Elvis made an appearance at Dave Rosenblum's clothing store, where Mr.
Bellman owned the ladies' shoe department with Lew Sonnier, and the
crowd was so large, the newspaper reported, that it stopped traffic downtown.
One night they went to Gus Stevens' famous Supper Club, "the
nightclub of the Coast," because Elvis wanted to see the comedian
Brother Dave Gardner, and Mr. Gus made a big fuss over them, put them
in a private dining room, and had his picture taken with the rising young
star.
Toward the end of July Elvis had to go back to Memphis for a week,
and when he returned he had a brand-new Lincoln Premiere with a wisteria
purple bottom and a white top, which he said would be "less conspicuous."
He couldn't get back into the "Hack House," so he rented both
sides of a villa which would ordinarily be shared by two families, allowing
June and Elvis to maintain their privacy from the guys. With the time of
Elvis' departure rapidly approaching, they clung to each other more and
more - neither one of them, it seemed, could imagine it ever ending. Finally
he said couldn't she just go with him? She asked her mother, and her
mother said no, but then Elvis said to just leave everything to him. He
had his mother call Mrs. Juanico and assure her that June would be properly
chaperoned. Then he went out to Keesler Air Force Base and persuaded
the father of June's seventeen-year-old friend Patsy, Sergeant
Napier (who June thought would never go for it, not in a million years),
to let his daughter accompany them. Then, when Sarge agreed, he enlisted
their friend Buddy to drive.
On the last night at the villa, with the older Presleys down for one
final visit, June stayed the night, falling asleep in his arms. When she woke
J U LY-A U G U S T 1 9 5 6 3 1 5
up early and started to get dressed, he pulled her back into bed, and they
started fooling around, as they frequently did, wrestling and giggling and
carrying on. "We had spent night after night falling asleep in one another's
artns without anything beyond a lot of kissing and a little touching.
Elvis respected women, I think because he respected his mother so
much, and he always stopped before I would ever have to say no. But this
one time I didn't want to say stop, and I don't think he wanted to stop
either, so I got hysterical with giggling - that's what I do when I get nervous
- and then my giggling rubbed off on him, and here we were rolling
over and over on top of one another without any clothes on just
laughing our asses off, because we were both afraid of what we were
about to do. And then we stopped, and all of a sudden there was a little
tap at the door, and it was Mrs. Presley. She said, 'I heard it was quiet in
here, and then I heard giggling, and then I heard quiet again. So I thought
I'd better come see. You know, maybe we'd better get June on some pills
to keep her from having too many babies.'
"Neither one of us ever said anything about it like 'I'm sorry it went
almost that far.' It was more like, 'Boy, we almost did it, June, didn't we?'
That was his comment. 'We almost did it, didn't we, baby?' And I said,
'We almost did.' He said, 'That was close, wasn't it?' Like it was fun for
him, and it was fun for me, too, and it was close. After that, we really
didn't have too many more occasions when we were totally alone. There
was only a few times - but it never really got as close as it did that
night."
Then he was gone. He would meet them in MiaIni, he said. Just look
for Red or Junior or Gene - any one of those three would take care of
them.
TH E Y A R R I V E D in MiaIni on Friday, August 3, just as Elvis was going
on for the first of three daily shows at the Olympia Theatre, a vaudeville
redoubt from the 1920S still resplendent with stuffed peacocks and a
ceiling twinkling with painted stars in a painted sky. June was immediately
ushered backstage, where a Miami News reporting team discovered
her and recorded that
she reportedly stroked [Elvis'] brow between stage shows.... Furthermore.
June Juanico, 18, the Biloxi beauty whom Presley evidently
3 I 6 ", E L V I S A N D J U N E
prefers to aspirin, admitted that Elvis is as unsteady in love as he is on
the stage. "It would be nice if Elvis loved me as much as I love him,"
June sighed. "But right now he's married to his career and he isn't
thinking of marriage." June, whose hair is bobbed Italian-style, said
she's going on the Presley tour of six [additional] Florida cities and
New Orleans. But when he returns to Memphis, she said, "I don't
know just what I'll do."
Interviewed in the tunnel underneath the Olympia stage, June recounted
the story of their meeting and subsequent courtship.
"Well, you know how love is. Eight months went by, and I never
heard from him."... Overhead, while June was talking and posing
for us deep down under the stage, Presley was warming up and she
didn't want to miss even one performance.... We asked why the
girls, especially the younger set, threw such hysteriCs - and how
come she didn't scream. Without missing a knee jerk or bounce June
replied: "If you were a member of the opposite sex you'd appreciate
him, too. And I do feel like screaming."
