After months of inventive stall-and-delay tactics, Elvis finally agreed to a spring wedding, shortly after the completion of Clambake.
MARTY LACKER: When Colonel put me in charge of special projects, he gave me the title of Special Chief Aide to Elvis. A throwaway title. But Elvis continued to rely on me as he always had. The difference was I didn’t write the checks anymore and I didn’t have to deal with Parker.
Almost everything about the wedding had already been done. But one night we were talking, and Elvis said, “I’m going to need a tuxedo, and I’d really like something different.” So the next night, when I was blown out of my skull, I sat down and started drawing.
I’d designed some of his clothes before—costumes for Spinout and Double Trouble. He was tired of the wardrobe that they were making him wear. For example, he said, “I’d like to have a bolero jacket with straps instead of buttons.”
So we sat in his office upstairs at Graceland one night, and although I’m not an artist, I just started drawing. He told me a couple of other things he wanted, like piping on a jacket and a vest.
The next day, when the Colonel called, Elvis asked him to talk to MGM about using the sketches. And Colonel said he’d try. The call came back that they’d take our suggestions if I sent the instructions with the drawings. And they told me to work with Lambert Marks, in wardrobe, who was a great guy.
I sent all the stuff out to Lambert, and he called me and said, “Have you ever done this before?” I said, “No.” He said, “Well, it’s fairly good.” He said, “We’re going to go ahead and start making it up, and when Elvis comes out to do wardrobe, we’ll fit it on him.”
I told him that was great and that I’d go to some of the stores where we shopped to get his shirts and boots. The studios used to buy these $10 shirts at the stores and put them down on the budget as $65 custom-made shirts. That’s part of how they make their money in Hollywood.
There used to be a cheap shoe store called Hardy’s Shoes. That was the only store in Memphis that sold Italian dress boots that zipped and came up over the ankle. They cost $10.95. Those are the black dress boots that Elvis used to wear. They’d last maybe six months, a year. When they discontinued the style Elvis liked, he bought the pattern.
Anyway, about three weeks into filming, an assistant director came over to me one day and said someone in wardrobe wanted to see me in his office. I thought maybe he was going to tell me how much he liked my designs. But when I got there, I could tell that wasn’t what he had in mind. He was one of those old Hollywood barracudas, and he was sitting with another guy.
He started out by saying, “It sure was nice of you to help us on this wardrobe.” And then he said, “But there are some things you don’t understand about our business.” He started telling me how they structure their budgets, and what they write off, and what they count as expenses. He said, “We have to do certain things.” I said, “What are you getting at?” And he said, “The bottom line is, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t do it anymore.”
I said, “Why don’t you tell Elvis all this and see what he’s got to say, since he’s getting 10 percent of this fuckin’ picture? Because in other words, what you’re telling me, sir, is that you’re stealing money out of his pocket.”
So when Elvis mentioned this tuxedo for the wedding, I thought, “Well, okay.” And I came up with that brocaded paisley material. And he loved it. That kind of inspired me, so I designed a wedding gown for Priscilla. And Elvis loved that, too. He said, “Man, that’s beautiful!” I gave him a copy of it, and he showed it to Priscilla.
The next day, she came up to me and said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d mind your own business.” I said, “No problem.” And she bought a cheap gown off the rack in L.A. and sewed her own train on it.
LAMAR FIKE: In 1990, Albert Goldman wrote an article for Life. He said he’d rethought his biography and come to the “inescapable conclusion” that Elvis had killed himself. He talked to David Stanley, who supposedly told him that Elvis had tried to kill himself in ’67, at Graceland, just before the wedding. Goldman said Elvis and Priscilla got into a whopper of a fight, and Elvis took a big handful of downers.
A couple of hours went by, and Vernon supposedly answered the phone and turned to David and the others and said, “My son tried to kill himself!” The story goes that they got in the car and raced over there, and Vernon hurried up the steps crying, “Son, please don’t die! Don’t die!” Elvis was comatose on the bed, with all these paramedics giving him oxygen and trying to revive him.
