The Colonel (41 page)

“I was at the house one day,” remembers Lamar Fike, “and Colonel
and I were sitting in the den, talking. Marie came in all distraught and said,
‘Midnight’s on the roof! Midnight’s on the roof!’ Colonel said, ‘He’ll come down.’

“She came back in a little while and said, ‘Midnight’s still on the roof! Do something!’ So Colonel went out with a hose about as big as a - fireman’s, with
tremendous pressure, and aimed it at that cat, and blew it over the garage and the porte cochere, and out into the street. It landed on its feet, but boy, was it surprised! Colonel came back in and
said, ‘Now,
that’s
how you get a cat off a roof.’ ”

Lately, though, he’d demonstrated more compassion. Marie’s health had begun to deteriorate. She complained to Gabe Tucker and to her brother, Bitsy, that living with the Colonel was
constant stress, and sometimes he got on her nerves so badly she suffered debilitating headaches that left her unable to think straight. But the Colonel believed it was more than that; her mind
seemed to be slipping, and sometimes her rantings, he said in off-the-cuff remarks, drove him crazy. Since she was also becoming severely arthritic, after the Tuckers moved out Parker hated to
leave her alone, so first he had RCA sales manager Jack Burgess stay up all night with her and play cards. When Burgess grew weary, it was Irv Schecter, one of Marie’s favorites, who got the
call. Schecter was probably only too glad to be out of Parker’s office, where the Colonel thought his William Morris recruit had developed ulcers.

It was during the 1964 making of
Roustabout
that Elvis met Larry Geller, who would become one of the most significant members of the Memphis Mafia and perhaps
Presley’s purest friend.

A hairdresser in Jay Sebring’s tony salon, Geller first showed up at Presley’s home on Perugia Way in April ’64 at the invitation of entourage member Alan Fortas. Elvis had
heard good things about his work, Fortas told him. Affable and expressive, Geller talked at length to Elvis about his dedication to spiritual studies and the metaphysical, which seemed to set the
singer’s curiosity on fire.

“What you’re talking about,” Elvis said, hungry for discussion, “is what I secretly think about
all the time.
You don’t know what this means to me.”
They talked of Elvis’s purpose in life, and the singer confessed he felt “chosen” but didn’t know why. “I’ve always felt this unseen hand guiding my life ever
since I was a little boy,” he said. “Why was I plucked out of all of the millions of millions of lives to be Elvis?”

The next day, at Elvis’s request, Geller showed up at Paramount with a copy of
The Impersonal Life,
a book he thought would aid Presley in his quest. From
then on, Elvis would read such books every day, dedicating himself to the study of Eastern religion and the spiritual path, with Larry as his personal teacher. Almost immediately, the entourage, as
well as Parker and Priscilla, viewed Geller with suspicion, seeing him as a disruptive interloper who threatened the status quo.

Toward the end of 1964, however, Parker had much bigger things on his mind than bickering among the Elvis camp. That December, he signed a contract with United Artists for two pictures
(
Frankie and Johnny
and
Clambake
) at $650,000 each. But more important, with the help of Abe Lastfogel, who said it couldn’t be done, he succeeded in completing a deal with
MGM for the benchmark figure of $1 million.

Lastfogel thought Parker was crazy, bringing Gabe Tucker in for some light banter to distract the studio lawyers, and insisting he wouldn’t do the deal unless MGM threw in the ashtray that
lay on the conference room table. But in the end, he nailed down a deal for three pictures, the first commanding $1 million—$250,000 of which would be paid in $1,000 weekly installments over
five years—and the next two drawing $750,000 each. Profit participation was set at 40 percent.

The Colonel couldn’t contain his glee. He’d finally gotten the best of them all—Wallis, Hazen, Lastfogel, everyone. By sheer gall and snow-manship, Parker had succeeded in
making Elvis the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, and his career total was even more impressive: since the beginning of their relationship, he’d brokered deals that had earned Presley $35
million. But to the Colonel’s great disappointment, Elvis didn’t seem particularly pleased about the new contract. In fact, since the May departure of Joe Esposito, the foreman of the
entourage and the Colonel’s chief spy, Parker couldn’t even get his client on the phone.

