis, who was obsessed with virginity—and the other was about as far from virginity as a girl could get.

  Joyce Bova was one of the virgins. She worked for the House Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. In August 1969, she had felt the need to take a break from her tedious work of sorting papers and flew out to Las Vegas. She was waiting for an Elvis performance when one of Elvis’s greeters invited her backstage. In Joyce’s meeting with Elvis, he invited her up to his suite after the show for a private dinner. He was much taken with her. She enjoyed the visit; he was so sweet and gentle. But she declined to stay the night.

  After Joyce returned to Washington, Elvis kept calling her, inviting her out to California. She was hesitant. She was a devout Catholic, and Elvis was married. She believed that sex outside of marriage was wrong and adultery a sin. Nevertheless, she was intrigued and finally accepted his invitation to come to Las Vegas during his August 1970 engagement, arriving in time to attend the postshow gathering backstage on Sunday, August 30.

  Death Threat

  Life had not been easy for Elvis over the previous three weeks. He had begun his third Las Vegas engagement on August 10. As always with Elvis, the thrill of a new beginning had rapidly diminished. By the end of the month, he was bored and not as good onstage as he should have been, which professional critics noticed and his audiences as usual ignored. On Friday, August 14, Patricia Ann Parker, a twenty-three-year-old waitress in North Hollywood, had filed a paternity suit against Elvis, claiming that he had gotten her pregnant during his second Las Vegas engagement. Patricia Parker had given birth to a baby boy she named Jason Peter Presley. Insult was added to injury when the person who served the court papers on Elvis pretended to be another adoring fan seeking an autograph, then shoved the documents into his hand. Elvis was outraged. “How can anyone do this to me?” he wailed to his audience during one performance. “I am completely innocent.” In the end the paternity suit was dropped.

  The real possibility of giving Lisa Marie a well-publicized illegitimate half-sibling was bad, but much worse was about to come. On Wednesday, August 26, an anonymous caller informed hotel security that there was a plot to kidnap Elvis. The next day the Colonel got a similar call. That Friday, Joe Esposito’s wife, Joanie, received a call from a man who said that Elvis was to be killed during the show on Saturday night. Less than an hour later, he called again to say that for $50,000 he would identify the killer.

  The authorities acted immediately to protect Elvis. The FBI, the local police, and hotel security all rushed in. Elvis called in all of his friends, including even the diminutive disc jockey George Klein, from Memphis, to shield him with their bodies from the assassin’s bullet. For years, he had demanded that his bodyguards and close friends promise to throw themselves in front of any bullet meant for him. Some did promise, but his cousin Billy Smith would not. “Hey, my life’s important to me too,” he responded. “I ain’t stopping no damn bullet for nobody.”

  Backstage on Saturday night before he went on for the first show, Elvis went from person to person, tearfully saying good-bye. Then he went onstage with a pistol in each boot. During the performance, a man in the balcony shouted out, “Elvis!” Everyone froze. But the man only wanted to ask Elvis to sing a favorite song. No killer emerged during that show or the next one.

  After Sunday’s show, a slew of friends and well-wishers were with Elvis backstage. The threat was a hoax. Everyone was exuberant with relief. Elvis was playing the charming host. Among other famous guests, he greeted Ricky Nelson and his wife, and Jim Aubrey, the head of MGM and his date, Barbara Leigh, a dark-haired twenty-three-year-old starlet. When Aubrey became separated from her for a time, Elvis got Barbara’s phone number. Apparently to avoid any confusion on his part as to whose number this was, she also wrote out her name on the slip of paper.

  Joyce Bova arrived from Washington just in time to join that gathering. After a year of entreating phone calls from Elvis and ambivalence on her part, she had decided to come to Vegas to determine if she and Elvis had a future together. She saw that he was very excited. One leg shook constantly. He could not stop talking about the assassination threat. He was boastful, bragging about his courage in the face of the threat of a murderous attack. He acted as if he had not been afraid the previous night, but his bodyguards and friends had been quivering with fear. “You guys were really scared, weren’t you?” he challenged.

