Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [242]
As usual, he flirted with women on the set, beginning with the tall brunette Francine York. They had a scene together in which he pretends to teach her how to shoot a bow and arrow. “There was something wrong with the lights or the camera angle, and so we had to shoot the scene several times. Norman asked Elvis if he’d mind shooting it again, and he said he wouldn’t mind doing it all day. Then he pulled me closer and whispered, ‘And all night.’ ”
She took it as just a friendly comment but, “Elvis and the guys enjoyed themselves with all the beautiful women in the movie. Elvis had a girlfriend then, too, and I remember him getting angry when she drove onto the set. He had a few words to say to her, and it seemed as though he was upset that she had come to the studio.” Francine didn’t remember her name. But “this definitely wasn’t Priscilla. She had a huge car, a Cadillac or something.”
It was his last trip to California for the year, and with him on the way out were two new members of the entourage, Mike Keaton, and twenty-two-year-old Jerry Schilling, whose brother, Billy Ray, was a friend of Red West. Jerry, who’d grown up poor and scrapping, and without a mother, had been planning to return to Arkansas State University for his senior year when Elvis made him the offer. He had been part of Elvis’s touch football games from the age of twelve, and Elvis treated him almost like a younger brother. But when he found out that Jerry lost his virginity with an actress Elvis had romanced on his last picture, they had a tense exchange. Jerry had no idea that Elvis and the girl had any history, and Elvis let it blow over. But Jerry learned a cardinal rule in the inner circle: None of the guys were permitted to date a girl Elvis had known.
Jerry did know that part of his gig was protecting Elvis, and he was also well aware that Elvis had his share of crazy fans who would do almost anything to get near him. His heart started pounding on his first night in the Perugia Way house, then, when about 2 A.M., he heard a key turn in the front door lock, and watched a shadowy female figure cross the room in the dark. Jerry had been too buzzed from Dexedrine to sleep, and now he called out sharply: “Miss—
“The woman spun around and let loose a bloodcurdling scream,” he wrote in his memoir, Me and a Guy Named Elvis. “And at that very moment, the wall behind her opened up to reveal Elvis. He flicked on the lights in the room. There was a huge smile on his face. The girl being there didn’t seem to bother him at all. In fact, he seemed to know her.
“My eyes adjusted to the light. Now I recognized the girl, too. It was Ann-Margret. Elvis put an arm around her and grinned in my direction. ‘It’s okay, Jerry. It’s just Ammo. She’s not gonna hurt anybody.’ ”
Elvis went home around Thanksgiving and spent the holidays in Memphis, renting out the Memphian for New Year’s Eve. But it was getting harder to watch quality films now when his own fell so short of the mark. No one was allowed to sit in front of him, and there in the darkened theater, when he’d get caught up in the emotion of a dramatic scene, he’d cry and slyly wipe away tears, or pretend that something had gotten in his eye. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was weeping because of the situation on the screen, or because he knew he’d never get a role like that again.
Then January 8, 1965, brought a milestone birthday—his thirtieth. The morning newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, called about an interview. Reporter James Kingsley wanted Elvis’s ruminations on growing older.
“I can never forget the longing to be someone,” he said in the article. “I know what it is to scratch and fight for what you want.” Kingsley asked him about his relationship with his fans, who always hung around the gates and made it difficult for him to go to his old haunts without being bothered. “I certainly haven’t lost my respect for my fans,