The rebel, p.41
The Rebel, page 41
“They’re all right,” Elvis said. “They’re shootin’ pool with the guys. And I’ve only been up here for a few minutes, goddammit, anyway.”
The Colonel ignored that and continued speaking to Caroline: “But I guess I just got a soft heart, so what about if Elvis takes you downstairs and introduces you to the band. Meanwhile, I’ll have a little chat up here with Jimmy, if he doesn’t mind.” He chuckled. “So I s’pose it’s your pal Jimmy who’s getting punished, ain’t that so, Elvis.”
“I guess so, Colonel,” Elvis mumbled.
Son of a bitch, the Colonel could still intimidate the hell out of him. I wonder what kind of deal Elvis cut. And what the hell has Caroline got me into here with the Colonel?
“Caroline”—the Colonel pronounced it “Kha-roh-line”—“we’ll have a little talk later, before this boy takes you away, okay?” He squeezed Jimmy’s arm to indicate whom he was referring to.
“Sure, Colonel, I’d like that,” Caroline said, giving Jimmy a quick nod, as if to say, “Go do business.”
“You know, Jimmy, Elvis never gives me any credit for understanding what he wants to do. Did Elvis tell you about the deal I’m putting together for him?” The Colonel gave Elvis a pointed look, then opened and closed his hand quickly, dismissing him, tantalizing him. Elvis dutifully escorted Caroline out of the room. “I’ve been talking with Hal Wallis about getting Elvis into a film with John Wayne,” the Colonel continued, talking loudly so Elvis could hear, and then cutting his voice down almost to a whisper. “What do you think of that idea, Jimmy? Elvis would be a gunslinger or something who learns everything from John Wayne, who’s like the teacher, you know what I mean? Except Elvis would be a faster shot than Wayne and end up having to kill him. What do you think?” Jimmy shrugged. “You see, Wayne is a has-been and on his way out, and Elvis is the big thing now.”
“I don’t know if John would see it that way.”
“Elvis will be the lead,” the Colonel insisted. “That’s just the way it is. Now just follow me into my cubbyhole, and we’ll have a little talk.” Indeed, the Colonel did have his own office in Elvis’s California mansion, a large room that was set up like a cafeteria, with a long table covered with an oilcloth set against the far wall, and a kitchenette and an open pantry opposite a polished, mahogany desk. He sat down behind the desk and motioned Jimmy to pull up a stool that was shaped like an elephant’s foot. “I love elephants,” he explained to Jimmy. “Elephant saved my life once. I was dead broke in some one-horse, shit-kicker town in Florida. Didn’t even have enough money to buy a meal, much less pay my hotel bill. But would you believe it, I found an elephant in that hick town.” He rolled his eyes upward, as if that town and that elephant were in heaven right above him, and he was staring right up at them. “It was left over from a circus or some damn thing, and so I borrowed that elephant and put on a promotion for the local grocery store, and that storekeeper—Mr. K. Cee Brannaugh was his name—made more money than he had ever seen before, and I made enough money to live pretty damn well for the next couple of days in that town. Ever since then, pachyderms have had a special place in my heart.”
Jimmy just shook his head. He had just noticed a plastic sign affixed to the front of the Colonel’s desk: ELVIS EXPLOITATIONS.
“Okay,” the Colonel said, turning on a desk lamp with a covered-wagon base, “let’s cut the bullshit and do business.” He lit a cigar.
“Fine with me,” Jimmy said, feeling awkward and angry, angry because this fat clown could actually intimidate him.
“Son, you ain’t ever going to win no election if you can’t look your opponent square in the eye.”
“Well, if you were my opponent, I’d look you square in the eye.”
The Colonel nodded. “I do believe you might.” After a beat he said, “I wouldn’t give you a chance in hell of beating Reagan. Reagan talks nice, he’s got good presence, everybody likes him. Why would voters vote for you?”
“Well, if you can’t get past that, maybe we’ve got nothing to say.”
