The saddest thing about Elvis Presley is how his decline and fall have obscured the wonder of his talent. He was a riveting, abandoned performer who created a fusion of country, crooning and rhythm and blues that was groundbreaking. He became the world's most famous entertainer. Leonard Bernstein once called him “the greatest cultural force in the 20th century.”
And yet what he became at the end overwhelmed what he was. The widely seen images linger: a bloated, stoned, mush-mouthed Elvis in his last years, stuffed into gaudy jump suits, dispensing sweaty scarves to adoring fans, slurring his repertoire. At his sad end in August, 1977, the one-time wild and wonderful “Hillbilly Cat” had morphed into a lost being – drug-addled, near-incontinent – dead on his bathroom floor at 42, his famous jet-black hair snow-white at its roots.
Baby, Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him, by Alanna Nash, HarperCollins, 684 pages, $32.99
For many, then, Elvis Presley is an oddball icon or a near-forgotten legend. Still, there will be plenty of loyal fans celebrating what would have been his 75th birthday today. For those fans – and for any reader curious about rock 'n' roll's greatest star and the arc of his fame – there is a major new contribution to Presley lore: Baby, Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him.
The book takes its title from the first of Presley's classic Sun Records singles to be a national hit. (The Arthur Gunter song peaked at No. 5 on Billboard's country chart in July, 1955, and contains the scary line that John Lennon later appropriated – “I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.”)
Presley's fame and vanity forbade the mature adult relationship
Don't let the title fool you. This is no cheesy photo book showing big-haired women staring adoringly at the handsome star. This is a lengthy, scholarly work by Nashville author/journalist Alanna Nash, who has written widely on Elvis. Her focus on Presley's relationships with women takes us on a long and often fascinating journey from the first and greatest love of his life – his mother, Gladys – through the “good girls” he wooed, the “road girls” he took to the back seat of his Cadillac, through the movie stars, the teenager he found in Germany and moulded, married, then ignored (Priscilla Beaulieu), the soulmate he found too late (the dazzling Ann-Margret), the starlets, the flight attendants, the burlesque stars and the Las Vegas hostesses all the way to the end – where a 21-year-old bank teller dumps him and an alleged gold-digging fiancée sleeps in his tomb-like Graceland bedroom as he dies.
“Elvis loved women,” says one of the many voices here. That appears so. But it's complicated. Presley's fame and vanity forbade the mature adult relationship. Instead, he constantly pursued women and juggled girlfriends. “Elvis got a crush on whoever was handy,” said country star June Carter. “It was just his thing.” It took many forms. He took schooling in sex from exotic dancer Tura Satana, star of Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. Well into his 30s, he continued near-chaste relationships with 15-year-old girls. He also, Nash says, had an “obsession with virgins, beauty queens and tiny brunettes with china doll faces.”
Women loved him too – for his charisma, his energy and his dark, sensual good looks. He was “absolutely the best-looking man I've ever seen,” says one-time fiancée Anita Wood. He was “a nice, well-spoken, well-mannered southern guy who was just so hot,” says Raquel Welch, then a background dancer in one of Presley's lamentable low-budget movies.