  For Joyce, Elvis was so different this time, arrogant, showing off in front of everyone, putting the guys down. He was not the sensitive and gentle man she had met the year before. Even so, she agreed to spend the night with him to see if they had a future. When they were alone in his suite, she tried to find out why he seemed so different. As she probed, he grew increasingly angry. “You can’t always be questioning me, Joyce,” he said. “I’m tired of people telling me how I am, or how I’m not. How they think I’m different, how they think I change from one time to another.” She had to trust him, he insisted, and join in his vision of them together. Angered, Joyce hit him where it hurt. During those phone calls inviting her out to California, she repeatedly irritated him by raising the subject of his marriage to Priscilla. Now she indicated yet again that he was still a married man. What vision of them together was possible?

  Elvis blew up. He had already explained that, he raged. He and Priscilla had an open marriage. “If you’re going to stay, then stay,” he said, flinging a black silk pajama top at her. In his mind, obviously, this was her whole costume for the evening. Joyce slammed the door as she left.

  The next day Elvis called Barbara Leigh in Los Angeles. He reached her just as she got home from her trip to Vegas. He wanted her to come see him on Wednesday. She couldn’t. She had a date to go on a cruise with Jim Aubrey on his yacht. Well, Elvis said, just come up tonight. She flew up. One of the guys picked her up at the airport, and she spent the night with Elvis. She had “the best time,” she said. So good that Aubrey had to wait for her tardy return to Los Angeles.

  On the same Monday that an eager Barbara Leigh flew into Las Vegas, an angry Joyce Bova flew out. Priscilla also flew in that day, bringing with her two-and-a-half-year-old Lisa Marie. It was the sort of juggling act with women and sex that Elvis relished. With Joyce barely gone, he managed to have sex with Barbara, even while his wife and daughter were arriving.

  Kathy Westmoreland

  In addition to Joyce, Barbara, and Priscilla, Elvis had another dark-haired beauty on the line. He was pursuing his second virgin of the season, twenty-five-year-old Kathy Westmoreland, the high soprano he had added to the company to replace Millie Kirkham a week after the August 10, 1969, opening in Vegas.

  Soon after Kathy joined the show, she had been invited to a party in Elvis’s suite. Virtually from the moment Elvis entered the room “looking gorgeous,” she was enthralled by him. “He just looked beautiful in this black velour-type suit with the high collar, laced so his chest showed,” she recalled years later. He walked straight over, sat down beside her, put his arm around her, and started talking to her again. “He told me how much he cared about me, you know, that he was interested in me and liked me, and when he kissed me, I crossed my eyes,” Kathy said. She could not believe that Elvis would choose her over all the glamorous young women who hovered about. Then they began talking about their common interest in matters of the spirit. Kathy told him she was a virgin. Elvis liked that. He explained that he and Priscilla had an open marriage, but hastened to assure her there would be no sex unless she wanted it. Then he walked her back to her room. As in the initial meeting with Joyce,
he was the perfect gentleman.

  Before the August 1970 engagement was over, Kathy was sleeping with Elvis. But there was no sex. He told her that he feared being alone, having had nightmares as a result of the assassination threat and all. She knew that other women slept with Elvis, but when no one else was available she was happy to share his bed and assuage his fears.

  When they all flew to Phoenix to begin the tour on September 9, Elvis made certain that Kathy flew with him and not with the rest of the troupe on another plane. It was another signal, especially to the guys, who must now keep their hands off Kathy, that Elvis had chosen her. She was still a viable candidate for a relatively permanent position in his bed.

  The show in Phoenix was a tremendous success. One critic noted that “the crowd that filled the house was young.” It was “screaming and stamping whenever he posed, pointed, stabbed and sprawled.” They wanted to hear the old songs. Elvis was back in the saddle again, both in Vegas and on the road.

