Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [104]
The judge went backstage afterward and told Elvis and the Colonel that all was well. Secretly, they’d reached a compromise anyway, the Colonel posting bond and Elvis joining the American Guild of Variety Artists, which also represented exotic dancers.
But Elvis was still wounded.
“It hurt his feelings,” June remembers. “Elvis was not vulgar. He did not do a bump and grind. He swiveled his hips slightly, but no forward movement. No pelvic thrusts.”
Yes, the boy kept his word, the judge told his wife, Eunice. “He went back to his chambers and telephoned me and told me how clean the show was, and he said, ‘Tell the girls to line up their little friends, and you can put them in the station wagon and bring them to the next show.’ ”
So Judge Gooding’s wife, their three daughters, and their girlfriends all went down to the Florida Theatre. Even they roared when Elvis dedicated “Hound Dog” to the judge. “Everybody in the audience got the biggest charge out of that,” said Marilyn.
At the Roosevelt after the show, Elvis told June all about it: “Baby, you should have been there. Every time D. J. did his thing on the drums, I wiggled my finger, and the girls went wild. I never heard screams like that in my life. I showed them sons of bitches—calling me vulgar. Baby, you don’t think I’m vulgar, do you?” She assured him that she didn’t. Then to lighten the mood, Elvis put a pair of June’s panties on his head and strode around the room.
Gladys, later hearing about Judge Gooding, told her son to never, ever go back to Jacksonville. There was nothing for him there except trouble.
But he had made some new fans.
The judge’s grandson, Tony, would grow up to idolize Elvis and plaster Presley posters all over his walls. And the last Christmas the judge was alive, he gave his wife an album of Elvis singing religious songs.
At some point during the Jacksonville gig, Elvis was to meet with Andrea June Stevens, of Atlanta, Georgia, who’d won a contest, “Win a Date with Elvis,” through Hit Parader magazine. She’d written an essay about why she wanted to meet him. But when the moment came, the dark-haired girl was nervous standing in the corridor at the hotel. She’d also had wicked cramps on the flight, and the butterflies didn’t go away until they opened the door to Elvis’s hotel room.
Then there he was, in black pants and loafers, white socks, and a white shirt with a comb—a couple of teeth noticeably missing—sticking out of his breast pocket. He accented it all with a matching white knit tie, and a white belt, slid over to the side so the buckle wouldn’t bump his guitar when he played.
He called Andrea June “honey” and made her feel at ease on the sofa next to him, introducing her to his cousins. She was his age, or thereabouts, and soon she saw he wasn’t really so intimidating at all.
After a little while, Elvis stood up and put on his kelly green jacket. They were going out to eat—after all, Andrea June had won a dinner date. But as they left the hotel entrance, the sight of him was just too much for one young girl, who fainted dead away, going down like a bowling pin. Somebody carried her to a couch inside, and Elvis, worried, stayed with her, calling her name and putting her hand up to his face. Finally, she came to—embarrassed that everybody was staring down at her—and Red got a souvenir program for Elvis to sign. It was just for her, Elvis told her. And please, next time she saw him, would she mind not fainting?
Now there wasn’t much time left, so he