“No, son, I’m asking you a question.” And so Jimmy answered; he explained the importance to ordinary working people of the free speech movement at Berkeley, black power, Watts, civil rights, and then he went on to Vietnam and free education and why he thought Reagan was dangerous. He explained what Brown had stood for, what he, Jimmy, stood for; and he watched the Colonel as he spoke, waiting for the Colonel’s gaze to drift, watching for him to lose patience, watching for the right button, as Pat Brown would say, pushing the buttons; but the Colonel just watched him, expressionless.
“None of that means shit,” the Colonel said flatly.
“So what does?” Jimmy asked.
“What I do for you, and whether we can come to an agreement.”
Jimmy couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing.
The Colonel leaned back in his chair and puffed on his cigar. “You know how I made Elvis a star? I didn’t let him appear too much in person or on television. It makes the fans clamor for a view of the product.”
“I don’t think that would work very well with an election,” Jimmy said. Jesus, his teeth are yellow.
“If you know how to use the system, it works. Your opponent—is Reagan your opponent? Have you made the decision, or are you just testing the water?”
“I thought you and Caroline have this pipeline,” Jimmy said sarcastically.
“She’s a good girl, your Caroline. Well, answer the question, son.” He grinned. “You know, if you become governor of the great state of California, I’ll have to stop calling you son.”
“I think you should stop calling me son right now.”
“Are you in or out?”
“I’m announcing on Tuesday.”
“You should have gotten me on board immediately.”
“This is immediately,” Jimmy said.
“Reagan is a whore,” the Colonel said. “He’s got all his little bitty bits of information that won’t get anyone’s back up, and he’s trying to talk to everybody and be everywhere, and he’s got this card system those professors set him up with.” The Colonel took a last puff on what had become the stub of his cigar. “I talked to one of them.”
“You what?”
“Oh, us show-business people do get around, don’t we?” A good old boy’s fake, pasted-on smile. “You want to know why the Beatles and their manager are downstairs? Because they’re the opponents. I take them out, and Elvis won’t have any trouble with all those other English faggots like the Rolling Stones and them others.”
“How do you take them out?”
“With kindness. Elvis is the hero of them young boys downstairs. This is going to be the ultimate snow job. It’s all about publicity.”
“I didn’t see any reporters. Caroline told me that everything was on the quiet.”
The Colonel nodded. “That’s right because we’re goin’ to control it. We got a boy here from a British magazine called New Musical something-or-other, and naturally, we got Caroline—”
Son of a bitch.
“—and a nice boy from Rolling Stone and one from The New York Times, but they got to keep everything a secret until it’s all over with, and they weren’t allowed to bring their cameras and tape recorders and all that, either. If you got a hundred reporters, it goes out of control. And I made the deal with the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, that his boys have to come here. They come here to me and Elvis because Elvis is the king, and maybe, if the Beatles are very good, we’ll make them knights or something. But the real snow job has to be out there.” He waved toward the window. “We snow the whole goddamn world. This new goddamn generation loves the Beatles, and if they love the Beatles, they damn well better love Elvis, too. Epstein and his boys get some. We get it all.”
“Yeah, maybe, but I don’t think any of this is relevant to an election, Colonel, with all due respect.”
“Everybody says you’re a nice boy,” the Colonel said. “Are you going to marry that little girl of yours?”
“What?” Jimmy asked. “That’s a hell of a rude question to ask.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t think that’s anyone’s business.”
“I think it should be everyone’s business. Do you love her?”
“My wife is barely cold in her grave. I really don’t—”
“Look, I don’t give a shit what you do—and, here, this is a freebie—I think you should announce on Tuesday, get married next month, and invite everyone in California to your wedding, especially your opponent.”
“What will that accomplish?”
“Put him on your turf. The people will get it. They’re not stupid.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” Jimmy said. “And it seems a pretty extreme way to send out an invitation.”
“Good publicity, but you’ll have to make sure you’ve got the right press and control it because otherwise he’ll be in all the papers doing his hand thing.”
“His what?”
