When Elvis arrived in California in March of ’67 for wardrobe fittings on Clambake, his twenty-fifth film, Colonel Parker and director Arthur Nadel were astonished to discover that Elvis’s weight had ballooned from 170 to 200 pounds during his vacation on the ranch. Furious, Nadel ordered wardrobe to redesign Elvis’s costumes to try to disguise his bulk. For his part, Elvis started gulping diet pills.
Clambake, which drew on The Prince and the Pauper for its plot, would be among the most forgettable of Elvis’s pictures, if not for an incident that occurred shortly before filming began—an accident that led directly to Colonel’s boldest claim on Elvis’s earnings and to the beginning of the end of the group as they had known it.
LAMAR FIKE: When he had pills in him, Elvis would get dizzy. And he got up in the middle of the night to use the toilet, and he slipped or fell over the TV cord and hit his head on the bathtub. And boy, all hell broke loose.
BILLY SMITH: About eight o’clock in the morning, some of the guys were in the den, and Elvis come out and said, “I fell and hit my head. I think I need to see a doctor.” He was holding the back of his head, and he had a pretty good bump on it.
MARTY LACKER: My first reaction was, “I wonder if he did it on purpose, to postpone the wedding?” But we got him into bed and Esposito phoned the Colonel, and somebody else called this doctor that Elvis had used for prescriptions. He brought portable X-ray equipment to the house, and I held Elvis’s head straight because he could barely hold it up. The doctor checked him and said, “You’ve got a mild concussion. You can’t start the movie right now.” And then he told Colonel they’d have to hold off shooting for about two weeks.
Colonel was just beside himself. Out in the hall, he said, “Goddamn you guys, why do you let him get this way? He’s going to mess up everything! They’ll tear up the contract!” He said, “I want one of you with Elvis twenty-four hours a day, sitting by his bed in his room. If he has to go to the bathroom, one of you walk with him. Do not let him walk on his own.”
Then Colonel went back in and talked to Elvis, and he flat laid it down to him. At the time, the Colonel was getting 25 percent. And he said, “Here’s the way it is. From now on, you’re going to listen to everything I say. I’m going to set down these guidelines, and you’d better follow them. Otherwise, I’m going to leave you, and that will ruin your career. And because I’m going to do all this extra work for you, I want 50 percent of your contract.” And Elvis meekly—meekly—said yes.
Colonel also said, “From now on, I’m changing these guys of yours. If they don’t like it, they can get the hell out. When you get better, we’re calling a meeting with all of them and I’m going to tell them exactly how it’s going to be. I’m going to say I’m speaking for you. And if you open up your mouth, I’m gone.”
BILLY SMITH: Elvis asked me to stay in his room with him and sleep on the cot. He wanted somebody to watch him, and I was a fairly light sleeper. I stayed for about ten days, got his food for him, and never left the room. I knew he was pissed at Colonel about something, but he never would really come out and say what it was. He mentioned he had to redo his contract with Colonel, but he showed no outward emotion. But I could tell that inside, he was just eat up with it.
I had no idea that Colonel had told him he was taking 50 percent. I heard it on the news like everybody else, after Elvis passed away. The afternoon of the second meeting, I had to leave the room. Colonel was coming up. They were going to sign the new contract, and he didn’t want me to know what it said.
Best I can remember, we all thought Colonel was taking 25 percent, but one time back in the early sixties, Elvis slipped and said, “That old son of a bitch is paid more than any other manager now. He gets 35 percent.” It was rare of him to have even mentioned that much about business. And it shocked me. I thought, “Well, God, what’s happening?” I have no idea why it went to 35 percent. But 50 percent? God Almighty!
LAMAR FIKE: Why the uproar? Back then, deals were made like that every day. A friend of mine managed [country singer] David Houston, and they had a fifty-fifty deal forever. I’m talking 50 percent of the net, or after expenses. That’s not done anymore, of course. Most contracts are 25 percent of the gross, but 10 percent is paid toward the agent.
I’m sure the Colonel padded some things, but I don’t think he ever intentionally ripped Elvis off. Give the devil his due. Elvis at his best was not the easiest artist to manage.
