The Colonel (35 page)

Blue Hawaii,
Elvis’s first fun-in-the-sun bikini picture, would follow the musical format of
G.I. Blues,
whose success had made it the prototype for all the
Wallis-Presley musicals to follow. But now
Blue Hawaii
would surpass it. The 1961 film would easily recoup its $2 million cost and effectively doom Elvis’s chances of moving beyond
its stultifying structure. It would also mark the first of seven Elvis pictures directed by Norman Taurog.

In wedding an exotic setting and plenty of romance to a fourteen-song framework—three more than even
G.I. Blues
allowed—Wallis perfected his winning Elvis formula. Nearly
all the movies Elvis made after 1960 would be assembled around Elvis’s personality—or the Hollywood moguls’ perception of it—the way larger movies were once fashioned around
female stars such as Shirley Temple or Mae West. The Wallis productions, especially, were the last in a series of Hollywood vehicles guaranteed to pull a certain bankable gross just because of who
was in them, leading the producer himself to remark, “A Presley picture is the only sure thing in show business.”

Couldn’t Parker see that such somnambulistic fare would squander his client’s talent and suffocate his spirit? Most likely not. As the Colonel indicated to Weisbart, he was woefully
aware of his inability to judge either a good script or a fine director. Likewise, he had difficulty discerning a good performance from a mediocre one and relied on the judgment of others to plan
Elvis’s future in films.

Despite Presley’s remarkable portrayal in
King Creole,
Wallis believed that Elvis couldn’t carry a picture without music. And Byron Raphael remembers
going with Parker to a meeting with producer Joe Pasternak long before he made
Girl Happy
and
Spinout
in the mid-’60s. Pasternak, famous for musicals, had a
dramatic property in mind for Elvis, and asked him to do a reading. Afterward, the producer told Parker, “He really can’t act. He just doesn’t have it.” In their four-year
association, Raphael says, “the only criticism I ever heard the Colonel make of Elvis was about his acting. He never believed that Elvis was going to be an actor. Not for a second.” And
nothing he saw changed his mind.

Parker used to tell his staff that the key to successful management was trying different tactics. “It doesn’t matter if you do ten stupid things,” - he’d say, “as
long as you do one smart one.” Here was his prime example. As long as Elvis made the upbeat musicals that Wallis wanted, he was assured of working in Hollywood.
Blue Hawaii
was the
first of a new five-picture deal with Wallis, which paid $175,000 for the first three and $200,000 each for the remaining two.

Elvis was surprised to learn of such a demanding movie schedule. It - didn’t leave much time for touring—and he wanted to go to Europe—or making records, apart from the movie
soundtracks. In Germany, he’d worked on expanding his range and making his voice fuller, and he was eager for more operatic songs, like “It’s Now or Never,” to show it
off.

But after the U.S.S.
Arizona
concert, the Colonel was in no hurry to return Elvis to the concert stage anytime soon. He’d rather people paid to see Presley in the movies, and they
might tire of him if Elvis did too many personal appearances. While Parker had been an extraordinary promoter, in time he would turn into an unconscionable manager. In fact, the Colonel no longer
thought of his client’s needs so much as he did his own.

In Hollywood, Parker was a steel wall of power, something he could never be in representing Presley, the concert artist. Therefore, California was where they would stay, where the Colonel could
have almost anything he wanted, free for the asking, with the biggest names in show business at his beck and call. In making or confirming all the big decisions on Presley’s pictures, and by
refusing to let Wallis or even William Morris have direct access to Elvis, Parker became not only a true power broker, but the “producer” of Presley’s pictures. He’d just
picked up a two-picture deal with the Mirisch Brothers and United Artists for $500,000 each and 50 percent of the profits; in January 1961, he’d close a four-picture agreement with MGM at a
salary of $400,000 per picture, plus $100,000 for expenses, with profit participation equal to the Mirisch deal.

Until the end of his life, Parker told a story that was likely untrue but illuminated his core philosophy. According to the tale, the Colonel, Wallis, and Abe Lastfogel
met at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel to discuss a deal for Elvis to play a part in a picture based on what Wallis promised was an Academy Award–winning script.