But I’ll tell you, I never heard that. And David and I are thick as thieves. Elvis was just not the suicidal type. If he committed suicide, he’d want fifteen or twenty people around. It would have been the hemlock routine—just as dramatic as anything you’d want to see. By the way, Life apologized for running that article earlier this year.
MARTY LACKER: Elvis never tried to commit suicide. To begin with, he believed in God too much. Besides, he wasn’t even in Memphis. He didn’t finish shooting Clambake until April 27, and the wedding was May 1.
I think Elvis tried to psych himself up for the wedding. But one minute, he’d cut Priscilla down, and the next he’d take up for her. The big mistake Priscilla made was trying to control. Elvis had her trying to control his personal life, and the Colonel trying to control the business end, and Vernon trying to keep him from having any fun at all.
In some ways, Priscilla’s agenda was the worst. She wanted to keep him from going places and leaving her at home—keep him from spending time with the guys. She wanted Elvis to be a normal husband. It shows how little she understood him, and his life. There’s no way in the world that Priscilla, or any other woman, could have gotten rid of all the guys. She worked on them, and, eventually, one or two got fired, and a couple left. But I knew that Elvis wasn’t going to brush all the guys off because he knew he needed them. Nobody could change Elvis Presley. Not really.
When we went out to California for Clambake, Priscilla came along, and she and I were going to fix up the Rocca Place house. Elvis wanted his room changed, for example.
From day one, Priscilla and I had arguments. I was taking sleeping pills, and if I didn’t have to be at the studio, I didn’t see any reason to get up at four-thirty or five o’clock in the morning. So I’d sleep until nine. Well, Priscilla would start banging on my door real early. I’d say, “The stores aren’t open yet!” And she’d say, “We need to figure out what we should get.” I’d tell her to get away from my damn door. And I’d go back to sleep.
When Elvis started bringing Priscilla around, his whole attitude changed. He always loved to shock people. He’d say nasty stuff in the company of people who were very prim and proper, just for shock value. And before this attitude change, he’d put Priscilla up to say all kinds of things to the guys. Like one time, when she was about eighteen or nineteen, we were riding in the car, just Elvis, Priscilla, and myself. I heard whispers in the back, and all of a sudden Priscilla said, “You know, it’s colder than a gravedigger’s dick.”
And Elvis cussed like a sailor. He’d say anything in front of the wives. Like, “That no good cocksucker . . . ”
Well, in this period just before the wedding, Priscilla got up on her high horse, and she had the nerve to say to Elvis, “I wish you’d talk to Marty about using bad language in front of me.” So he came over to me one day, and Priscilla was standing there. He said, “Look, I need to ask you to quit using that filthy language in front of Priscilla.” I said, “What?” And he repeated it.
I said, “What do you think you do in front of my wife?” I told him, “I’ll make you a deal, cocksucker. When you stop, I will.” I had a sort of sly grin on my face, but I wasn’t sure how he was going to take it. But he burst out laughing. And Priscilla stamped her foot and walked away.
LAMAR FIKE: I’m not sure when it started, but I think Priscilla made a silent vow to get rid of Marty. She had it in for him.
MARTY LACKER: On one of these weekend trips to Palm Springs that Elvis and Priscilla and Joe and Joanie took, Vernon and Dee went. Most of us didn’t want to go, and we didn’t go even though we were invited. We knew Priscilla was trying to arrange it where it was nobody but Joe and Joanie. It was so much petty bullshit.
On top of all that, Palm Springs was such a boring place. Elvis would be stoned on sleeping pills, and he’d just go out and lay by the pool. Everybody really started pulling apart.
This one Sunday, they came back, and Joe called me. He said, “Elvis wanted me to talk to you about something. Now don’t get mad, but he wants to know if you’d mind if I’m the best man along with you.”
I said, “Wait a minute, Joe. I’ve been talking to Elvis half the night. Why in the hell didn’t he say that to me?” Joe said, “Well, you know how he is. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.” I said, “I’ll tell you what, Joe, you call him back and tell him you’ll be the best man. I don’t need to be the best man.”
Joe said, “No, no. Now don’t start that. That’ll make him mad. He wants both of us.” I said, “Do whatever you want. But I know how all this came about.” Priscilla was pulling the strings, and the Colonel, too.
