CHAPTER 12

GRACELAND

In March ’57, Elvis and his parents moved into Graceland, a Southern colonial with a stone facade, situated on thirteen and three-quarter acres at 3764 South Bellevue Boulevard (U.S. Highway 51 South), in the working-class section of Whitehaven. The suburb was still so rural that when Elvis got off the train there after appearing on The Steve Allen Show, Gregory Martinelli wrote in Elvis ’56, the railroad stop—just a flag stop, really—“wasn’t much more than a grass field turning yellow, and a signpost that read ‘White’ . . . Elvis, still dressed in his suit and white knit tie, drifted through the burrs and foxtails, wondering which way to go.”

The original Graceland property was some five hundred acres, named after Grace Toof, the daughter of the owner, S. E. Toof, who’d founded a Memphis printing company. Upon her death, Grace left the property to a niece and two nephews, the boys, Toof and Bates Brown, selling their share to their sister, Ruth Brown Moore, and her husband, Dr. Thomas Moore. In 1938, the Moores had the mansion built as a country house, to indulge the doctor’s hobby of raising purebred Hereford cattle. They drained a lake on the property and sold it to a developer, selling other acreage behind the home for what became the Graceland subdivision.

When Elvis bought the property from Mrs. Moore—for about $100,000—she stipulated that a portion of the land adjacent to the north fence go to the nearby Christian church, which would adopt the Graceland name. Elvis complied and then immediately began tailoring the property to his needs, ordering construction of a swimming pool where Mrs. Moore cultivated her roses.

Although a prominent doctor had made an offer on the house, Mrs. Moore said she was pleased to sell to the Presleys because she knew they weren’t “drinking people” and that they would respect Graceland’s elegant history. In short order, Elvis began celebrating his splendid home and his increasing fame with a new collection of friends—staging fireworks fights and watermelon-seed spitting contests in the yard.

BILLY SMITH: One of the reasons Elvis bought Graceland was he felt he needed the acreage. That way neighbors wouldn’t complain about his fans and all. And he wanted his parents to be able to get some rest. On Audubon Drive, the fans stole the wash right off the line.

They moved to Graceland in the spring of ’57, between Loving You and Jailhouse Rock. And they hired a professional decorator, George Golden, who liked to run Vernon crazy. Because Elvis had left his plans on how he wanted things to be done and Gladys wanted it all finished by the time he got home at the end of June. When Elvis come back from making Jailhouse Rock four weeks later, Vernon looked like he didn’t have a hair left on his head. Pretty soon, they put that limestone wall and the music gates up. Put it around everything.

LAMAR FIKE: Elvis told us that damn fence cost $35,000, which was almost as much as what he paid for the whole house on Audubon Drive! That might have been an exaggeration, though. I think the newspaper said the fence was $13,000.

BILLY SMITH: When Elvis first moved to Graceland, he kept three or four donkeys somebody had given him in the swimming pool. He didn’t have any other place to put them because they hadn’t finished the fence. Oh, they had all kinds of animals out there. A couple of horses, I remember. And Vernon had two hogs, so he could kill ’em for ham, bacon, and sausage throughout the winter. He kept the pork out back in the old pumphouse, which he used as a smokehouse.

Elvis had peacocks and ducks and a turkey he called “Bow-Tie,” because he was solid white except for three black feathers right under his neck on his breast. The feathers made the turkey look like he was dressed formal all the time, ’cause one hung straight down and the other two went out on each side. Maybe it was Aunt Gladys who give him that name Bow-Tie. The turkey was a pisser—he was always floggin’ somebody in the rear end.

One time, Daddy got ticked off at him and threw a rock and hit him in the head. Bow-Tie laid there for a long time, and Daddy thought he was dead. He felt terrible about it and he was going to go tell Vernon he’d killed the ol’ turkey. Just as he turned around to get in the Jeep, Bow-Tie struck again. That bird didn’t hold a grudge—he got even.

LAMAR FIKE: Elvis had this blue ’54 Fleetwood limousine, which he’d painted yellow. He used it to stock the grounds. This time, he was hauling fowl—twenty chickens, six guineas, two peacocks, eight ducks, and a turkey.