MARTY LACKER: Lamar seems to have difficulty realizing what the Colonel did. Colonel took his 50 percent before the damn net. He took expenses out of Elvis’s 50 percent.
LAMAR FIKE: Dee Presley told me that Colonel had 35 percent, and Vernon had 15 percent of the management contract. Because Colonel knew the key to Elvis financially was Vernon. Later on, in ’74, Colonel talked to Vernon when they set up Boxcar Enterprises. That was a merchandising operation only, but it changed Colonel’s overall percentage of Elvis a little bit. Colonel was already looking ahead, see.
MARTY LACKER: When it came time for that second meeting, Colonel told all the guys to be there. Colonel got to the house, and he and Joe went into Elvis’s bedroom. About thirty minutes later, the intercom buzzed in my room, and Esposito told me to come in. Elvis was sitting on this little lounge seat, staring at the floor. He wouldn’t look at me. Colonel was sitting next to him, and Joe was sitting across from them.
Parker did all the talking. He said, “We’re making a few changes around here. Mr. Presley and I have discussed it, and from now on, you won’t have to be concerned with being foreman. Mr. Esposito will be the foreman. And no one is to come to Elvis with any problems. They’ll deal with Mr. Esposito.”
And he said, “Especially, nobody is to come to Elvis to talk about religion.” He meant Geller, of course. He said, “I want all the books that were brought up here taken out and burned,” which Elvis and Priscilla did together, according to her book. And Colonel said he didn’t want Geller coming around anymore.
Then he said, “Mr. Lacker, you will handle special projects for Mr. Presley. That’s the way he wants it.” I looked at Elvis and he still wouldn’t look at me. To see Elvis acting that way, and to hear this old, fat bastard spewing edicts like he was Elvis’s ruler, just made me sick. In fact, it destroyed my desire to be part of the group.
Colonel said to me, “The first project you are going to handle is the wedding.” I thought it was a joke because the Colonel and Joe had already planned the wedding.
Then Colonel said, “Okay, let’s go out and talk to the boys.” Everybody was in the living room. And Elvis just kept staring at the floor.
Colonel said, “From now on, you guys will not go to Mr. Presley with your personal needs and concerns. Because you’re causing him problems, and you’re not taking care of him. You go to Mr. Esposito, and he’ll take care of it.” Then he looked around the room, and he said, “Also from now on, you guys are going to really work. In addition, we’re going to cut back on some of the expenses and the salaries that people are being paid around here.” Of course, nobody was paid anything, really. And he said, “If you guys don’t like it, you know where the door is.”
BILLY SMITH: I remember that afternoon real well. And I especially remember that before Colonel started talking, Elvis said, “Fellas, the Colonel has got some things to say. And he’s speaking for both of us. What he’s going to tell you is coming straight from me.” Colonel told us that Joe would be the foreman. And then he said, “Right now you will continue out this picture with Elvis. But due to expenses, after you get back home, some of you will probably be let go.” He said, “It’s nothing that anybody’s done wrong. It’s just business. We have to cut back.”
We all kind of looked at each other in disbelief. Elvis was getting a million dollars a movie. I think I was getting $200 a week.
I thought I was going to be one of the ones terminated. Or if not terminated, I knew I’d have to quit. Because me and Jo were getting an apartment in California. Colonel made it clear that when Elvis and Priscilla got married, the guys wouldn’t be living at the house, and with cutting down on expenses, there wouldn’t be any rent money paid for the ones who wanted to stay out in California. So right after the Colonel’s little speech, I went to Elvis and said, “Look, I’ll have to be one of the ones that has to go.” He said, “Why?” I said, “Because I can’t afford to keep a home in Memphis and an apartment out here.” Elvis said, “That doesn’t apply to you. You’ll get your apartment out here, and it’ll be paid for.”
MARTY LACKER: As it turned out, there were no pay cuts, and nobody was actually let go. The idea was to get people to leave voluntarily.
BILLY SMITH: When you look at this, you see Elvis had a hell of a lot thrown on him at one time. He had a head injury. The studio was coming down on him. He was being forced to sign this new contract. Colonel was now maneuvering the guys. And pressure was being put on him by Priscilla and her parents to marry.
And, of course, on top of it, he was taking drugs. Which I know damn well the Colonel knew. But instead of getting help for Elvis, Colonel took advantage of his weakness.
