Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [195]
Finally the guys talked Elvis into taking his chances, Byron recalled, “and somehow we found out Marilyn’s soundstage. Then the four of us made our way over on bicycles.”
They almost missed her: Marilyn, dressed in a bathrobe and looking distraught, her hair all askew, was suddenly in front of them, coming out of stage twenty-three. Elvis approached her in his usual self-deprecating way, his soft baritone edged in southern charm. “Hello, my name is Elvis Presley. How are you, Miss Monroe?”
“Marilyn smiled in a way that said she liked the way Elvis filled out his Oxxford trousers,” Byron wrote in Playboy. “But then her face fell as she took in his companions: Gene, the most pathetic yokel who ever hit Hollywood, and the always embarrassing Cliff, a smooth operator who was so oily he practically left stains when he walked.
“Monroe, forever insecure, had been searching for class in her choices of husband Miller and lover Montand, and the sight of Elvis’s barely civilized friends launched an unmistakable look of fear and disgust. Marilyn’s famous suitor, oblivious to her reaction, began his roundabout way of asking for a date, mentioning a party at the Beverly Wilshire and inviting her to come.
“ ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t,’ ” she declined in a breathy rush. She wasn’t feeling well, she said—a headache from some kind of allergy—and promptly pulled a bottle of pills from her purse.”
Elvis was relieved. But he took something from the encounter after all, Byron said. “As a studio aide offered Marilyn a cup of water, I spotted the physician’s name—Dr. Hyman Engelberg—on the prescription label. Elvis did, too. A few weeks later, he had his own scrip from the good doctor in his dressing room.”
During the making of G.I. Blues, Elvis was much more comfortable in the company of a younger female, and if things had turned out differently, Priscilla Beaulieu might never have seen Elvis Presley again.
He spent his evenings at a restaurant-nightclub in Panorama City called the Crossbow, where Red knew a white rhythm-and-blues singer from Louisiana named Lance LeGault. The club was popular with celebrities, since they could sit unnoticed in the balcony and watch the dancing below. One night, Elvis, then twenty-five, was talking with the owner, Tony Ferra, and noticed a picture of Tony’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Sandy, in his office. Elvis said he’d like to meet her, and Tony called and got his sable-haired child on the line. Sandy would remember it was nine-thirty, while her mother, Mary Lou, fixed the time at more like 2 A.M.
Elvis and Sandy chatted for a few minutes, and then he asked the teenager if she could come to the club.
“No,” Sandy said. “I’ve got to go to sleep.” The girl had school the next day, and her mother refused to drive her up.
Mary Lou took the phone. “I said, ‘Elvis, she’s only fourteen.’ But then he kept buggin.’ He called again and again. He kept coming to the club until the night I said, ‘I will bring her up.’ ”
The evening Mary Lou made good on her promise, Elvis was there with a date, Kathy Kersch, who was just breaking into show business and would be crowned Miss Rheingold beer queen of 1962. Sandy remembers Kathy was “gorgeous,” but to her surprise, it was Sandy’s hand Elvis held all night. Mary Lou was perplexed. “He was paying all of the attention to my daughter. And I’m thinking, ‘Gee, she’s only fourteen. What’s his problem?’ ”
Soon they were dancing and making out, nothing more, Sandy says, though even that turned into a problem. “In school the next day I’d be embarrassed, because my face would be so raw. But when he would hold me in his arms, it was like, ‘If I died now, it would be okay.’ ”
Mary Lou accompanied them on their first date and then insisted on tagging along for the next two, according to Sandy. “He loved my mom.” But Elvis continued to puzzle the older woman. One night at the