BILLY SMITH: A day or so before the wedding, Elvis and Priscilla, and Joe and Joanie, and George Klein flew to Palm Springs. Vernon and Dee had rode the train from Memphis to San Bernardino, and Marty and Jerry and his wife picked ’em up and drove ’em to Palm Springs. I think they did that so the press wouldn’t get wind of what was up. Then Priscilla’s mother and stepfather come the next day. Colonel put the word out that there would be a press conference at the Aladdin Hotel the following day, May 1.
About three A.M., Elvis and Priscilla and Joe and Joanie and George flew to Las Vegas on a chartered Lear jet. The rest of us come later. Colonel wanted Elvis and Priscilla to be at the city clerk’s office at seven A.M. to get the marriage license. They were going to get married in Milton Prell’s suite at the Aladdin later that morning and then get the hell out of Dodge before anybody noticed.
I spent the morning with Elvis, helping him get his stuff ready. He had two pairs of shoes with him. One was patent leather, and the other was his regular boots, and he wanted them shined. He said, “Don’t forget these.” I said, “I’ll try not to.” He said, “This is my wedding day. If you forget these I’m going to fire you.”
A Nevada supreme court justice by the name of David Zenoff married them. He was a friend of the Colonel’s, somehow. Elvis and Priscilla promised to “love, honor, cherish, and comfort.” But they didn’t say anything about “obey.” That wasn’t in there. Priscilla’s sister, Michelle, was the maid of honor, and both Marty and Joe were best men. And you know who the guests were? Priscilla’s mother and stepfather and brother, Vernon and Dee, Patsy Presley and her husband, Gee Gee Gambill, George Klein, Harry Levitch, the jeweler—he sold Elvis the rings—Colonel, and me, and Jo. That was it. And boy, that left a lot of guys with red faces. They were steamed, man.
MARTY LACKER: I didn’t know that the guys weren’t going to be invited to the ceremony until we got ready to go downstairs. But Joe knew all along. And that really ticked me off. But I didn’t raise a stink because I didn’t want to ruin it for Elvis. I went down and told the guys because nobody else had the nerve to do it. When I walked in, the guys said, “I guess it’s time to go.” And I said, “I’ve got something to tell you.” Everybody was mad at me.
Red had already found out. He’d gone and knocked on Joe’s door and said, “What time should we get ready?” And Joe said, “Nobody’s going to the ceremony but me and Marty. You can all come to the breakfast reception afterwards.” And that crushed Red. He went back to his room and packed, and he and his wife got out of there. Went right to the airport and flew home.
This was all Parker’s doing. He didn’t care about anybody. I don’t think he even cared about Elvis anymore. Elvis was so damn nervous, I don’t think he knew who was in the room. In fact, that’s what he told Red when they finally talked about it in ’76. Elvis said, “I had nothing to do with that. That was railroaded through.” But Elvis trusted people to do stuff. I think if he had been told they weren’t coming, he would have said, “The wedding isn’t going on.”
BILLY SMITH: The excuse Colonel give for not inviting all the guys was that the room was too small for everybody and their wives. God, everybody’s feelings were hurt. Red’s, the most, I think. Because Red not only left. He quit. He went to work doing stunts on Robert Conrad’s TV show The Wild, Wild West. And he worked as a songwriter for a while. He come back on the payroll later, but I don’t think he ever got over it.
Me and Jo went down to the wedding reception, but we didn’t stay but a minute. We went out to the casino to gamble. Because it didn’t make much sense to me. Like, Redd Foxx, the comedian, was there as a guest. I guess Colonel had invited him.
MARTY LACKER: The truth is, the suite the ceremony was in was big enough for the rest of the guys to be there. But the Colonel invited who he wanted, and in essence told the others to go fuck themselves.
LAMAR FIKE: I was at my house in Madison [Tennessee], and I picked up the paper the next morning, and it read, ELVIS PRESLEY MARRIES IN VEGAS. I said, “Son of a bitch!” God, I was pissed off!
BILLY SMITH: For a honeymoon, Elvis figured him and Priscilla would go to Palm Springs and spend a few days. He thought it would be enough for them to be together. But Vernon and Dee were there, and Priscilla’s family, too.
