Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [32]
It was clear to me during our time working together that he was achingly serious about making a success of the movie and about honing his craft. There was a great deal of honesty in his performance in Flaming Star, and it saddens me to think of how much better an actor Elvis might have become had the Colonel managed his career differently and made better artistic decisions on his behalf. In my opinion, Elvis could have become a really fine actor, but instead he became a superstar, an icon.
During the seventies, when he was headlining at the Las Vegas Hilton and I was married to my second husband, Chuck Fegert, Chuck and I saw Elvis’s show there and went backstage to see him afterward.
Decades had passed since Flaming Star, but somehow I still nurtured the faint hope that Elvis might have retained the same southern-boy sweetness he’d once had. Sadly, I discovered that he was no longer the slim young man I remembered, but he was still using those southern manners with me.
In the dressing room, he took one look at Chuck and said bluntly, “I wanna know just how you got her. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me!”
It had never occurred to me, all those years ago when Elvis and I worked together on Flaming Star, that he had any romantic designs on me, and I was shocked. He had been such a gentleman, but was that just a cover for his true intentions? All that vulnerability and self-disclosure—was it genuine, or was I still hopelessly naive and Elvis had just been using a cynical ploy to seduce me?
Thinking back to George Schlatter’s revelation about Elvis’s request after he saw me at Ciro’s, I think I know the answer.
One final coda to my time with Elvis, and a tragic one at that: When I was doing my nightclub act in Reno, during the seventies, I came down with a terrible cold. The show booker was most sympathetic and offered to take me to what he described as “a very special doctor,” provided I promise that I’d only see him this once. Far too sick to question the booker’s odd warning, I agreed and went to see the doctor, who prescribed some pills and gave me a shot.
The next morning, my cold had completely vanished. Delighted, I noted the doctor’s number, in case I might need it the next time I played Reno. Then I remembered my promise to the booker.
“Why don’t you want me to consult that doctor again?” I asked.
The booker hesitated, then finally said, “Well, Barbara, we had Elvis up here last month and he’s not well. He has people around him who don’t care about him as a person, but only care about him working, no matter how bad he feels, no matter how sick he is,” he said.
I flashed back to Flaming Star and a conversation Elvis and I had had about work. I love it, Barbara. Give me a guitar and I’m happy, he’d said.
“So what did the doctor do to Elvis so that he could keep on working?” I asked the booker.
He hesitated again. “Elvis’s butt looked like a pincushion. It had so many needle marks in it,” he said at last.
The thought of my beautiful, handsome, gentlemanly Elvis in that condition was almost too much to bear.
A classic Jeannie photograph.
A baby picture taken of me at a Tuscon photo gallery, along with a rabbit; not mine. At the end of the shoot, I accidentally sat on the poor rabbit!
Me at three, dressed, as always, in plaid, on an outing in El Paso with my two grandmothers. A day I shall never forget, as I had my first taste of pink lemonade along with a homemade sugar cookie.
This photograph of me trying to look happy with a black patch over my eye was taken in front of our house on Ocean Avenue, San Francisco. My dog, Spotty, is beside me.
The Miss California beauty pageant, 1951. I am the third from the right in the top row, and not thrilled to be there. The girl who became Miss California