MARTY LACKER: A big question here is why Vernon didn’t do something to get Elvis’s drug use under control. But to the very end, and even after Elvis died, Vernon denied that Elvis used any kind of drugs. You’d have to be a blooming idiot not to know.
BILLY SMITH: I wonder if Vernon convinced himself that Elvis needed all that “medication.” Otherwise, if he loved him that much, why didn’t he do something? There were two people who could have legally helped Elvis—Vernon and, after the wedding, Priscilla. And both of them turned their back. They just ignored it.
I heard Vernon and Elvis argue about it a little. Elvis would say, “Look, goddamnit, I don’t want to hear no more! Get the hell out.” And Vernon would buckle under.
MARTY LACKER: Vernon couldn’t do anything about Elvis because Elvis was the man of the house. And Vernon was afraid if he upset him too much, Elvis would kick him out. It’s as simple as that.
LAMAR FIKE: Right after the Clambake incident, every relationship Elvis had was strained. With the Colonel, with his father, with Priscilla, with the guys. Colonel empowered himself and put his hand into the group really strong. That was the beginning of the end of the group. And Elvis started getting angrier. And stranger.
MARTY LACKER: During those weeks in March that Elvis was recuperating before he went to work on Clambake, he came back to Memphis and went over to Nashville to record. That session didn’t amount to much. I think he only got one song down, “Suppose.” He was too scattered, for one thing.
On the way back from Hollywood, we got about forty-five miles out of Memphis, in Forrest City, Arkansas, and we started picking up WHBQ, which was George Klein’s station. George was on the air that night, and he played “Green, Green Grass of Home,” which Tom Jones had just brought out. Elvis liked it, but it put him in a real sad mood. He was driving the big Greyhound, and he stopped at a pay phone and had me call George and make him play it again. Pretty soon, he was stopping at every pay phone. George played that thing three or four times in a row. Which he wasn’t supposed to do. He was risking his job. But Elvis wanted to hear it because he was just wallowing in how blue it made him feel. He was crying a little.
I was sitting in that tall seat up front that lets you look over the top windows of the bus. And I had tears in my eyes myself because I was thinking of all my family. You know the song. It talks about going home and seeing all the familiar things and faces: “And there to meet me is my mama and papa.” It’s a real homesick song. And it just hit us all, I guess because things were so bleak for us right then.
We got to Graceland, and we were getting everything unloaded, and I was getting ready to go home. I said to Patsy, “Let me see if Elvis needs anything.” I went in the hallway, and I saw Elvis near the front door, next to where his mother and father’s room was. He was kneeling on one knee, and he had his head in his hands. And he was sobbing. Geller was standing over him. I said, “Elvis, what’s wrong?” He was totally shaken. He said, “Marty, I saw my mama.” I said, “What do you mean?” I knew it was just the song. But he said, “I walked in the door, and I saw her standing here. I saw her, man.”
Elvis went upstairs to his quarters. We didn’t see him for about a week.
LAMAR FIKE: Shelley Fabares was in Clambake. She’d already been in Girl Happy and Spinout. She was another one Elvis was in love with. But she basically held him off. She was married to [record producer] Lou Adler.
MARTY LACKER: Shelley was just a downright nice, sweet girl. We used to have a lot of fun with her. And Elvis really took a liking to her. They used to talk a lot, alone in his trailer or in the dressing room. But I think that was it. One day, she and Elvis came walking out of the dressing room, and Elvis looked at me and said, “I told her.” I said, “You told her?” He said, “Yeah, I told her about the wedding.” No one outside the group knew about it. He didn’t want to tell anybody.
LAMAR FIKE: I was in the group, and he didn’t tell me.
BILLY SMITH: Elvis didn’t even tell me about the wedding until we were going back out to California to do the picture. And he said he was going to get married right after the picture. It kind of hurt my feelings. I said, “So? I went down to the justice of the peace and got married. It’s quicker.” And then I said, “You didn’t come to mine, so what’s the big deal?” And he said, “I’m Elvis Presley, that’s the big deal.”
LAMAR FIKE: There for about two years, ’66 to ’68, Elvis got hit by a lot of tragic family stuff. It started when Gladys’s brother, Tracy, who had the mind of an eight-year-old, died of kidney failure at forty-nine.
