The Colonel (62 page)

“I teased him about it a couple of times,” remembers Bill Willard. “I saw him at breakfast over at Leo’s Celebrity Deli and I said, ‘How’s the book coming
along?’ And he grumbled and grumped and turned away. [Loanne] looked at me and just shook her head.”

By then, most of Parker’s oldest friends were dead or dying, unable to confirm or deny the Colonel’s mythology. When he wasn’t in the casino or working for Barron Hilton, he
said, he spent his time reading. “I’ve got plenty to do . . . I think a lot . . . People take up exercise, you know, but I exercise my brain.”

To do so, he wrote doggerel poetry and sent it to friends such as Jerry Weintraub. And even though he still got up at five
A.M.
, he watched Elvis’s movies on
late-night TV. But he was more entranced by the television evangelists, particularly Pat Robertson, who built a $20-million studio with viewers’ contributions, Parker told one visitor, a
gleam in his eye. And he never quit dreaming up promotions, entering into a business deal with Vegas entrepreneur Hank Cartwright to sell back-to-the-’50s memorabilia via catalogue.

Mostly, he stayed on the telephone and dictated letters to Loanne, who wondered why there were no Colonel fan clubs in Europe, considering the amount of overseas mail he
received.

“He just got lost after Elvis died,” says June Carter Cash, whom Parker represented in the early ’50s. “He would send me little notes saying he was still thinking about
me and still loved me—anything to make him feel like he was close to the old days and to the things that really started it all.”

While he took great pride in boasting how many old pals like Gene Autry and others kept in touch (“Eddy [Arnold] calls me probably at least once a month”), the truth was that he
often did the calling, greeting familiar voices with his usual “kid, how you doin’?” He particularly made comforting calls to the sick, phoning the cancer-riddled Alan Fortas
every Sunday, and keeping in daily contact with British fan club president Todd Slaughter after Slaughter’s heart transplant in 1994.

“He was a lonely old man who came over from a foreign country alone and terrified,” says a friend of thirty years, “and he didn’t know how to accept somebody who loved
him for just being the Colonel. But he wanted to be loved more than anybody I ever knew.”

Others saw it, too. Elvis’s piano player, Tony Brown, thought Parker had mellowed in old age, finding him surprisingly “very nice” when the two met again in the Colonel’s
last years. To some extent, it seemed to be true. Though he never forgave Byron Raphael for leaving the fold and largely cast him out “like a king would banish you from the court,” as
one observer notes, he made up with a number of people he had cast aside—the still-infatuated Trude Forsher, for example—or whose feathers he had ruffled, including Julian Aberbach and
Lamar Fike. “We hadn’t spoken in probably ten years,” says Fike. “He said, ‘Do you still love me?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I still love you. How could I not,
for crying out loud? You’re part of my life.’ He acted like nothing ever happened.”

But he never lost his paranoia. When psychologist-author Peter Whitmer contacted him for an interview for his book
The Inner Elvis: A Psychological Biography of Elvis Aaron Presley,
Parker felt so threatened he telephoned Joe Esposito and Henri Lewin, the retired president of the Hilton, and “warned them about what to say.” And after the publication of
Elvis
Meets the Beatles,
author Chris Hutchins was shocked to get an irate phone call, Parker “shouting very loudly” because Hutchins had written about the Colonel’s secret shrine.
“It wasn’t like a manager lecturing
an errant journalist. It was more like a father telling off his son—he was quite a bitter old boy.”

The real problem, says Lamar Fike, is that Parker expected to die by age seventy and never thought he’d outlast his enemies. And if living to old age was his punishment, Parker began
wearing every day of it on his face and on his body. His eyes still snapped, but his skin—so thin it seemed translucent—was speckled with liver spots, the backs of his hands mottled to
an almost solid brown. His flesh hung in crepelike folds at his neck; his eyes sank into bottomless blue wells. Plagued by congestive heart disease and a recurring bronchitis that often slipped
into pneumonia, he looked not old, but ancient. His arthritis was so painful that he sometimes canceled engagements, and it took all his strength to hoist his weight off a chair. But, he insisted,
“I’m healthy up in my mind.”

For the most part, he pretended all was well, keeping secret his hospital stays and appointments with several cardiologists. If people asked why he’d given up his beloved cigars, he
claimed they cost too much and never mentioned his persistent cough or difficulty breathing. When he insisted on going to Los Angeles to take the children of one of his favorite vendors to the
circus, he faltered, out of breath and ghostly pale, on the walk to the top of the arena.

He made his last two major public appearances in 1994. In March, he returned to Palm Springs for the ceremony to unveil three stars in the sidewalk at the corner of Palm Canyon Drive and
Tahquitz Canyon Way—one for Elvis, one for Rick Nelson, and the last for Parker, an honor arranged by the Colonel’s former protégé and Nelson’s manager, Greg
McDonald. That June, the Hilton threw a sumptuous bash for his eighty-fifth birthday, and Priscilla Presley, among others, flew in from Los Angeles.

Only a month before, Parker had spoken brazenly of Lisa Marie’s marriage to Michael Jackson, spewing disdainfully that Elvis would not have approved. And he had taken other jabs at the
estate, insisting he had never “exploited Elvis as much as he’s being exploited today.” Yet at the party, all seemed well. Jack Soden testified to his help and suggestions in
running Graceland since it opened to the public, and Priscilla dutifully hugged and kissed the Colonel and Loanne. “I’m still working for you, Elvis,” an emotional Parker said,
wiping his eyes and pointing a finger skyward. He’d arrived in a golf cart, not wishing to use his wheelchair. Everyone knew this was the last of the big birthdays.