Now, Priscilla wanted the whole place to themselves. But Elvis didn’t. And rather than either one of ’em giving in, they had big arguments about it. He wanted one of the guys with him at all times because he was used to people getting him whatever he wanted. He thought, “I’m wealthy, let other people do it.” I think he figured he had the loyalty of these guys, and he didn’t know if a woman was going to give him that or not.
As it turned out, the day after the wedding, he had to go back to the studio to do some last-minute dubbing on Clambake. He come back to Palm Springs that night, but then two days later Elvis and Priscilla flew back to Memphis with Vernon and Dee and Jo and me. Elvis wanted to finish up his honeymoon on the ranch.
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis called me and said, “I’m going to have a second reception at Graceland for everybody who couldn’t come to the wedding, and I want you there.” And he said, “Before that, though, I’m going down to the ranch. Come on down.”
I guess you could say I went on their honeymoon with them. Because the first night they were there, I was there. We stayed in the trailer. All three of us. I didn’t have anywhere else to sleep. And it was a forty- or sixty-foot trailer, so it wasn’t like we were right on top of each other. I was in the front of the damn thing, and Priscilla and Elvis were in the back in the master bedroom. I’d been with him since the beginning, so nothing had changed, really.
After that, Elvis and Priscilla went to the Bahamas for a few days. But Elvis didn’t like it, and they came back. He thought it was a pretty tense place, racially.
Priscilla got pregnant on the honeymoon. We figured she conceived down at the ranch. We tried to pin it down. They were laughing about how I spent their honeymoon night with them, and Elvis said, “When do you think it happened?” I said, “When do I think?!”
BILLY SMITH: Believe me, Elvis didn’t know that Lisa was coming along. During the time he was on the ranch, he was stoned every day. He didn’t know where in the hell he was half the time. So there’s no telling when Lisa’s conception occurred. I can promise you that deep down in his mind Elvis couldn’t tell you what night it happened. He just liked to attach significance to things like that, the way he did with that bullshit about there being a blue light around the moon the night he was born.
MARTY LACKER: In June, Elvis had to go out to California to make Speedway with Nancy Sinatra. And Priscilla talked him into taking her out to the coast.
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis was on the set of Speedway in July when Priscilla called him from Palm Springs and told him she was pregnant. I imagine she wasn’t too happy to be pregnant so soon. She wanted a baby, but not that quick. Except it made the strap that much tighter around Elvis.
It wasn’t a comfortable situation for him. When she was seven months along, he told her he wanted a trial separation. He panicked about being a father. I think the separation only lasted two days, though.
MARTY LACKER: I don’t know what Priscilla’s motives were. She could have taken advantage of the condition Elvis was in out on the ranch to make sure she did become pregnant. But I think Elvis was really happy about the baby. I remember when he told everybody. We were on the set. He’d just talked to Priscilla on the phone in the dressing room, and he opened up the door, and he said, “Priscilla just called! She got back from the doctor, and guess what? I’m gonna be a happy pappy!”
Of course, he was putting the moves on Nancy Sinatra at the same time. I guess you could say they had a flirtatious romance on the movie. Priscilla heard about it from people, but Elvis denied it. She got mad and cried, and Elvis told her she was just overly sensitive because she was pregnant. I don’t think he saw anything wrong with fooling around. Just because Elvis was a newlywed and getting ready to become a daddy didn’t mean he wasn’t going to continue being Elvis. Nancy was a pretty nice girl. She’s the one who gave Priscilla her Hollywood baby shower, by the way.
BILLY SMITH: Once Priscilla got that ring on her finger—and pregnant—things got worse.
MARTY LACKER: She’s an ice-cold person, but I guess she had some real feelings for Elvis. I think she also thought she caught the brass ring. She thought she was going to get rid of anything that got in her way. But she wasn’t alone. The Colonel had something to do with it, Esposito and his wife had something to do with it, and Vernon definitely had something to do with it. Vernon figured the fewer people around, the fewer checks going out.
Priscilla and Vernon bonded with two goals in mind. They could use each other financially because she was as much of a penny-pincher as he was. And together, they were going to stop Elvis from spending.