We got into the limo, Vernon and Elvis and I, and we went out to Germantown, which was a long drive back then. We told the farmer we wanted all these birds, and Elvis said, “Could you put them in the backseat of my car?” The farmer looked at the limo, and back at Elvis, and kind of shook his head in disbelief.

Well, we were driving, and all the birds started to fight. They were flapping around like crazy, flying into the front seat, going nuts. Feathers were floating around like a snowstorm. We were laughing and trying to beat the damn things off. Elvis could barely drive. Finally, he said to me, “You got to get back there with them.”

I got in the backseat, and these things started shittin’ like they’d never get the chance again. The shit stuck to me, and the feathers stuck to the shit. And when Elvis and Vernon drove in back at Graceland, they just got out and left me. Elvis was calling, “Come here, Mama, and see what I got for you!” Meanwhile, I was locked in the back screaming, “Get me out of this damn car!”

Elvis thought it was hysterical. But that car had so much shit in it that even after he sent it to the Cadillac dealer to be cleaned and fumigated, it was never the same. Elvis told his daddy it was time to buy a new car. That’s when he got that 1958 black Cadillac limousine.

MARTY LACKER: What I remember best about the menagerie there was the mynah bird. Talked its head off. You’d walk by and that bird would curse a blue streak: “Fuck you!” and “Son of a bitch!”

BILLY SMITH: Oh, it could say a lot of things. Like “Get out of herel” and “Go to the devil!” The mynah finally kicked the bucket, and I don’t think anybody was real sorry.

MARTY LACKER: Elvis probably choked his ass.

LAMAR FIKE: When we came back from making Jailhouse Rock in the summer of ’57, we were home for several months. Elvis had made so much money in the first two or three months, and his taxes were so screwed up that he couldn’t work for a while. Apart from the movies, he was selling records like nobody had ever seen. When the single for “Loving You/Teddy Bear” came out, it sold 1.25 million copies in a week.

Colonel couldn’t resist putting the needle to all those people who didn’t think Elvis would make it. So in ’57, he took him back to “The Grand Ole Opry.” We went backstage, and Elvis was photographed with Brenda Lee, and with Johnny Cash, and a bunch of others. Elvis had on a tuxedo. He stood backstage a while, and then he walked out front and somebody introduced him to the audience. But that was it. The only time he ever performed on the “Opry” was for that audition in ’54.

Afterwards, we went over to the governor’s mansion to see Governor Frank Clement. We stayed up there until one o’clock in the morning playing the piano. The Prisonaires, who recorded for Sun, sang for us. They were real convicts, from the Tennessee State Penitentiary, in Nashville. They sang “Just Walkin’ in the Rain.”

BILLY SMITH: Elvis used to tell everybody how close we were. He’d tell people, “I actually raised him.” And in a sense, he did, because I was with Elvis damn near as much as I was with my mother and father. Really, over the years, more so.

I remember one time we were playing touch football on Alabama Street. I looked up to him even then. I used to go get him Pepsis. Then after he became famous, he used to ask me to do stuff all the time.

My parents trusted the fact that I was well taken care of. That’s why they let me go to “The Grand Ole Opry” with him in the summer of ’57, when I was fourteen. Elvis bought me a new suit so I would have something nice to wear. First new suit I had in, God, years. We went to that party at the governor’s house later on, and I got tired, and Governor Clement’s wife told me to go on in the bedroom and go to sleep. She told Elvis, “Just leave him here. I’ll put him on the bus tomorrow.” And Elvis said, “No, I’ll wake him up when we get ready to go.” But I never did go to sleep. I was afraid I’d miss something. I always followed Elvis around like a little puppy dog. I was totally captivated by him.

When Elvis had that time off in ’57, he loved being able to spend it at Graceland. The place was like something out of a fairy tale to us. We didn’t even know anybody who knew anybody who had a house like that. In our family, owning a car was a big deal. You know why Elvis really bought it? He wanted something grand for his mama. Once, Gladys saw some big house somewhere, and she made a comment about how pretty it was. Elvis was still little, and he said, “Mama, someday I’m going to buy you a house just like that.”

