Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [217]
They went into the dining room to have their evening meal—breakfast for Elvis—and sat down at the table with Vernon.
“I heard what you just said,” she announced, her voice shaky with anger, “and I’m going to make it real easy for you. You’re not going to have to make that choice, because I’m going to leave.”
She had hot tears in her eyes, and she got up and called her brother, Andy, to come get her. Elvis followed her and put his hands on her shoulders and said, “I hope to God I’m doing the right thing in letting you go.” Anita shook him off. She was too hurt for a conversation like that, even though it had been the most difficult decision she’d ever made. “You can’t keep me from going!” she snapped. “I’m going!” Then she calmed down and simply said, “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make any difference.”
They walked back into the dining room, and “Elvis became very upset, and Mr. Presley began to cry, too.” Nobody could eat a bite, and then Vernon said, “Well, if you must leave, Anita, maybe you’ll meet again. There are people who sometimes separate and get back together. You’ll get back together again.” Anita shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not planning on it.” Then she left to go upstairs and pack her things.
When she came down, Elvis thought about how she had stopped working to be with him, and then shoved some money down in her purse. But even that angered her. “No,” she yelled, “I don’t want any money!” She took it out. And then she left.
“It was very hard, but I never went back again as his girlfriend.”
She moved home to Jackson, Tennessee, for a while, and later began working for the Memphis city commissioner. Then one day Elvis showed up at her office. “He caught me in the hall up there, and I could never get away from him. He had me cornered talking to me. My goodness, my knees got weak, because I still cared. But I’d made up my mind that it was over.”
At the end of August 1962, Elvis began work on It Happened at the World’s Fair, his twelfth film, and his first in a four-picture deal with MGM. Norman Taurog would again direct. The light musical comedy costarred Joan O’Brien as Elvis’s love interest and was set in Seattle against the real-time backdrop of the 1962 exposition. Elvis plays a crop duster in money straits: his partner (Gary Lockwood) gambled away their money, and the sheriff has attached a lien to their plane.
It Happened at the World’s Fair is memorable for both the number eleven hit, “One Broken Heart for Sale,” and Elvis’s sartorial splendor. Hollywood tailor Sy Devore dressed him in conservative suits and ties to make him look “like a smart, well-dressed young businessman,” according to producer Ted Richmond. Thus Elvis’s metamorphosis from rebellious rock and roller to handsome leading man was complete. It Happened at the World’s Fair is also the only picture on which Elvis had the Memphis Mafia dress in actual uniforms—black short-sleeve tunics over white shirts with black pants. It gave them all a slight garage mechanic look, but for Elvis, it was just like being back in the army—each of his troops had his name festooned across his breast pocket, JOE, ALAN, BILLY. The only difference was that now Elvis was the general, in total power and in complete control of his black-suited brigade.
Research on twinless twins such as Elvis has shown an odd, yet consistent and inherent fascination with “uniformity.” They commonly talk of being powerfully drawn to groups of individuals dressed alike. The semblance of everyone appearing, if not being, the same—identical, twinned—is at the base of their motivation and intrigue. It gives them a sense of solace and reinforces the notion that they are not alone—a feeling Elvis wrestled with to the extreme once his mother passed away.
While seldom publicly reported, says psychologist Whitmer, “The need for uniformity underscores the difficulty any twinless twin has in communicating