Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [107]
As usual, his thoughts turned to Gladys after the show. He knew she always worried about him, even though both Elvis and Gladys had turned June into a surrogate mother. That night he was so exhausted he had chills and a fever. Perspiration gathered in hot beads on his forehead, and then gave way to cold sweats. He was just at the point of collapsing in the bed, but he said, “I have to call my mother before I go to sleep.”
When he got her on the phone, as June remembers, “He told her, ‘I’ll be home in a couple of days. Don’t worry about me, Mama. June is right here.’ Anytime he called her, he would say, ‘Here, talk to her.’ So he handed me the phone and she said, ‘How is he? Is he getting enough rest? Is he eating? Don’t let him run himself crazy, June.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m right here with him.’ ”
Still, he was so keyed up and sick that it took its toll. Contrary to his normal routine with June, Elvis was unable to relax and sleep. (“Whenever we went to bed, he just died, he died.”) But on this night, he was back to his old restlessness. They had a suite at the hotel, and June moved into the living room so as not to disturb him. But that didn’t seem to help, either.
“He sat straight up in his bed and he called, ‘June! June! Come in here!’ I went in and he was sweating, he was trembling, and he said, ‘I had a horrible dream. I was in a coffin and my mother was looking down crying over me!’ ”
June saw it as more evidence of a premonition he’d had that he was going to die young. He’d mentioned several times, “I’m not going to be here long.” Yet the timing was also curious. June had refused a ring, accepting only a radio with rhinestones all over it for her birthday. But it was the first time he’d gotten so close to really committing to a woman. His dream, then, seems more about the death of his lifestyle—about anxiety over marriage, of breaking his bond with Gladys—than about physical demise.
Now, in his fevered state, “He kept saying, ‘I can’t leave my mother! My mother needs me! I can’t leave her! She needs me!’ It was a real dream to him.”
Things just seemed to be happening quicker than he could absorb them, and there was never any time to think about any of it. He was scared about so many things, scared he might lose it all. He’d even mentioned it to Jackie, a mere child. But he couldn’t quit obsessing about it. What if it all just ended tomorrow?
Four days later, on August 16, Elvis would leave for Hollywood to begin his first movie.
Elvis and Debra Paget get better acquainted on the 20th Century Fox ranch during a break from filming Love Me Tender, late August 1956. “She’s the most beautiful girl in the world,” he said. (Robin Rosaaen Collection)
Chapter Ten
Hillbillies in Hollywood
Elvis arrived in Los Angeles with his cousins Gene and Junior, and immediately after checking into his eleventh-floor suite at the Knickerbocker Hotel—a favorite of show business luminaries on their way up or down—the trio went to Long Beach Amusement Park, where they reportedly blew $750. It was a huge sum of money to throw away on bumper cars and crap carnival food in 1956. But Elvis was hardly a young sophisticate. And Gene, never a smart boy, with a speech impediment that made him seem even dimmer, appeared such a bumpkin as to barely be believed. Together, with the eternally bewildered Junior, they were hillbillies in Hollywood, and the film community would nearly fall over itself to see who could make the most derisive comment or the cruelest joke.
Vernon and Gladys also had trouble believing where fate had led them, and Elvis was mystified to explain his success. “I don’t know what it is,” he said. “I just fell into it, really. My daddy and I were laughing about it just the other day. He looked at me and said, ‘What happened, El? The last thing I remember is I was working in a can factory, and you were driving a truck.’ And I remember how, after