Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [317]
Jerry braced himself for a lecture but instead, he got a confession: Elvis had slept with Jerry’s girlfriend. It had only been a one-time thing, he said, one night when Jerry had fallen asleep early. Jerry knew he was in no position to be self-righteous, but it stung. Elvis had broken the cardinal rule of the brotherhood.
Soon Jerry’s marriage to Sandy collapsed, and he would eventually marry Myrna Smith of the Sweet Inspirations. But that, too, would unravel.
Hanging with Elvis was rough on a marriage. Joe and Joanie would be divorced by the end of the year, but Joe soon meet a smart and energetic blonde named Shirley Dieu, an Oklahoma transplant who had grown up in San Diego.
Joe and Shirley were a strong couple, and Elvis told her on numerous occasions how much he admired their relationship. However, one time when she visited him in the hospital, he was half-dressed and got close in her face, and she got the impression that he was coming on to her. She dismissed it and acted as if it hadn’t happened. But he was clearer on another occasion in the Imperial Suite in Las Vegas, when they both got up from sleep and ended up in the kitchen at the same time.
“He put both of his arms up and tried to kiss me, and I just kind of slithered out from underneath him. I said, ‘I’ve got to go. Joe’s in the room.’ It was awkward, but I never thought of him in that way, and I never, ever, accepted any of his advances. I guess if you are really in love with somebody, you don’t.”
That didn’t stop Angie Stanley, the eighteen-year-old wife of Elvis’s stepbrother Billy. She went after Elvis “like he was the last piece of cake on the platter,” according to Billy Smith. Elvis’s response was to set Billy Stanley up with another girl so he could be with his wife. Billy wrote about it in his book Elvis: My Brother, saying the two had a month-long affair in 1972, and that Elvis felt bad about it.
Elvis told Billy Smith that he had intentions, but that he never went through with them. He and Angie simply talked, he said, and he ended up preaching to her a little. But Marty Lacker got a different idea one day when he and Elvis walked down the steps into the den from the kitchen, and Billy Stanley happened to pass them.
“I was thinking about Elvis and Angie, and somehow Elvis knew that. He kind of glanced over at Billy, and then he looked at me, and he said, ‘Well, it ain’t like he’s my brother.’ ”
Three weeks after the “Aloha” concert, Elvis opened his eighth Vegas engagement. He was tired now. All the Vegas nights of the past seemed to run together, the great shows when he was heralded as the white knight of rock, the bad shows when he’d change songs so spontaneously the band could barely keep up. He thought he’d wanted this life so badly, but what had it brought him in the end? Right now, he only knew what it had cost.
Sometimes he thought about the night Anita Wood came to see him. She was in Las Vegas with her husband, Johnny Brewer, and ran into Joe and Charlie in the hotel lobby. They invited her to the show, saying they knew that Elvis would want to see her, and they gave her his booth right in front. She took a girlfriend with her, “and man, he looked so fine. He talked to me, sang to me. I was just . . . ooh, my goodness.” She hadn’t counted on feeling like that.
She went backstage like they’d told her to, and she and Elvis embraced, held on hard and long. “Come on in this room,” Elvis said. “Let’s go in and talk.” It was a little private area, with just a bed and chair, and he closed the door to shut out the sound of his father and all the important people he didn’t want to see.
They talked for about an hour, and the years melted