They went back to the Robert Clay Hotel after the final performance.
Elvis' two-week-old Lincoln was covered with names and messages and
phone numbers. There had been reporters underfoot all day, and Elvis
was irritated both with himself and with them. At a press conference that
afternoon he had stumbled over a question about the Suez Canal crisis,
and he felt like he had made a fool of himself. He told June, "Well, I
shouldn't have said anything then. I should have waited and thought
about it for a second and not come out with anything so dumb." June and
Patsy had their own room, of course, and after taking a shower Elvis
came back to see them - and to get away from the Colonel and the boys.
He lay down on the twin bed with June, touched her as ifhe couldn't believe
she was really there, fooled around with Patsy, a mischievous little
sister as no-bullshit and sharp-tongued as June, murmured sweet nothings
inJune's ear, and then, before she knew it, was fast asleep.
The next day June's interview ran in the newspaper, and the Colonel
came storming into the dressing room before the first show. His gaze
went first to June, then back to Elvis, and he had the paper in his hand.
J U L Y-A U G U S T 1 9 5 6 '" 3 1 7
"Son, we can't have this kind of publicity," he declared, face red, eyes flaring,
rapping the newspaper loudly against his palm. "You've got to do
something about this, son," he announced again meaningfully. For the
first time since she had known him, Elvis looked really scared. "What is it,
Colonel?" he asked, stuttering the way he always did when he was agitated.
"Read it yourself, son, and make damn sure you do something
about it."
Elvis was still upset after the show - he seemed to blame her for giving
the interview, he seemed to feel like if she hadn't talked to "that damn
reporter," no one would ever have noticed her presence here in Miami.
He was obviously just frustrated and upset, and when he finally calmed
down he decided to go car shopping with his manager while June went
back to the hotel. On a whim he plunked down $10,800 for a white Lincoln
Continental just like Buddy's, with his brand-new lipstick-covered
Premiere used as a trade-in. A reporter tracked him down as he lingered
in the showroom and asked about June. "Now this is the way it is," Elvis
declared nervously. "I got twenty-five girls I date regular. She's just one of
the girls." "They show up sometimes eight at a time," chimed in the Colonel,
seemingly restored to good humor, "all claiming they're his 'steadies.'
One girl even claimed she was my daughter, and I don't have a
daughter."
Later, when the Colonel came to Elvis' hotel room, he barely gave
June a look. "Here, I thought you might want to see this," he said, handing
Gene a copy of the script for the picture they were going to start filming
in Hollywood in three weeks. Then he turned on his heel and
slammed the door. Elvis grabbed at the script eagerly, and he and June
started reading through it, but he got impatient and couldn't resist turning
the pages to find out how it ended. He was keenly disappointed when
he discovered that the character he played was going to die. "He said,
June, I don't want to die in my first movie.' I said, 'Why not? I think it's a
good idea. I always remember the character who dies. Happy endings you
forget. Sad endings stay with you longer.' "
For the final show Elvis told everyone to be sure to be in the cars
when he started the last song, not when he finished. He told June to stay
away from the Colonel, who would be preoccupied with selling his pictures
and souvenirs anyway; after all, he had to feel like he was doing
something. In the car as they traveled through the night, they held each
3 1 8 ", E L V I S AND J U N E
other. H e put an unlighted cigar in his mouth and made fun of the Colonel,
bravely declaring, "You're seeing too much of this girl from Biloxi.
She's not good for you, son. You can't be linked to any one girl. For God's
sake, don't get her pregnant. You do, and you're through in this business,
that's for sure." They laughed till the tears streamed down from their
eyes, but June knew his bravery in the dark would never see the light of
day. He was trying to look out for them all, Red and Junior and Gene and
June and her friends, his family, his fans, they were all counting on him,
they were all looking up to him, and some part of him felt like none of
this would have been possible, all of it could end in a minute, without the
Colonel. So he tried to take care of the problems he could take care of, he
did all he could to keep Red and Junior in line, he wanted, thought June,
to make everything come out all right.
The next day, in Tampa, the shit really hit the fan. The Miami paper
had interviewed June's mother over the telephone and then set her
quotes against Elvis' and the Colonel's. Under the headline "Elvis Denies
Biloxi Beauty Is His 'Steady,' " Mrs. Mae Juanico was quoted as saying
"- in no uncertain terms - that 'The Pelvis' had asked her daughter to
be 'his permanently' in three years.... 'I don't object to her making the
trip,' Mrs. Juanico said. 'He's a nice boy, and June is a good girl. I talked to
his parents and they said Elvis would take good care of her.... He said he
can't get married for at least three years, and he asked her to wait for
him.' " The Colonel was rigid with rage, the boys reacted to Elvis' quote
that he had twenty-four other girlfriends by saying, "Yeah, that's why he
takes us along, we take care of the overflow," and Elvis wanted June to
call her mother right away and tell her not to talk to anyone else - he
didn't want to hear about her defending her daughter'S honor, he just
didn't want any more of this shit.