“You don’t know about that? How whenever he has his picture taken, he raises his hand, so it looks like everyone’s deferring to him. If you’re going to kick his butt, Jimmy, you got to know all about him. Maybe you can take away some of his voters, but some you ain’t never going to convince, no matter what, all them people who are scared shitless of the students and the niggers and all that. Maybe you can pick up some of that vote, but what you really got to do is make new rules and pull out new voters, like the students and the nigger lovers and probably the niggers, and all them, and all your fans. The ones that’ll kill for you, Jimmy, that’s who you got to mobilize. You got to pick your fights and your opportunities, but I can tell you, you won’t do none of that right without me. I’ll bet you any bet you care to make on that.”
Bullshit. Cowboy bullshit.
“Like I said, you got to make them feel like they just can’t have you, that they got to work to have you.”
“Yeah, and what do they have to do?”
The Colonel grinned at Jimmy. “They got to get off their fat asses and vote, and you got to give them lots of wedding cake and circuses.”
“Colonel, you’re—”
“Crazy like a fox,” the Colonel said, lighting another cigar and puffing on it until he was wreathed with smoke. “You want to think I’m too uneducated and dumb to get you what you want, that’s fine by me, son. But politics ain’t one bit different from what I been doing for Elvis. Reagan’s people know a little. He’s doing good television. Notice he never does anything that’s too long? Your boy Brown, may he rest in peace, he pissed everybody off with that long commercial that cut into regular television programming, remember that? Nah, you wouldn’t. You weren’t paying attention.” The Colonel paused and examined his cigar.
“Jimmy, trust me, you ain’t got a chance in hell without being married. You got to show all them you got through your grief and you’re responsible. Come to think of it, it’s time for Elvis to be getting married, too. Few years ago that would’ve killed his career dead. Now it’ll help, like with you.” He looked steadily at Jimmy. “Time’s runnin’ out. I got things to do.”
“Did you work this all out with Caroline?”
“Not a word of it. Hell, maybe she won’t want to marry you. I’d be trying like hell to marry her if I was you. But then again, maybe you don’t care if you’re associated with that shiftless generation of beatniks who don’t believe in buyin’ the cow if they can get the milk for free.”
“What do you get out of all this?” Jimmy asked, ignoring the sarcasm.
“Tell you what, if you work with me and you lose, you don’t owe me nothin’ for all my work, except maybe some of my ordinary expenses.”
Yeah, right.
“But if you win, then you do a film with Elvis. My choice. And I take the same percentage from you that I get from Elvis.”
“If I win, I’m not going to have the time to be making motion pictures.”
The Colonel shrugged. “I think you could manage one picture, but if that’s a problem, then you just pay me the equivalent of what I’d be gettin’.”
“And how much would that be?”
“Fifty percent of everything you would’ve earned on the picture,” the Colonel said. “You want to win, you got to sup with the devil—or, in your case, you’d be suppin’ with the angels. Just ask my wife.” A wide yellow grin. “And if you get to be governor, maybe you could do me a little favor here or there.” And then a segue into another story about how the Colonel bet Brian Epstein that Elvis was more popular than the Beatles.
A bass guitar twanged so loudly that Jimmy almost jumped off the stool. Drumrolls, guitars being tightened into tune; then microphone voices, pounding guitar rhythms, breaking glass, the first riffs of a hit song: “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
“Elvis is playing that bass,” the Colonel said proudly. “I can tell. You want to go downstairs? Ain’t going to be able to talk anymore up here.”
THE MUSIC STOPPED WHEN JIMMY AND THE COLONEL ENTERED THE music room.
Elvis was sitting on the edge of a chair, still trying to get used to Paul McCartney’s left-handed Hofner 500/1 bass. The band sat close to Elvis, except for Ringo Starr, who sat behind a set of drums on a raised platform in the middle of the room. Elvis’s friends and bodyguards were all there, lounging on the carpet or on the white sofas. They were all dressed the same: black trousers and black short-sleeved shirts. Elvis, in contrast, was wearing tight gray pants, a red shirt, and a black silk jacket. He looked stoned, but the Beatles looked nervous and awkward in their gray suits with high button jackets. Their collars were open, ties loosened.
They were all in awe of Jimmy, just as they had been in awe of Elvis.
