Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [249]
When he got her alone, she was nearly in tears. “I never said those things!”
“Don’t worry,” Elvis said. “I know where it came from.”
He saved her a second time on the Paramount lot when Steve McQueen wouldn’t leave her alone. Grabbing her by the hand, he led her to his photo session, where suddenly he took her in his arms and kissed her for the camera.
“This won’t do your career any harm, baby!”
Elvis also had a swoon-inducing effect on Julie Parrish, who had joined a fan club for him at thirteen. When she first met him on the set, “My heart was beating so fast I was afraid he could hear it. . . . He did not seem that comfortable with me at first, but then I was not all that comfortable with him, either, to say the least.”
They warmed up to each other, though, and Julie was only too eager to listen to Elvis carry on about metaphysical studies. Then one day she became unwell, following a rough patch with Hal Wallis.
Despite being married, the “old letch,” as she called Wallis, kept putting the moves on her. Shortly before the film went into production, “He called me into his office, locked the door behind us, led me over to the sofa, and briefly kissed me on the mouth. He said, ‘Little, girl, we’re going to have a long talk about your future.’ I looked at my watch and apologized, saying I’d like to stay and talk, but that I really had an audition I had to get to.”
He continued to pursue her on location, “constantly calling and asking me out. . . . On his last call . . . he said, ‘You’d better think again.’ I think the stress of all this nonsense contributed to my becoming ill during that film.”
When she and Elvis rehearsed the musical number “Stop Where You Are,” they stood for hours on end, doing the scene repeatedly. Julie felt a sharp pain in her leg, and soon it crept up the right side of her body. The actress had just gotten out of the hospital, so the experience scared her.
“I complained of it and had to sit down.” When she said she couldn’t go on, “Elvis came over, picked me up in his arms, carried me to his dressing room and laid me down on his sofa. He then tried to do a healing. He held his hands about a foot above my body for a while, but I was so nervous, worrying about what everyone on the set must be thinking, that I couldn’t enjoy it.” Being in his arms, she confessed, “was almost scary to me.”
When she got back to the mainland, she went into the hospital for tests and was told she might have suffered a slight stroke. She had another idea: “My intuition told me that it had to do with taking [the sedative] Librium, diet pills, and drinking alcohol. . . . I had also been taking tranquilizers since the age of fourteen.”
Elvis could identify with both of Julie’s problems. His own difficulties with Wallis were apparent to everyone, even ten-year-old Donna Butterworth. She and Elvis were rehearsing the song “Queenie Wahini’s Papaya” when the producer appeared on the set. Suddenly, Elvis’s demeanor changed, and as Donna remembers, “he did not dig it that [Wallis] was there. He got miffed and wouldn’t continue until he left.” She never knew the reason behind it, but Elvis stormed off and went to his trailer, all the guys following behind him. When Wallis left, they resumed their rehearsal as if nothing had happened.
Elvis always made time for the pint-size performer, particularly after she got upset with him one day. She had already met Priscilla and found her “classy and quiet, but a lovely person.” But watching Elvis kiss all the girls confused her, since he’d told her that he and Priscilla would eventually marry.
“How can Elvis kiss and be nice to the other girls on the set when he is supposed to be with Priscilla?” she wondered.
One day he invited Donna to lunch in his dressing room, making sure he had the Mexican food she enjoyed from Del Taco.
“Little sister, I can see something’s bothering you. What’s going on?”
She told him. Elvis took her question seriously.
“Well, you