Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [170]
It was time for Elvis to find his own house.
Elvis and the fräuleins of the Moulin Rouge, Munich, 1959. Dancer Angie Zehetbauer, with whom Elvis was involved, stands at right. She would later commit suicide. (Courtesy of Andreas Roth)
Chapter Eighteen
House Full of Trouble
In February 1959, Vernon found a white three-story, five-bedroom stucco house for rent at 14 Goethestrasse in Bad Nauheim. By American standards, the home was not well appointed or extraordinary, but it suited Elvis’s needs, mostly because it was roomy enough to accommodate his family and friends—two bathrooms, a large living room, a glassed-in porch off the kitchen, and a basement for storage. The house also offered a retreat from the restrictions of hotel life and separated him from the image of elitism associated with the Grunewald. Now he could maintain his posture as a regular G.I., living off base with his dependents.
The downside was that he paid an exorbitant rent, roughly $800 a month, at least five times the going rate. However, the landlady, the obstinate and rotund Frau Pieper (“a bitch and a half,” in Lamar’s view), knew that she could command it and made hay of her opportunity. Moreover, as part of the deal, she insisted on staying there as the housekeeper, mostly to keep an eye on her tenants and her property. Fans kept a constant vigil, some camping out in tents a hundred yards from the house, others covering the wooden fence with lipstick confessions of torrid desire. When he sings, one girl said, “gold comes out of his hot throat.”
Even a house as large as Frau Pieper’s could not always accommodate two female heads, however, and Frau Pieper and Minnie Mae, who shopped together, cooked together, and drank together in local cafés, often butted heads. They made quite a pair—one tall and skinny and cursing in English, the other short and fat and cursing in German—chasing each other around the house with a broom. Then they’d make up and swap recipes, Minnie Mae learning to fix Wiener schnitzel, and Frau Pieper serving up a plate of southern “cat head” biscuits.
Lamar found it hilarious. “Frau Pieper mouthed off to her one day, and Grandma threw a skillet at her. She missed her that time, but later on she decked her.” Elvis offered to rent her an apartment, but she refused. Then Lamar threw a firecracker under her bed. But Frau Pieper was not moving: She now had romantic designs on Vernon and couldn’t keep her hands off Elvis, either. When she’d catch him in a bear hug, he’d smile and hurl insults at her (“Get away from me, you fat slob!”), knowing she hadn’t a clue what he’d said. When Frau Pieper asked Elisabeth to translate, she covered for him: “He said you look nice today!”
Elvis left the house at five-thirty each morning to report for duty, which meant he was up by four-thirty for breakfast at five. But since he was hosting parties or playing music with Charlie and Red until late into the night—he had rented a piano and was trying to expand his vocal range—he found it hard to stay awake.
A sergeant in Grafenwöhr gave him amphetamines on maneuvers, but he was out of them now, and he went in search of a pharmacy mate who could get Dexedrine, his mother’s drug of choice, in quart-size bottles. It was amazing what money and fame could do, and almost no one said no to Elvis. He seemed to do everything to excess these days, from buying uniforms (as many as a hundred) to bedding girls. Pills were no exception.
If Elvis got up at dawn, everyone had to get up at dawn, so all the guys took Dexedrine to match his schedule and energy level. He assured Rex the pills wouldn’t hurt him.
“Truck drivers back in the States use these all the time to stay awake on long trips,” he told him. The only side effects were good ones—Dexedrine was an appetite