John Lennon was the first to speak. He walked up to Jimmy, extended his hand, and said, “Oh, you must be…James Dean.”
Laughter, and Jimmy retorted, “Oh, I guess you guys must be friends of the Colonel.” He wisecracked with Elvis and the others and then sat down on a couch with Caroline, Bit, and Elvis’s shy, dark-haired girlfriend, Priscilla.
Priscilla nodded to Jimmy, and then, as if she had suddenly embarrassed herself, turned back to watch Elvis and his new best friends.
Caroline waited until everyone settled down, then she squeezed Jimmy’s hand and whispered, “How’d it go?”
Jimmy shrugged, feeling uncomfortable.
But the Colonel, not to be outdone by any of the others, boomed, “This casino is now open for business.” He was standing beside a distinguished-looking man—Brian Epstein—who was smooth, quiet, and boyishly handsome. The Colonel then flipped over the top of a large coffee table to reveal a roulette wheel. “I’m the pit boss. Who’s playing?”
THE COLONEL DECLARED THE PARTY OVER AT 2:00 A.M.—AFTER HE had won three thousand dollars from Brian Epstein. “You boys got to come back soon,” he said, “because I just about got Brian convinced to book you in for a benefit for my boy Jimmy, who’s going to be the next governor of California. What do you think of that? And my boy Elvis will also have some news pretty soon, won’t you, Elvis?”
Elvis had taken more downers than uppers; he looked at the Colonel and blinked twice.
“Ding, dong, the bells are goin’ to ring,” the Colonel said, nodding significantly to Priscilla—and Caroline.
He slapped Epstein on the back and smiled at Jimmy.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The Politics of Experience
LOS ANGELES: SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 1966
It was a circus, but a very conservative circus.
There were no beards and longhairs. All the “kids,” as they were called—the antiwar and civil-rights activists; the students and the hippies, the doe-eyed young women from Vassar and Smith; the boys from UNC and Yale and Cornell, who were top of their classes or hanging out at the fringes dropping acid and extolling the virtues of Timothy Leary and The Politics of Experience; the fat fans who just loved Jimmy and activism and politics and the communal friendship and sex; the blacks the whites the Hispanics who had participated in strikes and sit-ins and teach-ins and walk-outs, who had marched with Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King and joined acronymic organizations such as SCLC, NSA, NAACP, MFDP, and SNCC—had cleaned themselves up for Jimmy. “Get Clean for Dean”—another one of the Colonel’s mottos.
There were young mothers and grandmothers and all the Committee to Elect James Dean people. There were celebrities—Elvis Presley, Jack Kerouac (ferociously sober), Eli Wallach, Lee and Paula Strasberg, Frank Sinatra, Eartha Kitt, Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, Elia Kazan, Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Wood, Joanne Woodward and a rather sour Paul Newman, James Brown, Otis Redding, Adam Clayton Powell, Ursula Andress, Muhammad Ali, Rudolf Nureyev, Marty Wrightson, Sidney Poitier, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Nick Ray, Keenan Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Andy Williams and Claudine Longet, Martin Luther King and his wife, Coretta, Hank Snow, and Brian Epstein and the Beatles, who were going to do a special benefit for Jimmy, along with Ray Charles and Harry Belafonte.
All the old guard of the state Democratic Party had been invited, including John Raymond Jones; Liam Laski; Paul Cottrell; Sam Yorty, mayor of San Francisco; Danny Cowles, who was now Jimmy’s “official” campaign chairman; Robert Coate, the Democratic state chairman; and Eugene Wyman, California’s Democratic National Committeeman chairman. There was a host of out-of-state politicos, including Bobby’s advisors, who were also advising Jimmy. And, of course, Ron and Nancy Reagan were there.
How could they refuse a very public invitation to the wedding of the decade?
JIMMY AND CAROLINE WERE MARRIED IN THE WEE KIRK ’O THE Heather Chapel, the same chapel where Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman, were married.
The same chapel where the funeral for Pier was held.
The same cemetery—Forest Lawn in Glendale—where Pier was buried.