Elvis had picked this time to show a rare spurt of independence. In early October, when he reported to Allied Artists to begin preproduction on
Tickle Me,
he told the Colonel and
everyone on the set that it was important to him to be home in Memphis for Thanksgiving. As filming wore on and delays ensued, Elvis realized that the schedule would be tight, but still he kept
quiet. Finally, he got his release on Tuesday, November 24, two days before Thanksgiving, with a caravan of cars and a Dodge mobile home yet to transport cross-country.

In late February, Presley went to Nashville to record the soundtrack for
Harum Scarum,
the first of the three MGM pictures, a Sam Katzman
quickie with a plot that
called for Elvis to wear a turban, be kidnapped by a gang of assassins, and perform with a Middle Eastern dancing troupe—a scenario that seemed to combine Rudolph Valentino’s
The
Sheik
with the Hawaiian and gypsy stories Parker had suggested to Hal Wallis years before. The session, Presley’s first time in a recording studio in eight months, went poorly as the
former rocker balked at singing such lyrics as “Come hear my desert serenade.” Parker, who had kept tabs on Elvis’s mounting dissatisfaction, began sending letters to Marty
Lacker, the new Memphis Mafia foreman, stressing the importance of the “caravan superintendent,” as he called him, getting Elvis and company to the coast on time to begin filming.

Elvis, however, was in no hurry to report to California, preferring to spend time with Larry Geller in meditation and study. Weeks went by, and Parker’s continuous calls went unheeded.
“Elvis is not ready to come back,” Marty reported, and it did no good for Parker to scream. He was beside himself with anxiety, the studio telephoning night and day and talking breach
of contract. To duck their calls, he finally staged an elaborate ruse, having Marie phone Harry Jenkins, who in late 1963 replaced Bill Bullock at RCA in New York.

“My husband is deathly ill,” Marie whispered into the phone. “It’s a bad situation.” She’d just ordered a hospital bed for him, in fact, and she needed
Jenkins to get the word to MGM and to Gabe Tucker, relaxing in Houston after months out on the road touring Elvis’s cars. Jenkins dutifully reported the grave news: “Gabe, Colonel is
bad sick. Marie wants you to come out and take care of him.” Tucker, afraid that Parker had suffered another heart attack, caught the first plane, only to find the Colonel himself waiting to
pick him up.

“Goddamn, Colonel, you scared the hell out of me. Mr. Jenkins said you was in bad shape.”

“Well, I didn’t feel good yesterday.”

They went home, and Tucker knew there was something wrong after all. “He said, ‘Let’s sit out by the pool,’ ” and Parker told him the whole story. Secretly, the
Colonel’s employee rooted for Elvis. “I thought, well, by God, Elvis showed him this time. For a change he stood up.” But Parker was somehow sympathetic, too—craving a kind
word and a compliment. No manager had ever accomplished what he had, or taken a star to such heights. Now he’d made a once-in-a-lifetime deal for a client who didn’t even care, a client
who was surely slipping out of his grasp.

“He asked me, ‘Gabe, would you get my bed turned?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ ” Afterward, Tucker rolled it out beside the pool for him,
helped him into it, and made him as comfortable as he could. He wondered if Parker wasn’t sick after all. Then he plugged in the outside phone.

The two old friends sat there for a minute reminiscing about how far - they’d come in twenty-five years. Soon, the phone started ringing nonstop—Elvis still hadn’t reported to
the studio. “They was on him somethin’ awful. I never heard such cussin’ and carryin’ on, and he didn’t usually do that. Finally, I said, ‘Colonel, why
don’t you tell ’em to kiss your ass? You got all the money you need. You can just tell everybody that you managed the highest-paid truck driver in the world.’ And he laughed, but
he said, ‘Goddamn, Gabe, that ain’t funny.’ ”

It was March before Elvis gave in. The caravan left Memphis so late in the day that they needed to drive straight through, without the usual night’s rest in Amarillo or Albuquerque. But
during a brief stop at a motel for a shower and a change of clothes, Elvis took Larry aside. Intellectually, he understood all the books Larry gave him, but he’d never had the kind of
profound spiritual experience they described.

“I explained to him that it had nothing to do with an intellectual perception,” Geller says, “that it was more of an emotion, a surrendering of the ego to God.” They
continued their discussion on the drive, Elvis steering the mobile home and Larry riding shotgun, the other entourage members in the back and following in separate cars.

They drove the rest of the night, and it was well into the next day before Elvis realized he’d gotten separated from the rest of the group. Elvis told Larry he was glad they were
lost—“I need to be away from everyone, because I’m really into something important within myself.”