There were two shows that day at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory,
sponsored by the Seratoma Civic Club, with seats at S1.50 and S2.00. There
were boxes set up for a stage, no house P A, two microphones, and two
amps, with the same incongruous procession of vaudeville acts that AI
Dvorin, the Chicago booking agent, had been supplying since the spring,
amounting to an hour and a half of mediocre warm-ups preceding the
main twenty-minute show. "Fuck you very much," Elvis said over the
din, but no one could make out the words, the music, or the remarks. "It
was more than obvious," wrote Anne Rowe, a reporter for the St. Petersburg
Times who was there for an interview, "that he loved every scream
J U L Y-AU G U S T I 9 5 6 '" 3 I 9
and yell... and every minute on that stage. H e wrestled with the mike,
breaking two apart in his frenzy, and finally, with perspiration pouring
down his face, he practically tore his jacket off and let go on two more
numbers."
He felt like a different person, he told June, when he was onstage: "I
don't know, it's hard to explain. It's like your whole body gets goose
bumps, but it's not goose bumps. It's not a chill either. It's like a surge of
electricity going through you. It's almost like making love, but it's even
stronger than that." Did it happen to all entertainers? June asked him. "I
don't know. The few I've talked to experience excitement and nerves, but
they must not feel the way I do. If they did, they would say more about it,
don't you think? They say they get nervous, but after they sing a few lines
they calm down. Hell, I don't calm down till two or three hours after I
leave the stage. Sometimes I think my heart is going to explode."
HE P L A Y E D L A KE L A N D, St. Petersburg, and Orlando, using Tampa
as his home base for the first two. When he played Lakeland on
Monday, he did an interview backstage with Tampa Tribune reporter Paul
Wilder, which was scheduled to run the following month in TV Guide.
Wilder had been with the paper for years and in fact had covered Tom
Parker on a regular basis in his column "In Our Town" when the Colonel
was merely Tampa's inventive animal-control officer. He had reviewed
Elvis' show in Tampa with relative indifference (his daughter, Paula, had
covered the teenager's angle with considerably more fervor), but he
began his interview, with unimaginable insensitivity, by reading lengthy
excerpts from one of the most vicious write-ups Elvis had ever received.
" 'The biggest freak in show business history: " Wilder read, from
Herb Rau's column in the Miami News, in a flat, droning voice. " 'Elvis
can't sing, can't play the guitar - and can't dance. He has two thousand
idiots per show, yet every time he opens his mouth, plucks a guitar string,
or shakes his pelvis like any striptease babe in town....' Do you," he
asked the startled performer, "shake your pelvis like any striptease babe in
town?"
For one of the few times in his career Elvis actually showed anger, not
just for himself but for his fans. After first stipulating that Wilder probably
knew about striptease babes because that's where he must hang out, he
protested the slur on his audience. "Sir, those kids that come here and pay
3 2 0 '" E L V I S A N D J U N E
their money t o see this show come to have a good time. I mean, I'm not
running Mr. Rau down, but I just don't see that he should call those people
idiots. Because they're somebody's kids. They're somebody's decent
kids, probably, that was raised in a decent home, and he hasn't got any
right to call those kids idiots. If they want to pay their money to come out
and jump around and scream and yell, it's their business. They'll grow up
someday and grow out of that. While they're young, let them have their
fun. Don't let some old man that's so old he can't get around sit around
and call them a bunch of idiots. Because they're just human beings like
he is."
Okay, said Wilder, returning to his readings. But what did he think
about Rau suggesting that what his female fans really needed was " 'a
solid slap across the mouth?' Have you any comment to that?" "Yeah, but
I don't think I should say it." "Okay, okay, this isn't over the air, this is for
TV Guide, " Wilder inexplicably persisted, but Elvis continued to show a
remarkable degree of restraint. He still didn't think he should voice his
reaction. "Okay -," said Wilder. " 'Cause I'm a singer, not a fighter,"
said Elvis, to a background of sardonic laughter. What about all this talk
about his gyrations? Wilder asked him. "I read a clipping, somewhere you
were attributed as saying that Holy Roller -"
"I have never used that expression," Elvis exploded angrily. "That's
another deal. See, I belong to an Assembly of God church, which is a Holiness
church. I was raised up in a little Assembly of God church, and some
character called them Holy Rollers -" "Oh, I see. Well, you -" "And
that's where that got started. I always attended church where people
sang, stood up and sang in the choir and worshiped God, you know. I
have never used the expression 'Holy Roller.' " What about the music in
his church? Wilder wondered innocently enough. "Do you think you
transfer some of that rhythm into your -"
For the first time Elvis seemed to lose his composure altogether.