“That’s fine,” the Colonel said. “When do you start?” Wallis gave him the date, and the Colonel turned to Lastfogel. “Sounds good, Abe. We get a million
dollars, and we’ll be there.”

Wallis spoke up. “No, Colonel, you don’t understand. I said this was an Academy Award–winning script. I only want to pay $500,000, not a million.”

“Oh,” the Colonel replied, “I didn’t get that part of it. Well, tell you what we’ll do. You send us the million, and the day Elvis goes up and gets the Academy
Award, we’ll send you back $500,000.”

Parker put little store in industry kudos. “They’ll never win any Academy Awards,” he said of Elvis’s films in 1960. “All they’re good for is to make
money.”

At last, the Colonel had his dancing chicken.

W
HILE
negotiating the film deals that would carry Elvis through the decade, the Colonel was heavy with
worry. Since the late autumn of ’60, he had received a series of troubling letters from Holland that threatened to topple the delicate balance of his world.

In the spring of 1960, a Dutch housewife named Nel Dankers–van Kuijk visited her hairdresser in Eindhoven, and thumbed through the new issue of
Rosita,
a Belgian women’s
magazine. There she saw a photograph that stopped her heart. A young American singing star, Elvis Presley, just home from the army in his handsome dress blues, waved to his fans from the doorway of
a train.

But it was the big man standing behind him who caught her eye. He looked so much like her younger brother Jan. Then she saw his name—Tom Parker. Wasn’t that the same name scrawled at
the bottom of those strange letters from the States some thirty years before?

“My God,” the stunned Nel said aloud. “That is our Dries!”

Afterward, Nel had telephoned her brother Ad. First Ad gazed at the face in disbelief, and then he compared it to old family photographs. Now Ad was certain that the famous Colonel Parker was
their own long-lost brother.

“It seemed like a fairy tale,” he said, but the rest of the family also saw the resemblance. Through the years, they had received the odd postcard, or an envelope containing a
miniature American flag, a not so subtle statement of their brother’s loyalties. Now several of them began writing, mostly in their native language, which Parker could barely read anymore.
They got only Elvis memorabilia in return.

Finally, nineteen-year-old Ad Jr. decided to send a plaintive letter, an
appeal to the Colonel’s heart. He could understand that Parker wasn’t interested in
relatives he hadn’t seen in so many years, he wrote in English, but the family needed to know if at last they had found the brother they had mourned so long. “Are you,” he asked,
“really my uncle?”

On January 31, 1961, Parker sat down and answered “Master Ad Van Kuyk Jr.,” as he addressed the envelope, writing at once the most enigmatic and revealing document of his life. He
typed it himself on plain paper, retaining all the odd syntax and spelling (“some-one”) that characterized his letters to Hal Wallis.

The letter began in the third person, as if the author were a secretary. Throughout, in guarded self-protection, he showed himself to be deeply disturbed about an episode that he never quite
defined. He repeatedly asked in a paranoid tone that all his relatives stop writing until they heard from “Mr. Parker,” as the letters were getting mixed in with the fan club mail, and
“I am sure you will agree that this matter if it involves Mr. Parker must be handled very carefully and privately.”

As for why the family had not heard from him, he assured Ad Jr. that “Mr. Parker has felt the same longing and hopes as all of you but must have had a very good reason and many problems so
not to bring them to any of his people at any-time.” Then he cryptically referred to “Friends” who might assist them in the future. “We will try to help in some way to at
least make-up for any mistakes some-one may have made without meaning to do so.”

With that, he bizarrely switched to first person (“Remember me to all of them”) as the text hinted of past deeds and secrets. He signed the letter with a signature that only his
Dutch family would know—“Andre.”

Ad Jr. was proud to have received such a reply but was baffled by its contents. What was Uncle Andre really trying to say, referring to “mistakes some-one may have made without meaning to
do so?”

