Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [31]
I did just that, while Elvis stood and applauded.
It only took a couple of seconds with Elvis for me to recognize that he was really just a nice southern boy who had been taught by his momma to mind his manners and say please and thank you, just as I’d been taught to do by mine.
In fact, Elvis was far less flamboyant and far more low-key than Colonel Tom Parker, his manager and the man who’d discovered him. The Colonel roared onto the set every day in his big convertible Cadillac. Swaggering around in his white suit and ten-gallon hat and puffing on a big cigar, Colonel Parker was definitely one of a kind, a maverick with no inhibitions and, some said, no scruples, either.
As for me, I rather liked the Colonel, because he never disguised who or what he was, nor how venal his motivations actually were. Bizarre as it may have seemed to all the rest of us on the movie, each morning the Colonel came onto the sound stage and set up a table on which he displayed Elvis’s records, as well as books and magazines featuring him. I don’t think anyone bought a single item, but the Colonel remained cool and unflustered.
As Elvis confided to me on the set of Flaming Star, “You know, Barbara, people say that I should leave the Colonel, but if it weren’t for him, I’d still be that kid playing in a little bar down in Memphis. I know he’s getting a big cut out of what I make, but he deserves every cent of it.”
That comment was typical of Elvis: open, honest, and revealing. In between shots, we had similar intimate conversations on all sorts of subjects.
Elvis needed to have family and close friends around him for most of the shoot because he was fundamentally insecure. His father, Vernon, was usually on the set with him; it was obvious that Elvis loved his daddy and they were very easy with each other. He also had a group of guys with him at all times—his “cousins,” as he introduced them to me. We all used to sit outside on the set and shoot the breeze together.
Years after Elvis’s death, when I was on Larry King Live, one of the cousins called in. By then I knew that none of the guys I’d met all those years ago were related to Elvis at all, so I took the call, laughed, and said, “You stinkers! I honestly thought you all really were his cousins, but you’re not!”
Elvis also confided in me about his new love, Priscilla Beaulieu, an army colonel’s daughter who was only fourteen when they met while he was stationed in Germany. Subtle as always, he broached the subject delicately by asking how Michael and I managed our marriage when one of us was away on location. “How do you handle being married to a man other women like so much, Barbara?” Of course, he was thinking of Priscilla and whether or not she would be able to cope with the armies of female fans forever pursuing him. I did my best to reassure him that so far, I had been able to rise above any jealousies or insecurities I might have because Michael was so damned attractive to legions of women.
But Elvis was still concerned.
“I’m really worried that she’s too young,” he said.
Time, of course, would prove him right, because when Priscilla grew up, she would ultimately leave him. But all that was years in the future, as was his gargantuan weight gain.
I’d been on a diet for what seemed like my entire life. I routinely ate coffee, toast, and grapefruit for breakfast, a meat patty and a boiled egg for lunch, and a salad for dinner. But despite my meager diet, my battle against putting on weight was ongoing, and I told Elvis as much.
“I’ve got to watch what I eat, because I’m like my momma and she and I always gain weight. So I have to be real careful,” he acknowledged.
His mother had died two years before, and Elvis clearly venerated her memory. Family meant everything to him, and when he found out that my younger sister, Alison, was one of his biggest fans, he sent her a signed photo inscribed with the words “I’m glad to hear there’s another one like her at home.”
I was flattered.