Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [229]
“Ann-Margret really was the love of his life,” says Patti Parry. “She was just the best girl. And they were like little kids together, laughing and having fun.”
They spent a lot of time together, and as Lamar remembers, “it blew our minds” that he went with her alone so much. “We would give him a bunch of money, and he’d jump in that Rolls-Royce and stay gone. Nobody knew where he was, except that he was with her.” Part of the time, he was over visiting her parents at their apartment, an indication of how serious he was about the girl he called “Rusty Ammo,” and “Thumper,” the code name she would later use when she phoned for him at Graceland. As for what she called him, “When I like someone,” she told a magazine, “I say scoobie. Elvis is scoobie.”
The Memphis Mafia, half in love with her themselves, could hardly stand the thoughts of the two of them together. When the film went on location in Las Vegas, Elvis stayed in Milton Prell’s suite at the Sahara, and he and Ann-Margret secluded themselves there for the weekend. The guys “aggravated the shit out of them,” as Marty Lacker recounts, Red and Lamar stuffing newspaper under the door and lighting it. “They even shined butter knives ’til they looked like mirrors. And then they slipped ’em under the door to see if they could see Ann-Margret without her clothes on. They tried everything. But Elvis and Ann-Margret would not come out of that suite.”
“It was a very strong relationship, very intense,” she has said. Elvis was so entranced by their lovemaking that he later had a round bed made for her in pink, but when word leaked out about it, Elvis made sure not to be seen with her at industry events. He invited Yvonne Craig to go with him to the screening of the film, and when she pried him for information, “he was very circumspect about the whole thing.”
Viva Las Vegas was an immediate hit, topping Blue Hawaii as Elvis’s highest grossing film ever—by 1969, revenues would reach $5.5 million, up from Elvis’s usual movie gross of $3 million.
Colonel Parker might have been expected to see that spending money for bigger costars, bankable directors, and an involving script would ensure longevity for his client. But during production, he constantly harped that Viva Las Vegas was over budget, which could mean a loss of profit participation, a given in each of Elvis’s movie contracts.
However, on several levels, Parker was also greatly worried about Ann-Margret. The artful manager was nervous about what she might have told Elvis about the way other managers worked—that they took far less than the 50 percent that Parker commanded on some of his deals. And the Colonel was unhappy that director Sidney seemed intent on awarding Ann-Margret as much screen time as Elvis. He grumbled that the director gave her more close-ups and flattering camera angles, and complained that it was difficult to tell just whose film it was. He also nixed special billing for her in the advertisements that MGM hoped would help draw audiences beyond Elvis’s core fans. “If someone else should ride on our back,” Parker huffed, “then we should get a better saddle.”
Parker may have been looking after his client, but he was particularly shortsighted in insisting that the director cut the couple’s duets down from three to one. The news didn’t go over well with RCA, either, remembered Joan Deary, who was then Steve Sholes’s secretary.
“There was no cut of Ann-Margret on the Viva Las Vegas product, because the Colonel did not believe that anyone should cash in on Elvis’s popularity.” Though several of the Ann-Margret songs have appeared since Elvis’s death, “There was never any female singer on any of Elvis’s albums with the exception of Nancy Sinatra [“Your Groovy Self,” from Speedway], and that was because of the Colonel’s friendship with Frank. We had no influence on what [songs] went into the movies, and no choice of what the selections