Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [233]
Chapter Twenty-Four
Satyrs and Spirits
In January 1964, not long after celebrating his twenty-ninth birthday, Elvis took the entourage—including foreman Joe Esposito, Alan Fortas, Richard Davis, Billy Smith, Jimmy Kingsley, and the newly returned Marty Lacker, to Las Vegas for an extended vacation. Priscilla was at home. They stayed at the Sahara, and each night they attended shows around town by such disparate acts as Fats Domino, Don Rickles, Tony Martin, Della Reese, and the Clara Ward Singers. At the Desert Inn, they also took in a performance by the McGuire Sisters, Christine, Dorothy, and Phyllis, best known for their songs “Sincerely” and “Sugartime.”
If Elvis defined the liberal and progressive culture of the 1950s, the McGuire Sisters embodied the conservative and staid white majority. Yet immediately Phyllis, a pretty blonde, caught Elvis’s eye. He thought of Anita Wood, who was then engaged to the Cleveland Browns’ tight end Johnny Brewer, and would marry the NFL star later that year. It hurt Elvis to think of Anita with someone else, but it was too late to go back now, and he tried not to think about it. Still, at times, he did.
“Man,” he told Marty Lacker, now staring at Phyllis, “she’s as pretty as Anita.” He repeated it several times, his eyes fixed on her. When the show was over, he said, “I’ve got to meet her,” and they all went backstage. After that, Elvis returned to the Desert Inn every night—not to see the show, but to visit Phyllis in her dressing room, often staying more than two hours.
One of the braver guys finally said it might not be such a good idea for Elvis to keep seeing Phyllis, since it was well known that she was the girlfriend of mob boss Sam Giancana. Elvis paid no attention to it, and one evening he told Marty to get him up by noon the next day and to make sure the Rolls-Royce was ready.
Elvis seemed anxious when Marty knocked on his door that afternoon, and he insisted on driving the Rolls himself. They ended up at the Desert Inn.
“We went upstairs, and Elvis knew exactly which room to go to. He knocked on the door, and Phyllis cracked it open a little, because she had the chain on it. Her hair was in rollers. Elvis started talking to her, but she didn’t really want to let him in. So he said to me, ‘Why don’t you just go wait in the car?’ ”
An hour and a half later, Elvis came down. They were driving back to the Sahara, and all of a sudden, he started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Marty asked.
“I was up there with her,” Elvis said, “and I noticed there was a gun sticking out of her purse. I asked her what she was doing with it, and she said Giancana had given it to her for protection. And I said, ‘Well, tell him I carry two of ’em.’ ”
Marty felt a chill and then cautioned his boss that that might have been a foolish thing to say. “What if she goes back and says that to the guy in a way he doesn’t like?” But Elvis just smiled.
“We were rather attracted to each other,” Phyllis admits. “We had a few dates. It was nice. The nights in Las Vegas are quite beautiful, and I was so impressed with his car, because I had never ridden in a Rolls-Royce. I remember that he opened the glove compartment, and there was this beautiful, beautiful gun.”
They drove out to the desert, and Elvis shot the gun for her, showed her he wasn’t afraid of a firearm, or much else. “He always did everything to the fullest. I giggled and laughed, and I thought it was the greatest thing. So we bonded in more ways than one.”
At the end of February he started work on Roustabout, a carnival picture with Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Freeman. Roustabout is memorable only for the black leather figure Elvis cuts on a motorcycle, and for the musical highlight, “Little Egypt.” But what he would remember most was how the notoriously iron-willed Stanwyck belittled him in conversation. She referred to a Greek goddess, and Elvis told her he was unfamiliar with the name. “You don’t know who Athena is?” she chided, her voice full of scorn.