  Kathy continued to sleep with Elvis in Phoenix and after. In Detroit, on September 11, it seemed to her that he was committing himself to her. However, as they headed south for Miami the next day, Elvis had Kathy moved into another room. His relatives would be coming for a visit, he explained. Kathy said that she understood, but she was confused and hurt.

  In truth, Elvis was flying Barbara Leigh in from Los Angeles, not relatives. Barbara had no trouble having sex with Elvis, married or not. But she did not get along with the guys. “They kind of got the leftovers,” she said with her usual candor in such matters, “and I stopped all the girls from coming around whenever I was around.” The downside for Barbara was that Elvis was always demanding attention. The game, she felt, was barely worth the trouble.

  After the September 1970 tour, Elvis spent a lot of time in Palm Springs with the guys. In late October, he persuaded Kathy to join him there for a weekend. Just as she walked in the door, he was on the phone with Priscilla explaining why he could not come back to join his wife and child in Los Angeles right then. Elvis read poetry to Kathy, read to her from his books on spirituality, and lamented the death of his pet chimpanzee so emotionally that tears came to her eyes. As they entered the dining room in the afternoon of the next day for breakfast, the guys were already gathered around the table.

  “Hey, boys, you know what?” Elvis exclaimed. “Our Kathy is still a virgin.”

  Humiliated, Kathy retreated to the bedroom, intending to pack her things and flee. Elvis came in, almost started up his little-boy act, then saw her fury. He pulled her close.

  “Honey, I wasn’t trying to shame you. I’m proud of your being a virgin. Not many girls could hold out this long,” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world.”

  That night, they had sex. The following night, he advised her to go on the pill.

  Kathy had to go back to Los Angeles to meet television and recording commitments, which Elvis urged her to cancel. “I’ll always take care of you,” he said. Kathy promised to come back the next weekend.

  Meanwhile, Barbara Leigh was in and out of Palm Springs. Elvis told her his life’s story, including how when he was a boy he had caught a glimpse of a girl’s panties while he was wrestling with her and how he was victimized at school. He also tried unsuccessfully to interest her in spiritual matters, but Barbara was into other things. “In those days I had so many boyfriends and guys pursuing me—I think I was oblivious to right and wrong,” she said. She began to lose interest in Elvis. “Get this. Get that,” he was always ordering. There was a lot of sex at first. He was a great kisser and very sweet, but not the stud she had expected. She ascribed the difficulty to the drugs he was taking. “It was hard for him to be a natural man,” she said.

  Kathy Westmoreland came back the next weekend. She found Elvis to be plenty natural—by her standards. “But that night, in the quiet stillness of each other’s arms after a flurry of passion, things began to go topsy turvy,” she said. She told him that even love was no excuse for adultery. When Elvis was not able to talk her into easily accepting their physical relationship, he was furious. “Does that mean I have to get someone else, train them just like I want them?” he demanded. Kathy was outraged. “Am I some kind of dog or puppy that you housebreak?” she responded. “I’m a woman, a human being.” In the end they made up, but thereafter everything was strange to Kathy. On the surface, things seemed fine, but underneath there was always a tension. Kathy had just lost not only her virginity but also her chance at becoming Elvis’s relatively permanent bedmate. The troupe began another tour in November. Kathy started out sleeping with Elvis, but on the fourth night, when they played San Francisco, he moved her out of his bedroom. She knew her place was filled by another woman. Onstage that evening he boasted about his records, fifty-six gold singles and fourteen gold albums, as if those trophies ought to free him from his troubles. “I’ve outsold the Beatles, the Stones, Tom Jones—all of them put together,” he bragged.

  Badges, Guns, and Policemen

  In the fall of 1970, Elvis was falling apart. He became obsessed with obtaining police badges. When his show played Denver, he wooed the city police and got them to promise him a real police badge. Shortly after, he flew back to Denver especially to collect his badge. Almost immediately, he cultivated particularly close friendships with several members of the Denver Police Department, buying each of his new friends a Lincoln Continental Mark IV at $13,000 each. He also got badges from ranking police officers in Memphis and Tupelo. In Los Angeles, he secured a gold police commissioner’s badge after making a $7,000 donation to a police fund.