By that time, they were in Arizona, near Flagstaff, approaching the famous San Francisco Peaks, in the land of the Hopi Indians. It was coming on dusk when Elvis peered into the electric-blue
sky and suddenly said, “Look, man! Do you see what I see? What the hell is Joseph Stalin doing in that cloud?” Larry said he saw it, too, and then the image dissolved back into a fluffy
cloud again.

Suddenly, Elvis pulled the mobile home over and, jumping out, yelled, “Follow me, man!” Then he took off into the desert. When Larry caught up with him, Presley had tears rolling
down his cheeks. “It happened!” Elvis said, hugging his friend. “I thought God was trying to tell me something about myself, and I remember you saying, ‘It’s not a
thing in your head. It has to do with your heart.’ I said, ‘God, I surrender my ego. I surrender
my whole life to You.’ And it happened!” The face of
Stalin had turned into the face of Christ.

“It was like a lightning bolt went right through him,” Geller recounts. “He said, ‘Larry, I know the truth now. I don’t
believe
in God anymore. Now I
know
that God is a living reality. He’s everywhere. He’s within us. He’s in everyone’s heart.”

When they returned to California, Elvis took his friend into the den of the rental home on Perugia Way and told him he’d made a decision. After such an intense experience, he
couldn’t go back to making “teenybopper movies” again. He wanted to quit show business and do something important with his life. “In fact, Larry,” he said, “I
want you to find me a monastery. I’m not making a move until you tell me what to do.”

Geller froze and then, thinking fast, told Elvis he could use his vision to make a difference in his films and in his records. “You’ve got the greatest career in the history of show
business!” Geller told him. “You are the legend of them all! You are Elvis!”

Geller’s words found their target. “He got that gorgeous grin on his face, and he said, ‘Yeah, well, to tell you the truth, I can’t imagine Priscilla next to me in some
monastery, raking leaves.’ ” But Larry knew the conversation meant trouble. At the word
monastery,
collective groans rose from the other side of the louvered doors. Says
Geller, “I realized that five minutes later, Colonel Parker would know everything, and the little wheels in his head would start to turn.” Soon, Parker would also learn about
Elvis’s involvement with an ecumenical movement called the Self-Realization Fellowship, based in Pasadena and run by a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda named Sri Daya Mata. And the Colonel
certainly
wouldn’t like that.

The fallout started several weeks afterward on the soundstage of
Harum Scarum.
To keep their relationship strictly business, the Colonel made few appearances on the movie sets, and when
he did, he held court, saying, “Where’s a chair for the Colonel?” and expecting the Memphis Mafia to snap to attention, bringing him water and lighting his German cigars with the
yellow tips. Geller was always uncomfortable when he added, “And bring a chair for Larry . . . You sit with me, Larry.”

“He knew that I had Elvis’s ear, and that Elvis was changing, and he couldn’t figure me out.” Sometimes, Parker even asked Geller to give him a haircut or invited him to
share the whirlpool bath at the Spa in Palm Springs. It was always tense between them, but this day, Geller knew the Colonel had a different tack, and he wasted no time in getting to it.

“Larry,” he began, “I think you’ve missed your calling. You’re tall, and have such a commanding presence. I can see you dressed up in a
tuxedo, standing on the stage. You have the quality to hypnotize people.”

By now, the Colonel had reinstalled his pipeline, Joe Esposito, who shared co-foreman duties with Marty Lacker. Elvis seemed resigned to the arrangement, telling Geller he knew the Colonel had
been taking care of Joe all of those years, and that he didn’t care. Several days later, with the picture completed, Esposito reported that Parker had called and wanted his client to come
over to MGM right away. Geller was blow-drying Elvis’s hair in the bathroom, and they stopped and gathered the rest of the guys and piled into two cars.

“We went over to the lot,” Geller says, “and about ten minutes later, Elvis walked out. We knew he was ticked. He got in the car and he said, ‘That motherfucker, man. He
accused me of being on a religious kick. My life is not a religious kick. I’ll show that fat bastard what a kick is.’ He fumed for days.”

It was as if his resentment about everything had finally boiled over—his embarrassment about the scripts, his frustration at seeing his music reduced to pabulum, and Parker’s
constant interference. “The Colonel really cares about me? He’s supposed to take care of the business end and that’s it. He’s not a personal friend, he’s my manager,
and he’d better stay that way!”