BILLY SMITH: Uncle Tracy caught some disease when he was little—scarlet fever or rheumatic fever. He was real slow, but not really mentally unbalanced. And he was partially deaf. He was real easygoing. He loved kids. And he generally liked to be around people. He only weighed about 165 pounds. But I don’t think he knew his own strength. He was so strong he could hurt you without even meaning to. Especially when he got mad.
MARTY LACKER: One time in the early sixties, Tracy came in the Jungle Room where we all were, and something set him off. He was standing there, grinning about something, and all of a sudden he just started gritting his teeth and looking around. Elvis said, “Watch him.” Elvis loved him, but I think Tracy was also a source of amusement for him. I looked over, and Tracy was clenching his fists at his sides and making sounds like he was getting ready to explode. Elvis said, “There he goes.”
BILLY SMITH: Gladys took care of Tracy until she died, and then my daddy looked after him. They were really the only ones who could handle him. Sometimes Tracy would stay down there at the gate with Daddy and pretend he was a gate guard, too. He lived with us up there in that house behind Graceland. Somebody came to see me one time, and Tracy told him nobody was home because he thought the guy meant he was coming to see Elvis.
Well, the guy jumped the fence and come in our house and sat down on the couch. Tracy found him in there and asked him for a cigarette. The guy gave it to him, and Tracy took it, and then he just knocked the hell out of him. He said, “Don’t never jump the fence. Elvis wouldn’t like it. You ask Tracy.” The guy said, “I did ask you, Tracy!” And Tracy said, “You didn’t say you were coming to see Billy.”
LAMAR FIKE: When Tracy got down-and-out, he’d say to Elvis, “I got my nerves in the dirt.” The first time Elvis heard that, he laughed like hell. He thought that was great. And then he gave Tracy some money. That’s what he wanted, anyhow.
BILLY SMITH: Tracy used to come up to Graceland and tell Elvis he’d come for what he owed him. Of course, Elvis didn’t owe him anything. He meant he needed some money. As soon as Elvis got home from California, Tracy would appear and say, “I come up to get what you owe me.” And Elvis would say, “Uncle Tracy, how much you figure I owe you?” And Tracy would say, “Well, I need $5 for tobacco, and I might get some socks—that’d be about $5. And maybe $10 for groceries.” And then he’d say, “And I got to have $20 for my woman.” Meaning he was going to hire a prostitute. So he figured up $40. That’s what Elvis owed him. Every time it was the same amount, $40.
LAMAR FIKE: The same year Tracy died, Elvis’s uncle, Pat Biggs, died. He was married to Delta Mae, Vernon’s sister.
MARTY LACKER: One night in ’66, just before Elvis bought the ranch, he was out in the barn at Graceland with the horses. I happened to be out there, too. The phone rang—the intercom—and he picked it up, which he usually didn’t do. He said, “Yeah?” like that. And he said, “Okay,” and he punched the line.
It was Delta calling from Montgomery, Alabama, saying Pat had just died. She was all alone in a sleazy motel, and she didn’t know what to do. They’d taken Pat’s body over to the funeral home, and she needed some help. I could see tears in Elvis’s eyes because he really cared for Pat. I heard him say to Delta, “Don’t worry. You can stay here for a while. We’ll get you back here some way.”
I saw how it was affecting him, so I tapped him on the shoulder, and I mouthed the words, “Tell her I’ll come get her.” So he said, “Aunt Delta, I’m going to send Marty Lacker to bring you up here.”
Her car was down there, and Elvis told me to fly down and drive her back in her car. I said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take Richard.” He said, “No problem. I appreciate you doing this.” So Richard and I flew to Birmingham and drove to Montgomery in a rented Cadillac.
We got to the motel, and we put her in the backseat of the Cadillac, and she didn’t say one word all the way to Memphis. Not even when we got to Graceland. We pulled up to the house and opened the car door for her and still, not a word of thanks, nothing. Not even when Vernon came over and said, “Well, I hope you’re okay, Delta.” Now, granted, I’m sure she was grieving, and depressed, and maybe in shock from Pat’s death. But she was also just not a very nice woman.
