Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [131]
Elvis was in complete awe of Little Richard, and Byron recalled that Elvis beamed when the piano-pumping sensation called the Colonel’s office to say he was sending a limousine to bring the star out for a visit. Parker insisted that Byron accompany Elvis, who brought along Cliff and Gene.
When they arrived, two beautifully coiffed women with lavender skin and dazzling jewelry opened the door, and then welcomed them with ceremonial grace. Moments later, Little Richard, wearing what could only be called “a bright gold gown,” as Byron put it, literally danced into the room. Elvis had never seen a black entertainer so wildly tricked out, not even in the seamier clubs of Beale Street, and “his eyes got wide as saucers,” Byron said. Their host had powdered his face a ghostly shade of white and accentuated his dress with diamond earrings, gold chains, a ring on every finger, and a wig that snaked six inches toward the heavens.
Elvis and his friends stood there motionless as Little Richard rushed around the room, slapping at them playfully and fawning over Elvis and his talent. Elvis returned the compliment, and his new friend fluttered his false eyelashes. “Oh, shut up!” Little Richard said, giggling, and then turned to Gene and Byron. “And you shut up, too!” With that, the two musicians traded performances at the piano, and then it was over. On the way back, Elvis and Cliff guffawed and rolled their eyes, but Gene’s face was fixed in a quizzical gaze, wondering why such gorgeous doorkeepers had such large Adam’s apples.
For a time, Elvis tried to integrate himself in the film community, even though Colonel Parker didn’t want him mingling much. The Colonel preferred that he stay secluded at the Beverly Wilshire, both to give him an air of mystery, and to keep him away from the influence of others, particularly stars who might suggest other representation.
Elvis’s fame was already such that he couldn’t take a woman to dinner, but that also worked in his favor, helping ensure he wouldn’t sleep alone that night. He simply invited girls to the party he held in his suite each evening.
Such blanket invitations lessened the chance for personal rejection, but they also allowed for a more practical cover, meaning other members of his entourage could take the blame if Elvis got a girl pregnant. Byron believed that may have happened, as the Colonel had several important dinners with the parents of young girls who spent too much time with his client. After that, the Colonel had a directive: “When any girl comes up to Elvis’s room, I want to make sure at least two of you guys are around. That way, if any problems come up, you can say, ‘Well, we made it with her, too.’ ” Any woman who came up to see Elvis, then—even a famous actress—would have to sit around with one of the other guys before she went in alone with Elvis.
Elvis defied the Colonel at first, wanting to attend his share of Hollywood parties and see the town. One day he was riding a bicycle on the Paramount lot and stopped to meet Valerie Allen, a young starlet walking his way.
“I want to take your picture, honey, with me on the bicycle,” he said, and as Valerie found him “the most handsome young man I think I’ve ever seen in my life,” she invited him to a party at her studio apartment. But as soon as he came in the door, one of the guests said something derogatory about him, and wounded, he disappeared before Valerie could make her way over to him.
Still, he saw her occasionally for the next year or so—she later became Mrs. Troy Donahue—but there were too many women after him for anything real to develop. Some of them, like B movie queen Jeanne Carmen, weren’t shy about one-night stands. Neither was Elvis, who was becoming increasingly hedonistic.
Parker fretted about it, especially with the morals clause in Elvis’s contract, and strictly forbade him to be photographed in situations that would