Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [232]
If he hated making the film, which Cynthia later heard, she didn’t see it at the time. He was always professional, knowing everybody’s lines, and showing up for the over-the-shoulder shots that most stars would leave for the stand-ins. Yvonne, too, was impressed with him, seeing he was such a natural actor that he didn’t appear to be working at all.
“I’ve only seen that with one other person, and that was Spencer Tracy. You’d think, ‘He’s just putting in his time and not doing anything.’ Then you’d go to the dailies, and he’d be so riveting that you couldn’t look at anybody else.”
As on It Happened at the World’s Fair, Elvis invited Yvonne over to the house for dinner, teasing her about her big sunglasses and calling her “Bug.” Again, they ended upstairs in his playpen of a bedroom (“back where he shouldn’t be taking women”), this time to watch a Katharine Hepburn movie. Yvonne continued to give him all kinds of unsolicited advice: that perhaps he should dye his hair dark brown, because his was so shiny black that it ate the light. (“He said he would think about it.”) And that he ought to take on some meaty roles again, since all his movies had him bursting into song, like an operetta.
She saw how he could sit on a set and know what everyone was doing and why. “If you are that observant,” she told him, “and you understand everybody’s motivation, it just makes for a whole depth that you could bring to almost every character.” But he was tired of hearing it, tired of fighting. “I don’t make any of those decisions,” he said, and the next time she looked over at him, he had drifted off to sleep.
“I figured I needed to get out of there, so I went around and like a good fairy, shut off the TV and all the lights, and quietly tiptoed out of his room. As I was walking down the hall, Joe Esposito was coming to see if I would like to go home. I said to him, ‘Listen, Elvis fell asleep. I shut out all of the lights, but he needs to get undressed.’ And Joe said, ‘You shut out all of the lights?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Well, Elvis likes to sleep with a light on.’ And I said, ‘How would I know that? I’m not his mother.’ We laughed, and he said, ‘I’ll fix it,’ and then we went on downstairs.”
But when they opened the door, there were five Bel Air patrol cars in the drive, and at least that many officers pointing guns right at their hearts.
Joe looked at Yvonne.
“Did you touch a button up by the top of the bed?”
“I touched all of the buttons until the lights went out,” she said meekly, not realizing she had inadvertently pushed a panic button that summoned the cops.
“The next day on the set, I was sitting in my chair and Elvis sheepishly came up and said, ‘I hear you called the police because I went to sleep in your face.’ ”
They never worked together again, but Yvonne would see Elvis around Hollywood now and then. Sometimes they would pass each other in Beverly Hills, and he would lean out the window and yell, “Hey, Bug!” She loved it.
During Priscilla’s brief time on the Kissin’ Cousins set, she impressed the cast and crew in various ways. One of the actresses found her chilly (“Not a bit of warmth there—Elvis had it all”). But Yvonne thought just the opposite. “She was very poised, and you know, she was just a baby. She said to me, ‘I was so jealous of you during It Happened at the World’s Fair. But I’m not now.’ She said, ‘I thought you were a threat.’ And I went, ‘Wow! It takes a lot of guts to say that to somebody, especially at her age.’ ”
But Priscilla, who had spent so much of her life concealing her true emotions, did a fine job of masking her insecurity. “I always felt worn out because there were such emotional highs and lows,” she would say nearly thirty years later. “There was never really any time that I let my guard down.”
Actress Mary Ann Mobley made Elvis Girl Happy in June 1964, but off the set, their friendship was based more on respect and shared background. Though she adored