Charlie used to fawn over Priscilla, but Charlie was phony. Priscilla took a liking to Jerry because Jerry was a good-looking guy, and Elvis said he thought she had the hots for him. At times it caused a little animosity. One time he came down to the kitchen in the middle of the night, and there was Priscilla and Jerry. They were just talking, but they were talking maybe a little too intimately for Elvis’s taste.
Elvis was on those back steps, and he stopped midway and watched them for a while. And then he came walking in and said, “What the hell’s goin’ on here?” They said nothing was going on. But I know that Elvis used to worry that something might happen between them.
Since Priscilla couldn’t have cared less about anybody other than Joe and Jerry, she and Vernon and Colonel started a campaign to edge almost everybody out. And one or two guys in the group were always trying to get rid of people, too, and at every opportunity they’d bad-mouth somebody and stab ’em in the back. It started getting really terrible. The old camaraderie was in shambles.
At one point, somebody left because he’d had his fill, and Charlie made the statement, “Who gives a shit? That’s more gravy for us.” Elvis wasn’t there, but it pissed the rest of us off so much that when we were all in the room with Elvis, and the conversation got around to the guy who left, one of us said, “Charlie, why don’t you tell Elvis what you said?” And Charlie just grinned because he didn’t think anybody would do it. So they said, “Come on, Charlie, tell Elvis how you said that would be that much more gravy for us.” And Elvis just looked at Charlie with this mix of anger and disbelief.
In July of ’67, two months after the wedding, Vernon and Dee came out to L.A. one weekend, and they trotted down to Palm Springs with Elvis and Priscilla and Joe and Joanie.
The morning of the day they were coming back, I got a phone call from Joe. He said, “Elvis wants his dad and Dee to stay out in L.A. for a while, and he wants them to stay at the house.” And then he said, “But the house is getting too crowded. So Elvis wants to give you a choice. You can either go back home and work on the ranch with Alan, or you’ll have to go get an apartment out here.”
I said, “Well, Joe, you don’t really need an answer from me, do you? You know exactly what I’m going to do, and so does he.” I said, “You all have a good time.” And I hung up.
Before they got back, I moved down to the Bel Air Sands Hotel, on the San Diego Freeway on the way to the airport. And everybody who hadn’t gone to Palm Springs came over to the motel with their wives. They were all saying how dirty it was. I said, “No, don’t worry about it. That’s the way they want to handle it.” I was disappointed that Elvis hadn’t told me himself. But I said, “They’re poisoning his mind, and he’s letting them get away with it.”
When I went back to the ranch, all I really did was sleep. I wasn’t interested in becoming a rancher or even being down at the ranch. And in September, I figured it was just time to move on.
The day I told Elvis I was quitting, he said, “Well, what if I need you?” I said, “I’m not going anywhere. If you need me, call. You know where I am.” I remember we were sitting in the dining room, and then we moved into the living room, which he hardly ever used. He said, “You know you’ll always be welcome here.” I said, “Well, I appreciate that. I didn’t think it would be any other way.” And really, things didn’t change. I was with him about every day he was in Memphis, just out of friendship. I went on some of the tours, and to Las Vegas, and on the Aloha special, in Hawaii. And I did a lot of projects for him, gratis. I just didn’t have to travel every day anymore, or put up with all the bullshit of working for him, and dealing with Colonel, and Priscilla, and Vernon, and Joe. If they’d had their way, everybody would have been gone. The fact of the matter is that if Elvis hadn’t had the guys around, he probably would have died fifteen years before he did.
Vernon filed a separation notice for me, to make himself feel good, I guess. I ran across it just the other day. It’s from the Tennessee Department of Employment Security, and it’s dated September 22, 1967. It says I’d been employed since November 15, 1963—which was my second stint with Elvis—as a bookkeeper and purchasing agent. At the point I left, my take-home pay was $181.80 a week. And remember, I had three children.
It’s signed by Vernon, as manager, and states that my employer was E. A. Presley. And here’s my favorite part. Where it says, “Reason for separation,” Vernon put down, “Lack of work.”