"That's not it. That's not it at all," he practically shouted, obviously stung
by an implication far more sweeping than the disInissal of his music.
"There was some article came out where I got the jumping around from
my religion. Well, my religion has nothing to do with what I do now. Because
the type of stuff I do now is not religious music, and my religious
background has nothing to do with the way I sing."
After that even Wilder seemed to get it, and he backed off on his questioning,
so much so that by the end of the interview he appeared to be
J U LY-A U G U S T 1 95 6 3 2 1
totally disarmed. Then, with the show going o n in the background, h e interviewed
his old friend the Colonel, but it was obvious that he never had
a chance. Was there a possibility of more frequent television appearances?
"I think one of the main reasons that I don't book Mr. Presley on television
more often is that to my way of thinking many of the artists today
are overexposed on television.... My way of thinking may be wrong on
this. However, I'll have plenty of time to find out next year. If it doesn't
work this way, we'll try something new." The wiggling, and the criticism
it provoked? "I have tried to figure out many angles. First of all, for many
months we were touring the country, and Elvis had never appeared on
television, and the only way people would know about Elvis was by his
records. And I have tried repeatedly to play his records and figure out
some way where I could see him wiggle while listening to his records.
Which is impossible." Elvis' future as an actor? "Well, Mr. Wilder, when
we made the screen test for Mr. Hal Wallis at Paramount Studios in Hollywood,
they tested Mr. Presley in a singing role, and also, while he was
there, they gave him a short story or some play - whatever you call it -
and Mr. Wallis decided after seeing the test that Mr. Presley was capable
of starring in a dramatic production. When and how I don't know, but
Mr. Presley had no training in acting, and I saw the test, and if I was not
his manager, I could not be more excited about a new personality than I
am now being Elvis Presley's manager, for his acting ability was the greatest
.... I think Elvis Presley could play any role he makes up his mind to
play."
He did three shows in Lakeland, three in St. Petersburg (renamed "St.
Presleyburg" for the day), two in Orlando, and two in Daytona Beach. By
the time that he arrived in Jacksonville on Friday, August 10, the town had
taken on all the trappings of a religious revival. The faithful were gathered
as always in a long line in front of the box office from the predawn hours
before the first show; a minister was offering up prayers for Presley at the
Trinity Baptist Church after declaring that the singer had " achieved a new
low in spiritual degeneracy"; reporters from two national magazines, Life
and Collier's, were on hand to cover his every move; a contest winner
named Andrea June Stephens was flown in with her mother from Atlanta
by Hit Parader magazine for a date she had won with an essay entitled
"Why I Want to Meet Elvis"; June Juanico was hissed at and gossiped
about and cursed as a whore by girls who had read about her or just didn't
like the confident way she stood at "his" side; and Judge Marion Gooding,
3 2 2 '" E L V I S A N D J U N E
who was determined not to see a repeat of the previous year's performance
when "aroused fans ripped nearly all [of Elvis'] clothes off," met
with the Optimist Club and prepared warrants charging Presley with impairing
the morals of minors, which he said he would serve if the singer
acted in a fashion that "put obscenity and vulgarity in front of our children."
Judge Gooding was at the first performance at 3:30 Friday afternoon
and subsequently invited the singer to a meeting in chambers. There Elvis
expressed his shock at the judge's reaction ("I can't figure out what I'm
doing wrong," he said to reporters; "I know my mother approves of what
I'm doing"), and the judge repeated his determination to serve the warrants
if the show were not toned down. A compromise was reached, and
Judge Gooding was satisfied that Presley complied with the agreement,
"judging from reports of the later shows." Meanwhile, the Jacksonville
Journal informed its readers, a representative of the American Guild of Variety
Artists told Presley that, because of his suggestive body movements,
it would be necessary to post bond and join the guild (which represented
exotic dancers, among others), or they would block the show. The Colonel
took care of that, and Presley, noted the paper, "kept a nonchalant
attitude throughout the day," answering reporters' questions, taking Andrea
June Stephens out for a cheeseburger (which Andrea June declined),
and, in place of the body movements, wiggling his little finger lasciviously
in a move that sent his audience into paroxysms of ecstasy. Back in the
hotel room afterward he told June, "Baby, you should have been there.