LAMAR FIKE: Gladys was like my second mother. I think I got along with her better than anybody in the group. She was an unusual woman. She had only a third-grade education. But god-durn, she was smart as a whip. And a very kind woman. But she had a temper like you could not believe. And she could scream, boy. When she exploded it was like, “Holy shit!” And Elvis and his mother fought like cats and dogs. The fights always started at the dinner table. I mean to tell you, they’d get to arguing with each other, and it would scare the crap out of me.

Her worrying would just drive him to distraction. They’d argue about that. And he’d argue that she drank too much. She was a beer drinker. And it would just get rough-and-tumble. She’d be cranky, and then Elvis would get cranky. And, boy, they’d crank in together.

Elvis loved purple hull peas—crowder peas—and sliced tomatoes and bacon and mashed potatoes. She would fix that for him, and we would have it for dinner, along with some hot peppers that Vernon and I liked. One night, Gladys was sitting at one end of the table, and Elvis was sitting at the other. I was in the middle, and Vernon was across from me. And they started arguing. Elvis said, “Mom, you worry too much about me. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay.”

And Gladys started. She said, “Don’t tell me to not worry about you!” Then it got worse. Elvis stood up and picked up the plate of tomatoes and just slung ’em. They bounced off the wall and went all over the room. Then he picked up the bowl of purple hulls, and I ducked. I thought, “Man, I’ll never survive this!” I ran out of the room.

I had never seen fights like that in my life because I wasn’t raised like that. When my mom and dad would argue they’d close the door, and we never knew anything about it. When Elvis and Gladys got it on, they put on a show. And they didn’t seem to mind lighting into each other while I was at the table. God Almighty! They would say words to each other that I had never heard. But they would hug right afterwards.

After I moved in, Cliff Gleaves moved in. He’d stay a while, then go tearing off somewhere. I don’t think he ever had a real address, other than Graceland. The last time I saw him in Memphis, he told me he was sleeping at the cemetery. He’s just the weirdest guy. That’s why Elvis liked him.

MARTY LACKER: Lamar was fairly weird, too, you know. I think Elvis liked him for a variety of reasons. One is that he needed somebody to pick on. Lamar is also brilliant. I don’t think that’s why Elvis picked him for the group, though. I think he thought Lamar would give him a colorful life. But he teased him relentlessly, usually about his size. Elvis called him “The Great Speckled Bird.” Or “Buddha.”

LAMAR FIKE: I could take a lot of abuse and not pay too much attention to it. But with Elvis, I have to admit it hurt sometimes. He called me all kinds of names. Sometimes as a term of affection, he’d call me “Birdy.” I guess it was because my eyes were big, like an owl’s.

I can’t remember the actual instances, but they hurt so bad sometimes I really cried. Afterwards, he’d come and hug me and say, “I didn’t mean that. I was just feeling bad.” And I’d say, “Okay, no problem.” It was so hard for him to say, “I’m sorry.” And I’d just kind of go off and swallow my Adam’s apple and hope to God I could put up with it again next time.

I think everybody was a whipping boy for Elvis. And it got worse as the years wore on.

BILLY SMITH: I think there were a lot of reasons Elvis picked Lamar. What did he say one time? “I need somebody I can laugh at.”

LAMAR FIKE: Down deep, I knew Elvis really cared for me. I stayed because of that and because he was fun to be around. We were in such a sheltered environment. It never rained on us. It never got cold. It was like big wings over us. We were sort of in a fishbowl, but protected. When I moved into Graceland, it was the greatest feeling because we could close the gates and we were so isolated that nobody could get to us. Nobody. Not even bill collectors. The people who did come up were there because we let them up. We lived such a fantasy that it was hard to judge reality. We didn’t care about the outside world. It was like an addiction. We had to stay there in order to think.

BILLY SMITH: When they moved into Graceland, Vernon asked my daddy to be the head gate guard, just as he’d been on Audubon Drive. My parents and Bobby and me moved into a three-bedroom house in the back of the property.

Vernon’s brother, Vester, worked as the groundskeeper at the time. Later, about ’60 or ’61, he started working on the gate, too. One day, Daddy and Vernon got into it. You couldn’t have took Vernon at his best day and thrown him in my daddy’s direction. Because Daddy would have beat his damn brains out. Daddy cared about Vernon. But here’s the difference between ’em. One time, Vernon told Daddy, “You’re going to have to get them damn people outside the gate.” And that embarrassed Daddy to death.