Throughout 1995, his health continued to deteriorate. When his old friend Gabe Tucker saw him the following year, “he knew he was dyin’. He never said
nothin’ about it, but he didn’t want us to go. God, he was in bad shape. I seen him breakin’ fast.” By September 1996, he was essentially housebound. But still potent and
quick with advice. He entertained a few visitors such as Jimmie Dale Gilmore, the Texas singer managed by Parker acolyte Mike Crowley. Gilmore was enchanted: “He said Elvis was as hard a
worker as he ever knew, and it looked like tears were coming to his eyes.” Anyone who demonized the Colonel, Gilmore said, “will never convince me.”

Such visits buoyed him. “In the last years,” Freddy Bienstock offers, “he had hardly any business. People had shunned him, or he shunned them. He would tell me I was the
closest friend he had.” The two last spoke in November 1996. “I was supposed to go out that fall, and I told him I couldn’t make it, but I’d definitely be there in February.
And he said, ‘I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.’ ”

But by December, the Colonel could barely speak. When friends called, Loanne had to talk for him and relay messages back and forth. Still, at eighty-seven, he clung to his entrepreneurial
dreams. In one of his last visits with Jerry Weintraub, they schemed about putting their own relationship on film.

“He was my mentor, my teacher, my father figure,” says Weintraub. “He told me he loved me, and I said, ‘I love you, too,’ and I kissed him, and he kissed me.
I’m glad we had that moment.”

On Monday afternoon, January 20, 1997, Parker was at home in his living room, perusing a pile of Christmas cards and letters. Loanne, in another room, suddenly heard a thud. She called out to no
answer, and found him slumped in his chair. The Colonel had suffered a stroke.

At Valley Hospital, Loanne got on the phone and called her husband’s circle. Bruce Banke, Parker’s loyal contact at the Hilton, arrived to find the Colonel still in the emergency
room. Banke leaned over and took his hand. “Colonel, it’s Bruce.” The old man opened his eyes, squeezed his friend’s finger, and then faded. “I was the last person he
saw,” Banke says. “He never regained consciousness.” The following morning, just before ten, he died. Loanne arranged for his cremation, though the final resting place of his
ashes—not in Palm Cemetery, as reported—would become as mysterious as the rest of his peculiar life. His death certificate would list his birthplace as Holland but his citizenship as
American.

Four days later, the invitation-only guests who filtered into the service
at the Hilton were a predictable lot, a few famous faces—Eddy Arnold, Sam
Phillips—mixed in with hotel honchos, record company execs, highbrow carnies, and swarthy men in dark, monied suits. Elvis-ographers large and small paid their respects, as did Phyllis
McGuire, once Sam Giancana’s girlfriend. Ron Jacobs, the radio personality Parker had befriended in Hawaii so long ago, draped a fresh maile lei around a giant picture of the Colonel.

Almost no one noticed Tom Diskin, who after leaving Parker’s employ upon Elvis’s death, had finally made a life for himself, marrying a French Elvis fan and producing a daughter.
Scrimping through the years, he had nonetheless invested his stock and bonuses wisely, buying a luxurious California mansion before moving back to Nashville. He would die the following year in a
traffic accident, leaving a multimillion-dollar estate, much of it in property and land.

As with the classic ant-and-grasshopper tale, the boss Diskin had come to mourn this January afternoon—a man who had earned an estimated $100 million from Elvis Presley alone—left
behind only $913,000 in savings bonds, securities, and memorabilia. Much of that would go to Marie’s grandchildren, Parker’s secretary Jim O’Brien, and Mary, Patti, and Tom
Diskin—hush money, some would say. The charitable trust disappeared in probate.

“How and where do you begin to celebrate the memories of a man - who’s been so dear to us?” asked Parker’s Las Vegas lawyer and master of ceremonies, John
O’Reilly.

Speaker after speaker sobbed in eulogizing “a very emotional man,” whose eyes “were but windows to the world of kindness and love.” Jerry Schilling read a letter from
Tommy Sands, who thanked the Colonel for making all his dreams come true, and Henri Lewin remembered that “to work with him was actually working for him.” “You and Elvis are
together again,” Lewin mourned in his heavy German accent. “I know you both looked forward to this moment.”

Of those who lauded the man who had promoted his client’s name into the consciousness of two generations, only Priscilla Presley was matter-of-fact. “Elvis and the Colonel made
history together, and the world is richer, better, and far more interesting because of their collaboration. And now I need to locate my wallet, because I noticed there was no ticket booth on the
way in here, but I’m sure that Colonel must have arranged for some sort of toll on the way out.”

Loanne, who announced she hoped one day to erect a monument to
such a great man, had planned carefully for this day, accenting her simple dress with a glittering
diamanté brooch fashioned in the shape of a snowman. But Mrs. Colonel had none of her late husband’s power.

The new head potentate was Priscilla Presley, who, in a year’s time, would send her late ex-husband back out on the road to fulfill his dream to tour abroad. “Elvis: The
Concert” would pair live performance from fifty of Presley’s former instrumentalists and singers with video of their old boss on stage. For two hours, a virtual Elvis, circa
1970–1973, would sing, strut the stage, show off his karate moves, and mumble to the band, all on a twenty-foot screen.

Colonel Parker’s idea for the satellite-beamed “Aloha from Hawaii” had been brilliant—Presley traveled the world without ever having to leave the States. But now Elvis
wasn’t even required to be alive. His jumpsuited specter would sell out shows and earn rave reviews in America, Europe, Australia, and Japan, many fans reporting the event was as good or
better than seeing him in the flesh.

Such bodacious sleight of hand was a weird and wonderful bit of humbuggery, a tribute befitting the greatest carny con man of them all.

The following abbreviations are used in the notes:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION