Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [191]
“It was literally the smoking gun,” says Finstad. “I didn’t care which one was telling the truth. I simply wanted to know what really happened.”
In her opinion, Currie’s story doesn’t in any way tarnish Priscilla, she adds. It just makes her more human. She was like every other teenage girl in the world, desperate to make Elvis Presley her own.
On Wild in the Country, filmed in late 1960 and early 1961, Elvis met actress Tuesday Weld. She called him “dynamite—real dynamite.” Their relationship was often tempestuous. (Robin Rosaaen Collection)
Chapter Twenty
“Crazy”
He arrived at McGuire Air Force Base near Fort Dix, New Jersey, at 7:42 A.M., in the midst of a snowstorm, full of barbiturates to stave off his nervousness about flying. It was still dark that early March morning, and standing in the snow in his dress blues and hat, smiling, waving, and illuminated by hundreds of flashbulbs, Elvis was beyond handsome. He was lean, at 170 pounds, and positively glowing. No actor in Hollywood could have approached his magnificence.
The army held a full-scale press conference, and on hand to welcome him were the usual parties—the RCA executives, his music publisher Jean Aberbach, as well as Nancy Sinatra, who presented him with two formal, lace-fronted shirts, a gift from her father, Frank.
The publicity stunt was to billboard his upcoming television special, “Frank Sinatra’s Welcome Home Party for Elvis Presley,” in which a new, cleaned-up, adult Elvis would be presented to the public with an imprimatur from the chairman of the board. It was a slick piece of behind-the-scenes machination by the Colonel, and came together through connections as simple and obvious as the William Morris Agency and as complicated and opaque as Las Vegas mobsters.
As far as the Colonel was concerned, rock and roll was dead, just like Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and the careers of Jerry Lee Lewis (who had married his underage cousin) and Little Richard (who had gone into the seminary). It was time for Elvis to move on to the next phase of his life as an all-American hero. That’s what the military years had all been about.
The reporters had their predictable questions, and Elvis had answers:
“Have two years of sobering army life changed your mind about rock-and-roll?”
Sobering army life? No, it hasn’t changed my mind, because I was in tanks for a long time, and they rock and roll quite a bit.
“Are you apprehensive about what must be a comeback?”
Yes, I am. I mean, I have my doubts. The only thing I can say is that I’ll be in there fighting.
“There’s a rumor floating around, Elvis, that you plan to get married soon. Is that true?”
No, sir. I don’t expect to be a bachelor, sir. I just haven’t found anyone yet that I wanna marry.
Two years earlier, at a similar press conference in Brooklyn, as he was waiting to board the U.S.S. Randall, a reporter had asked, “Are you leaving any special girl behind to go overseas?”
Naw sir, not any special one. There’s quite a few of ’em, though. (Laugh)
And there would continue to be quite a few, starting with three. As Elvis boarded a train two days later that would eventually wind its way home to Memphis, he had Anita and Elisabeth waiting for him in Tennessee, and Priscilla pining away in Germany.
Priscilla’s stepfather didn’t quite know what to make of it. “It was a very difficult parting,” she said years later. “He saw how I responded to it. I really went into deep depression. I locked myself in my room. I wanted to be in dark places. I didn’t want to go to school. I skipped school. He started realizing there was something wrong with me. I was fourteen at the time, but this was more than a teenager’s crush.”
Elvis instructed her to write to him on pink stationery, so Joe Esposito could pick her letters out of the endless sacks of mail.
The media asked about her at Elvis’s Memphis press conference, held March 7, 1960,