BILLY SMITH: When it come to her personality, Aunt Delta was a whole lot like Vernon. She hated everybody. Pat had been a big-time gambler. At times, he had hundreds of thousands of dollars. But when he died, he was completely broke. Elvis paid for his funeral. Pat was the one who instilled the desire in Elvis to own something of his own, like a nice car or a nice house. So when Pat died, Elvis felt like he needed to take Delta in, give her a place to live. He loved her, but he took her in mostly out of loyalty, same way he did Grandma. Delta had a horrible temper, and she drank too much. And, of course, Elvis didn’t want any whiskey around Graceland.
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis created places for people, so Delta would go to the grocery, run household errands, and pitch in with the kitchen help.
BILLY SMITH: I think Delta Mae done a lot, from keeping up with all the car keys, to making sure everything was in its place. She kept Elvis’s room immaculate. And she made sure he had all the stuff he liked to eat and looked after all the little things, like putting water in his refrigerator upstairs and the current TV Guide in his room.
MARTY LACKER: Sometimes Delta shared a room with Grandma, but other times she slept in a room off the kitchen. After Grandma died, in ’80, she moved into Grandma’s room, which was off the front hall. Delta lived there until she died in ’93. All those tours would come through Graceland, and she was right there—a kind of living relic. But you never saw her. They said she was real sick. I’m sure she was still drinking.
After Elvis became famous, his family started hounding him for money. It made him feel they didn’t really love him. He said to me, “I’m going to make sure that Billy doesn’t turn out like the rest of them.”
One day, Elvis was really agitated. He said, “When I get home, I can’t even come downstairs because there’s all this family sitting around waiting to get money off me. That’s the only time they come up here.”
It got to a point where he had closed-circuit television installed, with monitors upstairs in his bedroom, so that he could check before he’d come down. A lot of times, he stayed in his room rather than face them.
LAMAR FIKE: Did you see Zorba the Greek? Remember the second after the death, when all those women rush in like vultures and snatch everything in the room, just pick it bare? Elvis’s relatives were sort of like that. They’d turn your stomach, man.
MARTY LACKER: Dealing with Elvis’s family—on top of this new stuff with the Colonel and Joe—was really more than most people could take. They disliked me and Joe, in particular, because we were ethnic and because we carried the money and wrote the checks. And they thought, “Elvis has given you stuff, and he ain’t given us nothin’.” And they especially didn’t like it when my family lived at Graceland. Three of them tried to kill me—literally. Two in the sixties and one in the seventies.
Elvis’s uncle Johnny was all screwed up in the head from that fight he had when he was young, when those five guys jumped him and Travis. And when we lived at Graceland, Johnny came up there one night in about ’64 or ’65, when Jerry Schilling first started. Jerry and I were sitting up talking, and there was nobody else around. Elvis was upstairs, and the maid, Hattie, was in the kitchen. Somebody banged on the front door, and Hattie answered it, and there was this strange man standing there. He’d climbed over the fence or something. She screamed and slammed the door, and the guy ran away.
I went in my room and got my gun and stuck it in my waistband, under my shirt. Jerry was getting ready to leave, but I said, “You’d better hang around for a while,” in case the guy showed up again. Well, just then, Johnny came through the backdoor. He was shuffling and holding his side. And he was bleeding pretty bad. On top of it, he was drunk out of his mind. I said, “Johnny, what’s wrong with you?” He looked at me funny, and he said, “You son of a bitch! You’re the one that stabbed me, and I’m going to get you!”
I said, “Johnny, what the hell are you talking about?” I was standing at the foot of the steps that led into the Jungle Room from the kitchen. And Jerry was standing right behind me.
Johnny said, “I’m going to take care of you once and for all. You were in that bar, and you stabbed me.” And he reached in his pocket and pulled out this knife, and he started coming towards me. I said, “Johnny, I want to tell you something. You take one more step . . . ” And I lifted my shirt up, and I took my gun out of my pants. I said, “I’m going to blow your fuckin’ head off.” And then I told him he’d better get out because if Elvis found out he was there, he was going to have a problem.”
Well, he still wouldn’t leave. So I told Schilling to call upstairs and let Elvis know what was going on. Elvis said, “You tell that son of a bitch he can either get out of my house now or he’d better never come back again.” Jerry told him, and Johnny froze in his tracks. They were all afraid of that because that would cut them off from the money.