  During the same time, Elvis developed an obsession with guns. In December, over a period of three days in Los Angeles he bought $20,000 worth of guns in one store. He kept four salesmen busy as he bought guns for himself, his friends, and people who just happened to walk in off the street. In his application for a permit to carry a handgun, Elvis gave “self-protection” as his reason. He also indicated that his weight was 160 pounds, which it probably was not, and he gave his height as six-one—which it definitely was not if he took the lifts out of his shoes. Back in Memphis, he got gun permits for both himself and his father. Soon he developed a huge and growing arsenal, including a .357 Magnum, a gold-plated .45 automatic pistol, a .22 caliber Savage revolver, a pocket-sized Derringer, an AK-47 carbine, and a Thompson submachine gun.

  Elvis also became obsessed with men who possessed extraordinary powers of command. He had seen the film Patton (1970) several times, and he had memorized Patton’s grandiose patriotic speech as compellingly rendered in the movie by the full-chested actor George C. Scott. He would recite it often and with manly gusto. Later he also liked to watch the 1977 movie MacArthur. Before his death Elvis could recite the general’s farewell address before the US Congress verbatim and with feeling—“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away … ” When he had learned that World War II general Omar Bradley lived in Beverly Hills, he visited him several times. The dignified and low-key general was no doubt amused by the bizarre costumes his visitor wore—offstage now as well as on.

  Elvis also looked up Vice President Spiro Agnew in Palm Springs, where Agnew was a frequent visitor. He tried to give the vice president a gun, too, but Agnew explained that he could not accept a gift at that time. Elvis promised to keep it for him.

  Richard Nixon

  As the year 1970 came to an end, Elvis began spending money like water. He bought jewelry for everyone, expensive cars for several of his guys and Barbara Leigh, put down a $10,000 deposit on a new home for Joe and Joanie Esposito, and financed weddings, including that of Dick Grob, a sergeant and weapons training specialist on the Palm Springs police force.

  Elvis was making a lot of money then, but the previous year, 1969, he had come dangerously close to bankruptcy. His wife and his father, his personal money manager (for whom he had just bought a new Mercedes), were exceedingly money conscious, some would even say miserly. Alarmed by Elvis’s manic spending, they consulted wi
th the Colonel and got what they wanted—his advice, to be shared with Elvis and explicitly stated to be his advice, that he must curb his spending. One might as well tell the sun not to set or the moon not to rise.

  On Saturday, December 19, Priscilla and Vernon sat down with Elvis at the dining room table in Graceland and began to lecture him on what he had to do. Elvis could not believe what he was hearing. With exceedingly strong language, he pointed out whose money they were talking about and stormed out of the house. He got into his car, roared off to the airport, and took a plane to Washington. He checked into the Hotel Washington using one of his favorite aliases, Jon Burrows. The desk clerk wrote down the name of the guest as Jon Burrowe.

  Elvis wanted to find Joyce Bova, but he only knew that she worked on Capitol Hill. He seemed unaware that there would be a multitude of government offices on the Hill and that they might not be open on a Saturday. Elvis was not able to locate Joyce by phone. His dialing skills were minimal; other people always did that for him. “Elvis wants to talk to you,” they would say when the desired party came on the line.

  Frustrated, Elvis flew to Los Angeles, having phoned Jerry Schilling to meet him at the airport when his plane arrived at 2:17 a.m. Jerry was alarmed to see Elvis enter the terminal with his face hugely swollen and covered with a rash. In the wee hours of the morning, having dropped off the two stewardesses to whom Elvis had offered a ride home in his limo, they got a doctor. Elvis told the doctor that his condition arose from eating chocolate on the plane. The doctor treated him and suggested that he eat no more chocolate. More plausibly, he was having a reaction to drugs and had come to California in part to replenish his drug supply.