Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [252]
Elvis found another little sister in Deborah Walley on his next picture, MGM’s Spinout, which went into preproduction in February 1966. The lightweight musical comedy again spotlights Elvis as a race car driver, this time fronting a band in his spare time. Deborah, best known for her iconic teen movies (Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Beach Blanket Bingo), plays his androgynous drummer who vies with Shelley Fabares and Diane McBain for his attention.
The bouncy redhead had not particularly wanted to work with him, being a Beatles fan, not an Elvis fan. (The camps rarely overlapped.) But when she first met him on the set, he was so captivating (“like getting hit with a tidal wave of charisma”) that she immediately changed her mind. By the time the film was over, Elvis had become one of the most influential people in her life.
“We had a very close relationship, a spiritual relationship,” the late actress said. “I really have to say he changed my life.”
He had been studying new books of late, going down to Gilbert’s Book Shop at Hollywood and Vine and buying The Changing Conditions of Your World by J. W. of Jupiter, and Billy Graham Presents Man in the 5th Dimension.
His thirst for spiritual knowledge was almost unquenchable now, and he was eager to talk about it with anyone who would listen. It was all new to Deborah, who had grown up in the Catholic church. Her earlier experience “was a turn-off . . . I was not on good terms with God. It was a void of not feeling one way or the other.”
She had lunch with Elvis in his trailer every day, and he took her for motorcycle rides on the back of his Harley. Just as Larry Geller mentored Elvis, “In a kind of odd way, Elvis was a guru to me, and I was a very eager pupil.” The guys made light of it (“Whew! He spun her head around like Linda Blair in The Exorcist,” Lamar said), but Deborah was profoundly grateful.
“I think Elvis found in me an empty vessel into which he could pour all the knowledge that he had acquired. We talked about Buddhism, Hinduism, and all types of religion. He taught me how to meditate. He took me to the Self-Realization Center and introduced me to [the teachings of Paramahansa] Yogananda. We talked a lot at either my house or his house . . . eating big bowls full of ice cream.”
One day when she was at the house, he showed her Priscilla’s picture. He told her that they were going to get married, but “he didn’t talk much about her,” and she couldn’t say that he sounded like a man in love.
When the picture wrapped in mid-April 1966, Elvis got behind the wheel of his new customized Greyhound bus, and the usual caravan of cars followed him for the drive home. They traveled by night and slept by day. When they checked into the Western Skies Motel in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he asked the guys to carry in his heavy Sony Betamax video machine, one of the early models.
“Every time we’d stop, Elvis would have the video recorder taken off the bus,” Marty remembers. “He’d sit up there and watch sex tapes.” Some were the ones Alan had commissioned for him in L.A. Others were of Priscilla wrestling in bed with another girl, both clad only in bra and panties. And still others were of girls he went out with once or twice.
They’d barely checked into the motel when Elvis called Marty’s room.
“Have someone go out to the airport and meet this girl coming in from L.A.”
“What’s she doing here?”
“I called her before I left and told her to meet me here.”
Marty let out a groan. “We had to stay four damn days while they played around with the video in the room. We were all pissed off, because we wanted to get home to our families.”
Elvis had been in a foul mood since they left L.A., with two pieces of news weighing on his mind. The first was professional: Hal Wallis had opted not to renew Elvis’s contract past their next picture, Easy Come, Easy Go, scheduled for the following year: “It’s not so much that Elvis is changing, but that the times