Then Jerry said, “Marty, Elvis wants to talk to you.” I got on the phone, and Elvis said, “What’s wrong with that crazy son of a bitch?” I told him Johnny had been stabbed, that there was blood coming out of his side, and he thought I was the one who did it. I said, “Elvis, I know he’s your uncle. But if he keeps coming, I’m going to have to shoot his ass.”
Elvis said, “You tell that bastard to go to a hospital. No, you take him.” I said, “Elvis, I ain’t taking him nowhere.” I said, “I’ll call a damn cab and tell the driver to take him to the hospital, but I’m not getting in the car with this crazy bastard.” Elvis said, “Well, yeah, you’re right.” He said, “Be sure to tell him if he doesn’t get in the cab, I’ll never see him again.” So Johnny agreed.
When the cab came, the driver took one look at Johnny and said, “What do you want me to do with him?” I said, “Take him to the nearest hospital.” I gave the driver a fifty-dollar bill, and I told him he didn’t have to wait for him. Because I didn’t give a shit whether he ever came back or not. Johnny died in ’68, and I can’t say I was sorry.
LAMAR FIKE: Between all the pills and all his confrontations with that family, Marty should be dead, really. They kept threatening to put him in the ground.
MARTY LACKER: Another night, I was downstairs in the basement where the three TVs are, filling out expense reports. And here came Elvis’s Aunt Clettes down the steps, drunk. She saw me there, and she stood by the doorway with this big purse in her hand. If looks could kill, I would have been deader than a doornail. She said, “I don’t like you, you no good son of a bitch. I’m going to get rid of you right now.” And she put her hand in her purse and came out with the biggest damn butcher knife you ever saw in your life.
There’s only one door out of that room, and she was in front of it. And she started coming towards me. I said, “Clettes, let me tell you something. If Elvis comes walking down those steps, or if he ever finds out what you’re doing, he’s never going to let you in this house again. You won’t be able to get near him.”
She stopped, and she looked at me with her drunken head bobbing, and just then, thank God, somebody—and I’ve forgotten who it was—came to the top of the steps and hollered, “Marty, are you down there?” I yelled, “Yeah, I am! You better come on down!” He said, “Well, no. You come on up. Elvis wants to see you.” And when Clettes heard that, she put the knife back in her bag.
When Delta moved in, I was afraid we were going to have more episodes like that. And I was right. It just took a while.
BILLY SMITH: When we went back to California to finish Clambake, Elvis finally started showing his anger about everything. Since the early sixties, he’d had this tendency to destroy an entire room when he got upset. But he’d usually disguise why he was mad.
Anyway, this day on Rocca Place, he was going to play this record. There were several of us in the room—Red, and Richard, and Jerry and Sandy, and me and my wife, and Priscilla. Well, the record kept skipping, and Elvis tried to play it over and over. And he was acting like he was patient about it. But when we come into the room that morning, before we ever started playing the record, you could tell he was upset about something. Elvis had a hard time hiding it if something was bothering him.
Finally, he said, “If this son of a bitch jumps one more time . . . ” Well, it did. And he took a cane and beat that record, and then he broke just stacks and stacks of records. And then he started in on the record player—the speakers and everything. He threw it across the room, and he started cussing up a storm at Joe’s brother, Frank, who give him the thing. This was shortly after the 50 percent contract with Colonel episode. So it wasn’t about the skipping of the record.
Elvis was swinging that cane every which way—even broke the little windows out of the side of the door and started clearing the shelves. And his hair fell in his face, and he looked like some kind of lunatic. Me and Red just fell out. We were dying laughing on the floor. But Jo was afraid Elvis would get mad at us because we were laughing at him. And it did set him off to doing other things—he beat the piano and destroyed these feathers that Priscilla had. Just tore ’em up. Then he said, real angry-like, “What in the hell are you all laughing at?” And we said, “We’re laughing at you. You look like some damn wild man who just swung out of the tree limbs.”
He got to thinking about it, and he got tickled, and then he started laughing. We tried not to let things bother him. But we had our work cut out for us. And it got to be more than most of us could handle.