The letter, sent by air and marked “Special Delivery”—useless in Holland, but still communicating a red code of urgency—arrived in Breda on February 4, 1961. Sixteen days
later, in a surprise turnabout, Ad Sr. was invited to visit his brother in America. The trip, which Parker paid for, was arranged through a Dutch husband and wife with a similar surname—van
Kuijck—living in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Ad Sr. flew to New York on April 9. There he was met by the van Kuijcks, who entertained him for eleven days until the Colonel returned to Los Angeles from the location filming of
Blue
Hawaii.
Then the three traveled to California.

Parker, suspicious that his visitor “was a crook from Europe to blackmail him,” as Ad Jr. says, asked the man outright if he had come for money. Ad Sr. assured
him he had not. Parker stared at his sibling, only four years younger, and then said finally, “Yes, you are my brother.”

They spent a week together, with Parker putting him up at his apartment in Los Angeles, conning a William Morris trainee into showing him the sights, even introducing him to a few colleagues as
a “business associate.” Still, the Colonel kept his distance. He showed no emotion when Ad Sr. told him news of his brothers and sisters.

Ad Sr. had promised the family that he would bring back pictures of himself with their brother, but although Marie obliged, Parker refused to be photographed with him, as if such evidence might
somehow be used against him.

Yet it was important that the family understand just how successful he had become. Before Ad went home, Parker did the unthinkable—he took him to Elvis’s rented home on Perugia Way
and introduced him as his brother. Elvis, watching television with the guys, rose to shake his hand. The Colonel doubtless had a story for why his brother spoke in a thick foreign accent, though
according to Ad Jr., Elvis was neither impressed nor especially curious. Lamar Fike believes Presley never understood the connection. “If Elvis had known, he would have said it. He
couldn’t keep a secret.”

When Ad Sr. returned to Holland, the family was eager for news. What was he like? How had he explained his awful absence? Ad Sr. had few answers for them. They hadn’t talked much about
private matters, he said, other than how Andre had painted sparrows yellow and sold them for canaries, and gypped rube carnival goers with a quarter glued to the side of his ring. Ad Sr. had the
distinct impression he shouldn’t ask too many questions. But he did meet Elvis Presley, the singer their brother had made the most famous man on earth.

In the following months, Ad Sr. wrote his own story for
Rosita,
and in 1967, as the owner of a drugstore where the jukebox played only Elvis records, he gave an interview to Dineke
Dekkers for the Dutch fan club magazine
It’s Elvis Time.
Ad Sr. died in 1992 of emphysema, never fully elaborating on the events to his siblings.

“The family connections in Holland were not close at all,” says Ad Jr. “To me and my mother, he told a little more.” But Ad Jr., a language teacher living in the Dutch
village of Oostburg, keeps it to himself.

I
N
March 1963, Parker worried about the arrival of a different kind of visitor, though there was nothing in
her demeanor to indicate that she would become a pivotal figure in anyone’s life, let alone the Colonel’s. Petite, pretty, empty-headed except for the usual teenage obsessions, and
positively gooney-eyed with love, sixteen-year-old Priscilla Ann Beaulieu had captured Elvis’s heart in Germany, and now she was moving to Memphis.

The stepdaughter of an American air force captain newly stationed near Friedberg, Priscilla had bragged to a girlfriend back in Texas that she was “going over there to meet Elvis.”
She achieved her goal in a week and a half. Lamar Fike remembers that she showed up at the house that first night wearing a blue-and-white sailor suit and white socks. “I said, ‘God
Almighty, Elvis, she’s cute as she can be, but she’s fourteen years old. We’ll end up in prison for life.’ I watched that from the very beginning with abject
fear.”

Parker had long known about her, both from his spies among the entourage, who reported Elvis’s every move, and from stories in the press.
Life
magazine had photographed Priscilla
at the Rhine-Main air base as she waved Elvis good-bye, captioning their picture “The Girl He Left Behind.” Elvis denied that he was smitten (“Not any special one,” he told
reporters when they asked if he’d “left any hearts” in Europe), but an elaboration (“There was a little girl that I was seeing quite often over there . . .”) and a
telltale grin said otherwise. It was she he’d spent his last night with in Germany, and he hadn’t stopped thinking about her, instructing her to write to him on pink stationery so her
letters would stand out in the avalanche of mail. On several occasions, he’d brought her to the States to visit.