Well, before Daddy knew it—and I guess this is partly where I get my temper—Daddy said, “Let me tell you something, you white-haired son of a bitch!” He said, “As long as you live, don’t never come down here at this gate and embarrass me in front of a bunch of people like you just did.” He said, “You call me up to Graceland and tear me up if you want to. But you do it in privacy. Don’t you do it in front of a bunch of people.” And from that day on, Daddy never had any problems.

MARTY LACKER: Vernon resented everybody because he thought they were taking his place with Elvis. He also thought we were all after his money, so he hated everybody who came around.

LAMAR FIKE: We’d been back [from California] only a couple of weeks, or maybe less, when Alan Fortas first came up. I’d known him in high school, played football against him.

MARTY LACKER: Alan came into the group in 1957. He’s the guy who found out Elvis got a “C” in music in high school. The Board of Education dumped all their old transcripts at Alan’s father’s scrap paper yard. And Alan just happened to find Elvis’s. Elvis wanted him in the entourage because he was like Gene—he made Elvis laugh. But Alan wasn’t dim like Gene. He was a class clown kind of guy. He was sort of big, and despite the fact that he was a high school football star—he was an All-Memphis player and got a bunch of college scholarships and had his picture in the paper all the time—he always felt a little on the fringe of things. He was Jewish, and unlike a lot of guys who came in and out of the group, Alan was from a solidly middle-class family. His uncle, Abe Fortas, became a Supreme Court justice for four years during the Lyndon Johnson administration. He was Johnson’s friend and confidant, but he was the only high court justice forced to resign. He quit when it came out that he was on a $20,000-a-year retainer from a foundation funded by a guy who went to prison for stock manipulation.

Alan had a sad aspect about him. He hid a lot of pain. And he had an absolutely huge heart—would do anything for you if the chips were down. He had this older brother who was a genius at school, and teachers were always comparing the two. Unfavorably, of course. So Alan became a comic. He was only happy when he was stirring something up. The other times, he was bored with everything. What really attracted Elvis was that Alan was this football star, which is what Elvis wanted to be. He called him “Hog Ears.” For pretty obvious reasons.

BILLY SMITH: Alan fit like a glove. He just won everybody’s heart. And if he didn’t win it, he’d con your heart.

Alan was driving Elvis’s black limo home to Memphis from California one time, and he had the corduroy drapes pulled around the windows. He was speeding, and a cop pulled him over. The cop said, “What kind of car is this?” And Alan said, “Can’t you tell? It’s a hearse.” The guy said, “A hearse?” And Alan said, “Yeah.” The cop asked him where he was going, and Alan told him he was going to Memphis. He said, “I’ve got a body in here that needs to be buried very shortly.” Then he said, “Do you want to get in and smell the embalming fluid?” And the cop said, “No thanks. Just keep on going.”

MARTY LACKER: I’ll give you an example about Alan that happened in the sixties. Elvis called me “Moon.” I had a bald spot, which was getting bigger. It bothered Elvis, so he volunteered to get me a Hollywood hairpiece. I said, “I don’t want it.” You know why? Because I knew Alan would pull it off my head in front of people.

BILLY SMITH: Two more guys came into the group at the same time as Alan—Louis Harris and Tommy Young. They didn’t last long. Tommy stayed only about eight or nine months. Louis lasted a while longer. He was real quiet, a nice guy. Sort of studious. And respectful.

MARTY LACKER: George Klein brought Louis in. George didn’t drive, and he was always asking guys to carry him out to the house. That’s how Alan got into the group.

LAMAR FIKE: Louis was a little nerdy, bless his heart. You almost felt sorry for him. He would get in a taxi, and they wouldn’t put the meter up. That kind of guy.

Tommy didn’t fit because we never did let him fit. He was a bit of a smartass, thought he was a “pretty boy.” He knew the market was there because all the girls wanted to hang around Elvis.

