Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [331]
His appetites continued to run more to the cosmic than the carnal. In late August 1974, he was back in Vegas, and on September 3, he took in Tom Jones’s performance at Caesars Palace, climbing up onstage with the Welsh star who had been his friend since the 1960s and singing “American Trilogy.”
Afterward, actress and beauty pageant winner Susan Anton was invited back, where Elvis started showing her his karate technique. Soon he suggested they take the party over to his suite. The two of them sat talking on the couch for a while, and then he said, “Come with me. I have something to show you.”
“I thought, ‘Uh-oh, here it is. This is the move.’ He took me down the hallway to his personal room and motioned for me to sit in a chair. And then he sat on a footstool in front of me and began reading from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.” Even though Elvis was an icon, Susan could see “he was just a sweet country boy under all that. It was like talking to a big brother.”
Whether Susan realized it or not, Sheila was with him that night. By August, when she still hadn’t heard from him, she phoned him in Vegas, and he invited her to fly over when Linda, who attended opening night, went home. He’d garnered terrific reviews, the Hollywood Reporter calling it “the best show . . . in at least three years. Presley looks great, is singing better than he has in years, and was so comfortable with his show—almost all new songs—the packed Hilton showroom gave him several standing ovations.”
But on September 2, his closing night, when Sheila, Priscilla, and Lisa Marie were in attendance, he delivered two long stream-of-consciousness monologues in which he seemed compelled to explain the recent events of his life. He was just coming out of Marty Robbins’s song, “You Gave Me a Mountain,” and started by saying the song had nothing to do with him or his ex-wife.
“She’s right here,” he said of Priscilla. “Honey, stand up. [Applause] Come out, honey. Come out, come on out. Turn around, let them see you. [More applause] Boy, she’s . . . she’s a beautiful chick. I’ll tell you sure, boy. Boy, I knows ’em when I picks ’em. You know? Goddamn.
“And then at the same booth is my girlfriend, Sheila. Stand up, Sheila. [Applause] Turn around, turn around, completely around. Sheila, hold it up. Hold it up. Hold the ring up. Hold up the ring. The ring. Your right hand. Look at that son of a bitch.”
Priscilla sank deep into the booth as Elvis began discussing the reasons for the divorce, the $2 million settlement, and Mike Stone, purposely confusing the words stud and Stutz, referencing the car. “Mike Stone ain’t no stud, so forget it,” he said. “I wish [Mike] was a stud, you know. He’s a . . . nice guy.”
He went on to sing “Softly as I Leave You,” but then later in the evening, he was at it again, this time trotting out the Patricia Parker paternity rumor, saying, “I had a picture made with that chick, and that’s all. And she got pregnant by the camera.”
The audience responded nervously, mixing tight laughter with applause, and seemed to fear what might come next. Now Elvis wanted to address another rumor, that he had missed shows because he had been “strung out” on drugs. He had the flu, he insisted, his voice growing angrier and more agitated. “If I find or hear an individual that has said that about me,” he ranted, “I’m going to break their goddamn neck, you SON OF A BITCH! [Screams and applause] That is DANGEROUS! I will pull your goddamn tongue out BY THE ROOTS!” And with that, he bizarrely switched gears and calmly segued into “Hawaiian Wedding Song” from Blue Hawaii.
“I was in shock,” Priscilla said later. “Because [in the past], he would never, ever let on to the audience what his emotions were. . . . This was [so] out of character for someone who had so