Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [118]
“He was constantly stuck up Elvis’s butt,” she fumed. In her heart of hearts, she believed that Nick was on the Colonel’s payroll, that he kept an eye out for whatever went on and reported back to him. She also believed the Colonel promoted Elvis’s relationship with Natalie Wood for publicity value.
Still, June was stunned to learn that Natalie was coming to Memphis during Nick’s extended stay. “Elvis didn’t invite Natalie,” she says. “Nick did, and the Colonel made all the arrangements.” The actor Robert Vaughn, with whom Natalie had just become involved, thought she did it for spite, to make him jealous. Others believe she came because she cared for Elvis and still hoped to spark their romance.
No matter why Natalie agreed to come to Memphis, it was uncomfortable for everyone, even before she got there. Nick kept asking Elvis when June was going to leave. “There’s not room for Natalie, if June’s going to be here,” he said one day in her presence. It got her hackles up. “I said, ‘No, Nick, you’ve got that backward. There’s not room for me.’ ”
Elvis stepped in the middle.
“I don’t care,” he said. “June’s going to stay.”
Finally, June announced she was going home to Biloxi when Elvis left for New York. Nick seemed relieved. But June disliked him for another reason, too: “Nick tried to put his hands on me. He came on to me. I said, ‘You touch me one more time, you’re in trouble.’ ”
She never told Elvis about it, because “Elvis felt sorry for him. Nick came across as a basically decent kid, but I really think he was bad for Elvis.”
She suspected, in fact, that Nick introduced Elvis to prescription drugs, more specifically to speed. She knew that Elvis took No-Doz pills, which contained caffeine, but that was all. “Nick was always up, always wired. Before he got there, Elvis was easy and laid-back. But when Nick got there, Elvis seemed to be wired, too. And you can’t get that wired from cola or coffee, and that’s about all Elvis drank.”
Certainly Elvis did not seem himself during Natalie’s visit. Or at least Phillip Barber didn’t think so. Phillip was a freshman at Memphis State that fall. A native of Dickson, Tennessee, he had decided to go to school in Memphis partly out of his love for Elvis’s music. He hoped to practice law in the music business, so enthralled was he with rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. Phillip often hung out at the Cotton Club in West Memphis, Arkansas, where he became entranced with Barbara Pittman, who sang with Clyde Leoppard’s Snearly Ranch Boys. A former neighbor of the Presleys from the projects, Barbara was the only female recording artist on Sun Records.
Like Elvis, she’d sung at the Eagle’s Nest. And she’d been in love with him ever since they met, remembering how silly he’d been to put black shoe polish on his hair to look like Tony Curtis. (“Look, there is no blond-headed idol except James Dean.”) One day, they’d performed together on Jackson Avenue at the Little Flower Catholic Church, and “after the show it started pouring down rain. Black shoe polish was coming out all over Elvis’s face. He could almost do an Al Jolson.”
They were tight enough that Elvis had taken her Sun publicity picture, and sometimes, if Sam and Marion had to be out, Elvis and Barbara would go down in the afternoons after work and take care of the studio. “A lot of people were talking to Elvis on the phone at that time and never even knew it.”
Phillip had been to see Barbara one night that fall, leaving a little after 1 A.M., and then driving over by Elvis’s house on Audubon Drive. There was always something going on there when Elvis was in town, but on this night, he was surprised to see Elvis standing out front with a guy he eventually figured out was Nick Adams.
It looked like a loose enough gathering, so Phillip parked his car and