MARTY LACKER: We had two or three guys who were there for what they could get. But Elvis was hip to that. He used to test people every now and then.

LAMAR FIKE: We could be pretty rough on guys we didn’t like. If a guy was getting ready to step off a cliff, we just let him step.

That wasn’t the case with Alan. Everybody liked his wit and the sort of dogged loyalty he had about him. Not too long after Alan came into the group, he went down to New Orleans with us to do King Creole. He was like me—loved being around movie people. And he usually ended up making friends with Elvis’s costars. They liked him because he had a childlike quality about him.

In a way, Alan was a misfit. But then most of us were misfits. In some ways, that’s our story. Elvis looked for oddballs. Some people might theorize that he picked guys like that to make sure they’d be faithful to him. I don’t think he had any rhyme or reason for it. But he did like underdogs, except George Klein had been class president. Elvis almost always liked the guy they treated worst.

MARTY LACKER: George really wasn’t part of the group, no matter what he says. He traveled on a couple of trips in the late fifties, and went on one to Hawaii. And he spent some vacations with the group. But he wasn’t there for the nitty-gritty, even though when you hear him on TV or at some of these Elvis fests, where he gets up and speaks, you’d think he was Jiminy Cricket, in Elvis’s pocket twenty-four hours a day.

LAMAR FIKE: George was never an intimate member of the Memphis Mafia, as he claimed to be. When we came back from Jailhouse Rock, and we left to go make the next picture, George stayed home to do radio. He was Elvis’s connection to the radio and record business, to let him know what was going on.

MARTY LACKER: When I came out of the army in ’57, I was twenty years old. Elvis had just moved up to Graceland. One weekend, George called me and said, “How would you like to go up to Graceland?” Basically, he needed a ride.

It’s like a picture in my mind. We drove up the driveway to the back of the house, and at that time, there was no Jungle Room. It was just an open patio. And just as we got out of the car and started walking towards the back, Elvis came out from the barn with Anita Wood. Anita was cohost of a local television show with Wink Martlndale called Top Ten Dance Party. She was real petite, real blond, and real cute—a beauty contest winner. She was nineteen.

This was the first time I had seen Elvis since the Katz Drug Store opening, and by now he was this big star. I even remember what he wore. He had on this big blousy shirt—black with white polka dots on it. We got up to the fence and Elvis said, “Hey, George, how you doin’?” And George said, “Elvis, you remember Marty, don’t you, from school?”

Elvis really surprised me because he said, “Yeah, man, you just got out of the army, didn’t you?” I looked at him, and I said, “Wait a minute. I know where you’ve been, but how would you know where I’ve been?” He said, “I just know. People tell me things.”

We talked for a while, and then we went in the house and shot pool and stayed up all night. Some of the other guys were there. I got to see Red again, who had also been at Humes.

Just as I was leaving, Elvis said, “Hey, I’m glad you came. Anytime you want to come back, just come out.”

LAMAR FIKE: What Elvis liked about Marty was the Humes High School connection. And Marty came up through the same sort of impoverished background Elvis did.

BILLY SMITH: I think Elvis knew that Marty had ways of getting things done, in a business sense. Marty is a take-charge kind of guy.

MARTY LACKER: After that, I went out to Graceland almost every night. I loved show business. When I was in school, I played the saxophone, and when I got out of the army, a couple of friends talked me into going to Keegan’s School of Broadcasting. So I went to school and hung out at Graceland.

LAMAR FIKE: Elvis just reversed day for night. That started after he got in the business. Most entertainers sleep ’til eleven or twelve o’clock in the afternoon or later. It’s a habit on the road. You work a show and you get through at twelve or one o’clock in the morning. Then you don’t get back to your motel until two or three, and you’re partying or whatever. You get to bed by maybe three-thirty or four. And you’ve got to get eight hours sleep, so you sleep ’til noon. So at Graceland, Elvis got up around noon, or maybe two o’clock, had breakfast, took care of whatever needed taking care of, and then about four or five o’clock, guys like Alan would start coming around. Things started shifting into full gear about seven or eight o’clock. Vester would be at the gate, and he’d start calling up to say who was there and ask should he let ’em in. Then we went to the skating rink, or the movies or the fairgrounds, or whatever.

MARTY LACKER: Back then, we used to do a lot of roller-skating. We’d go to the Rainbow Skating Rink, out on Lamar Avenue. Elvis would get the guys together and rent it out for $65 a night. They’d close to the public around midnight, and then Elvis and his friends would take it over until daylight. The guys would bring dates, and Elvis even let a bunch of kids who hung around the gate at Graceland come along. We’d have about 100 or 150 people.

We didn’t roller-skate like most people. We’d make up games, like “War,” where we’d choose up sides, the teams would line up at each end of the roller rink. Then at the count of three, we’d all skate towards each other and just knock the hell out of our opponents.

Elvis loved it. We’d have a big box of elbow pads and kneepads, and every hour we’d go in the bathroom and see who got hit the hardest. This one girl who used to come, Barbara Glidewell, told Rose Clayton and Dick Heard [Elvis Up Close] that Elvis didn’t care how rough it got because he’d take these “happy pills” he got from the dentist. So I guess he wasn’t feeling any pain.

I remember Elvis would have this guy, Bemis Atkins, who invented Pronto Pups, the corn dogs, come out there with his machine. We really had a ball.

BILLY SMITH: There was this real tough girl named Melinda who used to skate with us. She could hang in there with the best of them. When Sonny West came around in ’58, she hit him and hurt his collarbone real bad. And Sonny was 6’2”, about two hundred thirty pounds.

On skates it didn’t matter. You could bust their ass just as quick, them being three hundred pounds and you one hundred pounds. It depended on how good they could skate. And Melinda was a good skater, and rough! Elvis dated her for a while.

We had this other game called “Pop the Whip.” You’d get a lot of people and make a chain by having ’em hold each other around the waist. Then you’d make this real sharp turn. Well, the front of the line was hard to hold on to, and the middle, too. But the end of the line was hell. Because by the time it whipped around, the last person got snapped in two. One girl ran into the wall and hit her cheek. It laid her out pretty good.

The first time Elvis took me out there, I was about fifteen. I’d never been on a pair of skates in my life, but he showed me no mercy. Just when I was going pretty good, he’d knock my legs right out from under me and laugh like crazy.

The skating years lasted from about ’57 until about ’61. Then it was more the fairgrounds time. He’d rent out the whole Mid-South Fairgrounds, there on Parkway, starting around eleven or twelve at night, and go strong until about seven in the morning. He loved the roller coaster and the Dodgem cars. It was nothing for him to ride the roller coaster seventeen times straight, without it ever stopping. Everything to excess.

LAMAR FIKE: Elvis was always pushing the limit. I don’t think he was trying to be macho. I think it was letting off steam. When he moved into Graceland, he got out there on a big tractor with a bush-hog on it and cleaned the back acreage. Then he decided he’d tear down the old back fence. He hooked a chain around the fence posts and then to the tractor and pulled them out of the ground.

Finally, he hooked the chain around the corner post and began to pull. He didn’t realize it was set in concrete. The tractor bucked and almost turned over on him. He was just teetering there for a second. You knew when something scared the crap out of him because he’d start laughing. Gladys ran out, screaming, “Elvis, get off that damn tractor and put it up right now!” He was white as goose down. He climbed off and put his arms around Gladys and said, “I’m okay, Satnin’. I’m okay.” He never thought anything would happen to him.

BILLY SMITH: One of the most dangerous things Elvis liked to do was shoot off fireworks. I’m not talking about a couple of Roman candles. I’m talking about artillery. Hell, we could have put somebody’s eye out or burnt the house down.

Lamar got hit between the eyes one time, and he thought he’d lost his sight. He went to hollering, “I’m blind! I’m blind!” Of course, it was just for a second. But, hell, we had burns all over us. Even one of the horses got hit in the rear end.

There was one night we made the whole sky light up. Thousands of dollars of fireworks, set off by fifteen or twenty guys. I’m talking about six-inch bombs that shot several hundred feet in the damn air and spread out. And rockets and these helicopter spinning things. When they hit, they hurt, boy!

MARTY LACKER: We did other things, too, like go to the movies. At first, we’d go downtown to a regular theater and sneak in the side door after the movie started so no one would see who it was. We’d go up and sit in the balcony. Elvis had a rule that a member of the group had to sit behind him to keep people away from him. Because when people recognized him, they’d get up and come over and ask him for his autograph.

Only rarely would Elvis want to be alone. But sometimes in the fifties, he’d get in the old, beat-up, Chevrolet panel truck and go out by himself. He’d take a jar of ice water and a bunch of bananas. That was usually when he had a problem he wanted to mull over. He would ride around with a motorcycle hat pulled down over his head. He could get through the gate because nobody thought he’d be in that truck.

We never knew where he was. Later, he told Sonny that he’d go down to this park and watch girls playing ball. Sometimes he took Anita with him. That was unusual for him to do that with a woman. But they’d ride around in the afternoons through the different subdivisions. And he’d take her over to Lauderdale Courts and show her where he used to live. He trusted her more than he did most women, I think.

BILLY SMITH: Anita was usually Elvis’s date for the skating rink and the movies. She was around for a long time in the early years. They started going out in July of ’57, when he invited her to go with him to watch ’em put up a special front for [the Memphis premiere of] Loving You. The very next month, he give her a diamond and sapphire ring. A lot of people thought he was going to marry her.

LAMAR FIKE: George Klein set up their first date. He was always kind of a glorified pimp when it came to Elvis meeting girls. I called her, and we went by and picked her up. She lived in a rooming house, of sorts, with this old lady named Miss Patty. We drove around, and Elvis brought her to the house. Anita was very innocent. But that got to be a strong and heavy relationship, I’ll tell you.

MARTY LACKER: Elvis used to call Anita “Lil’ Bit” or “Little” because of the size of her feet. He was very affectionate with her. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t fool around when she wasn’t there. She started staying at Graceland, but everybody believes that was a chaste relationship.

BILLY SMITH: Once in a while, Anita spent the night at Graceland, and I think Gladys knew it, even though she had a strict policy about that. It was Elvis’s house, but Gladys made the rules. And she didn’t allow the opposite sex to sleep over, but she made an exception because she liked Anita a lot, and she hoped they’d get married and have kids.

LAMAR FIKE: The term “chaste” is sort of nebulous with Elvis and a lot of his girls. His sexual appetites were very, very strange. It wasn’t a case of just jumping a girl. He liked for them to keep their panties on, but he liked to see a little pubic hair creeping around the edges. Really, the touching and the feeling and the patting and everything else meant more to Elvis than the actual act. Intercourse was never that big of a thrill to him. He liked everything that led up to it better.

I guess Elvis was the King of Foreplay. This was all from the patting he exchanged with his mother growing up. You’ve got to understand this was an only child, whose mother still walked to school with him when he was fifteen, sixteen years old to make sure nothing happened. He slept with both parents up ’til God knows when. That was not a thread that ran through that family. It was a cable.

So I can imagine that Anita was a virgin and that their relationship was “chaste,” in the strictest sense. Elvis respected virginity. He used to tell Alan, “I’ll never break a virgin. There are too many whores around.” By the way, Elvis gave Anita that ring. But he didn’t want to get married. Never did.

MARTY LACKER: I remember one time that was kind of funny. Anita went out shopping, and while she was gone, Elvis brought another girl upstairs. He was fooling around with her in the bedroom, when all of a sudden, one of the guys called up and said, “Hey, Elvis, Anita’s coming through the gate.”

If you looked out his window, it was a straight drop to the ground. So we put a ladder up to the window. He let the girl climb down first, and he waited about five minutes, and then he went down. Anita came in and went upstairs and, of course, he wasn’t there. He walked around the back of the house to the front and came upstairs behind her. And he said, “Oh, you’re home. Great.” He would do stuff like that all the time. But he liked Anita a lot. He did a lot of stuff for her that he wouldn’t do in the latter years, like go on Top Ten Dance Party.

BILLY SMITH: It was Anita who turned him on to those tanning pills, those pills that turned your skin brown.

LAMAR FIKE: I remember when he got on that tanning kick. He’d come in and say, “Do you see this right here?” And his palm would be yellow, and he’d be thrilled. That’s because he liked pills of any kind. It was already starting.