Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [163]
When the train pulled into Brooklyn at 9 A.M., a band was playing Elvis songs. The RCA execs were there, including Anne Fulchino, the national publicity director who’d taught Elvis how to eat pork chops. Immediately, Private Presley, stunningly handsome in his uniform, and ten pounds lighter than he’d been before basic training, disappeared into a conference with the Colonel and a much-decorated wedge of army officials. He emerged to a firestorm of flashbulbs, then kissed a WAC for the cameras, and sat down to a large bank of microphones and an eager throng of press.
What if rock and roll should die out while he was in the service?
“I’ll starve to death,” he quipped.
How did he feel about being sent to Europe?
“I’d like to go to Paris. And look up Brigitte Bardot.”
What’s his idea of the ideal girl?
“Female, sir.”
Everybody laughed.
“I suppose I’ll know if I ever find someone that I really fall in love with.”
He was handling it all so deftly. The men from RCA beamed and nodded approvingly, and Anne Fulchino felt a wave of pride. He had come so far so fast, and grown from a green amateur to a confident star in two years. It was amazing, really.
Then, carrying a shoe box that Parker had handed him, Elvis waved to the crowd, hoisted a borrowed duffel bag to his shoulders, and climbed the gangplank of the U.S.S. Randall.
By now, the band had played “Tutti Frutti” three times. Elvis stopped at the rail of the ship and lifted the lid on the shoe box. The boat began making its metallic creak and then started its slow pull from the harbor. With that, Elvis emptied the box, and thousands of little Elvis images poured down the side of the boat and onto the pier, disappearing into the frantic hands of female admirers.
Elvis signs autographs in a park in Bad Homburg, Germany, October 5, 1958. He will soon begin dating sixteen-year-old stenographer Margit Buergin (to his right). Red West and Vernon stand behind him. (Robin Rosaaen Collection)
Chapter Seventeen
Fräulein Fallout
When the boat docked at Bremerhaven, shortly before 9 A.M. on October 1, 1958, Elvis, “the rock ’n’ roll matador,” as the Germans called him, received the same frenzied media attention that had surrounded his send-off in America. But the 1,500 German fans who turned out were greatly subdued in comparison to the screaming throngs in the States, so the media engaged in a bit of manipulation. Photographers from the teen magazine Bravo stage-managed pictures to show MPs struggling to hold back an eager crowd, and newsreel cameramen encouraged the bravest youngsters to feats of daring.
Sixteen-year-old Karl Heinz, who didn’t even own an Elvis record, was goaded into rushing up the gangplank to get Elvis’s first autograph in Europe. But as Elvis shifted his sixty-five-pound duffel bag to scrawl his name, he nearly lost his balance. Finally, he shook his head, “Sorry,” and moved on down to board the troop train, which would take him two hundred miles to Friedberg, population 18,000.
Elvis’s permanent army post was the Friedberg Kaserne, better known as Ray Barracks, home to the Thirty-second (“Hell on Wheels”) Battalion of the Third Armored Division. The long, bleak rows of brick buildings had formerly housed Hitler’s SS troops and made an unwelcome sight as the train pulled in about seven-thirty that evening, delivering Elvis and his battalion directly to the base. There, Elvis found high fences, well-guarded gates, and another barrage of media. “I’m just a plain soldier like anyone