Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [218]
The cast of It Happened at the World’s Fair included two young actors who would go on to distinguish themselves: Kurt Russell, playing a bit part as a bratty child who kicks Elvis in the shin (and would later portray Elvis in a television film), and TV’s future “Batgirl,” Yvonne Craig, who had a secondary role.
“It was not a good film. I had a small part, and it was a dance number, although I didn’t dance. My sister and I went to the drive-in movie to see it, and I didn’t want to stay for the rest of it. I just wanted to see how I looked with short hair. After [my scene] was over, I would like to have left, but I thought, ‘God, that’s really egocentric,’ so I sat there bored witless, and my sister did, too. Finally, she said, ‘Would you mind terribly if we went?’ I said, ‘No, no, I’d love it!’ I was sitting there dying.”
Elvis romanced three of the actresses on the film, including the blond O’Brien, a former country singer who had made the jump to acting and was just finalizing her divorce, and brunette Sandra Giles, whose name appeared near the end of the credits. She was amused when she met Elvis on the set: “He said to one of his men, ‘Would you get up and give Miss Giles your chair?’ But usually the man gets up and gives you his chair.” They went out to a steak restaurant in a place where “you had to know the owner to get in,” and just sat and talked. “We had a few dates and he was very nice. He wasn’t pushy. He didn’t even try to make out.”
Elvis was equally genteel with Yvonne Craig, who was impressed at how he interacted with the women on the film. Just as he knew what his female fans expected, he also knew that all of the women in the cast needed his attention.
“It wasn’t predatory at all, or it didn’t seem so to me. It was more of a southern gentleman thing. He would spend five minutes with each of the girls on the set, one at a time. It was really sweet to see. And it was like having fourteen brothers with the guys. They were all around, lighting your cigarette and asking if you would like another Pepsi.”
Yvonne wondered if Elvis was going to ask her out—she could feel a sort of latent heat between them—and finally, he made his move. During shooting, Joe called and made his smooth approach: “Elvis wanted me to ask if you would be free for dinner.” Yvonne was dating someone else at the time, but not exclusively, and so she accepted. In an unusual move, Elvis accompanied Gene Smith and Richard Davis, a new member of the group, to pick her up, mostly because he wanted to show off his gold-dusted Cadillac. George Barris had recently customized it, repainting the black exterior in white Murano pearl, and finishing the interior with “solid gold,” as Barris liked to say, meaning everything was gold-plated and stamped with a golden guitar insignia. The effect was something between a rock-and-roll chariot and a pimpmobile.
Richard knocked at Yvonne’s door and told her that Elvis was waiting in the car.
“I lived in an apartment that was like a cell block or some other kind of lockup—it was all square and you could look down in the patio and see who was coming and going. And when I saw this car, I said, ‘Oh, my!’ It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. Elvis said very apologetically, ‘I brought this because I thought it might be fun. It’s not like I travel like this all the time.’
“It had deep, deep, deep carpeting, so that when you got in, your feet sort of sank in and disappeared. And then he pushed all the buttons for me. It had two telephones, one with a direct line to Memphis. It had a complete entertainment center. It had an electric shoeshine machine, and a bar filled with Pepsi. He offered me one, which I thought was funny. Oh, it was a crazy-looking thing.”
When they arrived on Bellagio Road, Jimmy, the butler, served the two of them what should have been a romantic dinner. But the house was so baronial, and the table so long and expansive—it probably sat thirty people, by Yvonne’s estimation—that everything