Every time DJ. did his thing on the drums, I wiggled my finger, and the
girls went wild. I never heard screams like that in my life. I showed them
sons of bitches - calling me vulgar. Baby, you don't think I'm vulgar, do
you?" And he put a pair of June's underpants on his head and glided
around the room.
WI T H T H E T O U R ' S triumphant conclusion in New Orleans, he returned
to Memphis, while June went home to Biloxi. The Life
magazine team was still with him, and he was never far removed from a
reporter's question or a photographer's flashbulb. The Life photographer
got a picture of the fence that had been installed just a few weeks before,
complete with musical staff and notes. It didn't really keep the fans out -
J U LY-AU G U S T 1 9 5 6 '" 323
Life also ran a picture of some girls plucking blades of grass from the lawn,
and the newspaper reported lines of cars so long that the neighbors called
the police. Vernon's brother, Vester, still working full-time at Precision
Tool, was now moonlighting as a kind of security guard, but mainly he
just chatted with the fans or tried to get them to keep their racket down
so Grandma and Gladys could get some rest. There was no question of
running them off: Elvis wouldn't hear of it. He knew who he owed his
success to.
There were only four days left before his scheduled departure for Hollywood,
and he had a lot to pack in. On the first night he went out to the
Fairgrounds, and Red got into another fight. The next day Vernon told
Red that he didn't want him around anymore, that Red wouldn't be going
out to Hollywood with Elvis, because they just didn't need that kind of
bad publicity. Red got pissed off and said he was going to join the Marines;
he was mad because he didn't hear Elvis speaking up for him, and
what else was he going to do, anyway? Elvis saw a lot of Barbara Hearn,
and he stopped off to see Dewey down at the radio station almost every
night - they laughed and talked about the old days. Dewey
.
was just
about to start a TV show, which would go on at 8:00 on Saturday night,
just after Lawrence Welk. "You better warn those Welk listeners to grab
that dial quick," Dewey told Bob Johnson at the paper, " 'cause if they
don't switch quick, I'll be right there at 'em."
Everyone was talking about Hollywood, and no one who knew him
doubted that he would make a big success. Sam Phillips told him that he
would be another James Dean, and Dewey figured he would just nail all
the little starlets he met. He heard from the Colonel out in Hollywood
that there were going to be one or two songs in the picture, and that was
all right, as long as they didn't take away from the dramatic impact of the
role. Was he going to take acting lessons? the reporters all asked. No, he
told each and every one, although he had not recited so much as a single
line onstage in his life, "I don't think that you learn to become an actor, I
think you just, maybe you've got a little bit of acting talent and develop it.
If you learn to be an actor, in other words, if you're not a real actor you're
false." On the precipice of something he had never experienced
before, he seemed strangely serene -but then why shouldn't he be? Everything
he had ever dreamed had come true, so far. ''I've made a study
of Marlon Brando," he confided to Lloyd Shearer when Shearer had come
3 2 4 E L V I S A N D J U N E
down t o Memphis t o d o a story for Sunday Parade the month before. 'Tve
made a study of poor Jimmy Dean. I've made a study of myself, and I
know why girls, at least the young 'uns, go for us. We're sullen, we're
broodin', we're something of a menace. I don't understand it exactly,
but that's what the girls like in men. I don't know anything about Hollywood,
but I know you can't be sexy if you smile. You can't be a rebel if
you grin."
S T U D Y I N G L I N E S W I T H C O S T A R R I C H A R D E G A N A N D
D I R E C T O R R O B E R T W E B B, R I G H T. (M I C H A E L O C H S A R C H I V E S)
LOVE M E T E N D E R
HE A R R I V E D I N H O L L Y W O O D on Friday, August 17· There
were signs as he got off the plane at the Los Angeles airport
announcing "Elvis for President," but when reporters asked
him about it, he indicated no serious interest in the post, declaring,
''I'm strictly for Stevenson. I don't dig the intellectual bit, but I'm
telling you, man, he knows the most." With that he was off to his hotel,
the Hollywood Knickerbocker, on Ivar off Hollywood Boulevard, where
the Colonel was already staying and where he and his cousin Gene occupied
a spacious suite on the eleventh floor.
He reported to the studio for meetings and costume fittings at the beginning
of the following week. Unsure exactly what preparations were required,
he had memorized the entire script, not just his own part but everyone
else's, too. "I have no trouble memorizing," he told a reporter
proudly. "I once memorized General MacArthur's farewell address, and I
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