Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [248]
On August 5, Elvis, Priscilla, Vernon, and Dee flew to Hawaii for location shooting. Jerry Schilling, Larry Geller, Red and Sonny West, Charlie Hodge, Mike Keaton, Richard Davis, Marty Lacker, and Billy Smith went with them.
Jo Smith was pregnant with their second child, and she stayed in California with Patsy Lacker and her three children. “Patsy and I depended on each other.” Like Elvis and Gladys, “We even had our own little lingo that only we understood.” It was Jo’s first time on the West Coast (“I’d never been anywhere before”), and the Watts riots broke out while the guys were gone. Thirty-four people were killed, more than a thousand injured, and nearly four thousand arrested. Jo was terrified, wondering what in the world she’d gotten herself into.
In Hawaii, the movie set was also fraught with little wars and dramas, as Elvis juggled friendships of one kind or another with three starlets—Suzanna Leigh, Julie Parrish, and Marianna Hill—and a child actress, Donna Butterworth.
Priscilla rarely visited the set, which might have boded well for Elvis’s flirtation with twenty-four-year-old Marianna, whose exotic looks and long, dark hair set her apart from the more conventional Julie and Suzanna. The problem was that she didn’t find him impressive either personally or professionally and considered him little more than “a show business phenomenon.” Marianna, whose real surname was Schwarzkopf (her cousin H. Norman Schwarzkopf, would become commander of the Coalition Forces in the Gulf War of 1991), had a sexy dance number with Elvis, “Scratch My Back (Then I’ll Scratch Yours).” That led reporters to ask if the two might schedule some private time off the set. “No,” she answered, indicating that she found his ubiquitous entourage too strange for that sort of thing.
Elvis didn’t end up dating any of the film’s actresses, though he might have easily made time with either Suzanna or Julie, both of whom had been fans since their teen years. Suzanna, a Brit born in Redding, England, was the goddaughter of actress Vivian Leigh, from whom she took her stage name. She had grown up dreaming of winning a Paramount Studios contract, or more specifically, of making a film with Elvis. Paradise, Hawaiian Style was her second American movie. She played Elvis’s girlfriend, Judy, who ran the office in his helicopter charter service.
Suzanna began appearing in British productions at eleven, but now at nineteen, the show business veteran was still nervous about meeting her childhood idol. She planned to tell him that they had a good friend in common, actress-turned-nun Dolores Hart, but she never got a chance to deliver her prepared speech. She was on the set the first day, studying her lines, when suddenly a hand holding a cup of tea appeared before her face.
“I believe everyone from England drinks tea,” said a male voice.
Suzanna began speaking before she looked up. “No,” she said, “I don’t, actually . . .” But then she saw him. “Oh, yes, I do! Yes, yes, I love tea!”
They found an easy rapport, as Suzanna was a strong believer in spiritualism and held a deep faith. “We talked a lot about religion. I had a rough childhood. I found my father dead when I was six. I had a religious experience in a convent when I was small, so Elvis was fascinated by that. He said that he had been searching for someone who could give him facts that Jesus did exist.”
During their heart-to-hearts, Suzanna suggested that Elvis expand his repertoire and come to England, “because there were a lot of great movies being done there.” Colonel Parker, who had entered the country illegally from Holland and had no passport to travel, felt threatened by her and, according to Suzanna, fabricated a magazine article in which it seemed that she had “sold Elvis out. There was one thing that Elvis would not let you do, and that was speak to the press about him. If you did, he would drop you like a hot potato.”
When Parker had someone slip a copy of the article beneath her dressing room door, “I was in a terrible state over it.” She figured Elvis would never speak