Baby, Let's Play House Part 1

Baby, Let's Play House.

by Alanna NASH.

INTRODUCTION.

No matter if he were young and thin, a vision in gold lame, or middle-aged and paunchy, stretching the physical limits of his gabardine jumpsuit, Elvis Presley never failed to affect his female audiences the same way: He drove them crazy. The mere sight and sound of him made women around the world drop all inhibitions, and to publicly behave as they never would otherwise, giving in to screams, fainting, and wild exhibitions of frenzy. paunchy, stretching the physical limits of his gabardine jumpsuit, Elvis Presley never failed to affect his female audiences the same way: He drove them crazy. The mere sight and sound of him made women around the world drop all inhibitions, and to publicly behave as they never would otherwise, giving in to screams, fainting, and wild exhibitions of frenzy.

Sometime during the 1970s, when Elvis was a Las Vegas staple, Jean Beaulne, who had started his entertainment career in the 1960s as one-third of Les Baronets, Montreal's answer to the Beatles, was flabbergasted to see the reaction of one woman who attended Elvis's dinner show at the Las Vegas Hilton.

In between songs, some twenty-five minutes into the performance, as Elvis shook hands and kissed the women who crowded up near the stage and hoped to receive one of the mult.i.tude of scarves he ceremoniously dispensed, "We heard a woman yelling in the back of the room, and then we turned to see her hopping from one tabletop to the other to get up to Elvis.

"He was so surprised! He made a face, like, 'Wow, what happened?' Everybody in the room was laughing. Then she put her arms around his neck and kissed him. He smiled and gave her a scarf, and then she turned around and did the same thing, jumping from one table to the other. Everybody started to applaud."

Yet Elvis was never more potent than at the beginning of his career, before the patently routine scarf offering, when he was dangerous, revolutionary, and n.o.body knew what to expect.

On November 23, 1956, two days after the nationwide release of Love Me Tender, Love Me Tender, Elvis's first film, a high school photographer named Lew Allen covered a Presley concert in Cleveland and was astonished at what he saw. Elvis's first film, a high school photographer named Lew Allen covered a Presley concert in Cleveland and was astonished at what he saw.

"There was a row of policemen standing in front of the stage, and girls would start at the back of the auditorium with their eyes on Elvis, and run as fast as they could [toward the stage]. They'd bounce off these policemen's stomachs, and then bounce back four or five feet and land on their rear ends. And they would still have their eyes on Elvis. It was amazing. They did it repeatedly, like flies running into a light bulb."

Allen may have been dumbfounded, but as blues songwriter Willie Dixon teased, "The men don't know/But the little girls understand."

"Nineteen fifty-six was a great year," remembers Presley's seminal guitarist, Scotty Moore. "The crowds had gotten very large, and it would get so loud that it would just cancel out all the sound onstage. The best way I can describe it is like when you dive into the water and you hear the phasing, the rush of the water. Actually, on most songs, if we couldn't hear him, we'd know where he was at by his body language. We were the only band I know literally directed by an a.s.s."

As Elvis worked out his own private fantasies onstage, an entire nation would take his directive, even if it was initially slow to accept it.

"Elvis's s.e.xual history," the rock critic Robert Christgau has written, "inflects the myth of a feral young Southerner whose twitching hips were the point of articulation for a seismic shift in American mores."

The exact moment of that shift, according to some Elvisologists, arrived on June 5, 1956, when the twenty-one-year-old Presley appeared on The Milton Berle Show. The Milton Berle Show. It was not Presley's television debut. But in his previous network appearances, when his guitar had largely restricted his movements, Elvis relied more on "att.i.tude, sinking eyelids, a curled lip, sideburns, and a husky voice that rose from somewhere below the waist," as newsman Peter Jennings later put it, to convey his libidinous intent. Now on the Berle show, performing a lascivious rendition of "Hound Dog," he moved in a way that was completely unfathomable for a white boy of the 1950s, punctuating a drawn-out, half-time ending with the burlesque b.u.mps and grinds of a female stripper. At one point in the flurry of s.e.xual shakes and shimmies, he seemed to hump the microphone, and in a futuristic salute to his would-be son-in-law, Michael Jackson, almost grab his crotch. It was not Presley's television debut. But in his previous network appearances, when his guitar had largely restricted his movements, Elvis relied more on "att.i.tude, sinking eyelids, a curled lip, sideburns, and a husky voice that rose from somewhere below the waist," as newsman Peter Jennings later put it, to convey his libidinous intent. Now on the Berle show, performing a lascivious rendition of "Hound Dog," he moved in a way that was completely unfathomable for a white boy of the 1950s, punctuating a drawn-out, half-time ending with the burlesque b.u.mps and grinds of a female stripper. At one point in the flurry of s.e.xual shakes and shimmies, he seemed to hump the microphone, and in a futuristic salute to his would-be son-in-law, Michael Jackson, almost grab his crotch.

The following day, newspapers across the nation bellowed their outrage at this obscene purveyor of the fledgling art form called rock and roll, Ben Gross of the New York Daily News Daily News decrying that popular music had "reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley." decrying that popular music had "reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley."

Forty years later, in his book, Elvis After Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend, Elvis After Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend, Gilbert B. Rodman, an a.s.sistant professor of communications at the University of South Florida, would label Elvis's performance on the Berle show "a message so shocking that it seemed that Western civilization could not possibly survive its utterance," and call it the moment when rock and roll was "recognized as a threat to mainstream U.S. culture." Gilbert B. Rodman, an a.s.sistant professor of communications at the University of South Florida, would label Elvis's performance on the Berle show "a message so shocking that it seemed that Western civilization could not possibly survive its utterance," and call it the moment when rock and roll was "recognized as a threat to mainstream U.S. culture."

Such intellectual hand-wringing brings to mind the old black-and-white film clips of grim-faced men warning of the dangers of rock and roll, urging decent, G.o.d-fearing Americans to smash any copies of the Devil music they could find, lest the nation's youth be corrupted and d.a.m.ned to h.e.l.l.

Yet despite on which side of the moral fence one sits, there is no arguing that if Frank Sinatra was the first popular singer to make women swoon with the thoughts of romantic love, Elvis moved those obsessions lower, to erotic regions no mainstream performer had dared acknowledge with such ferocious abandon.

Today, Elvis's movements seem tame to younger generations raised on incendiary films and videos. But "few rock and rollers of any era have moved with such salacious insouciance," writes Christgau. In 1956, the cantilevered poetry of Elvis's swiveling midsection, coupled with the eye-popping sight of his left leg working like a jackhammer, quickly led journalist Pinckney Keel of the Jackson Jackson [Mississippi] [Mississippi] Clarion-Ledger Clarion-Ledger to dub him "Elvis the Pelvis," a term Elvis despised, calling it, "One of the most childish expressions I've ever heard coming from an adult." to dub him "Elvis the Pelvis," a term Elvis despised, calling it, "One of the most childish expressions I've ever heard coming from an adult."

That same year, on August 6, 1956, Tampa journalist Paul Wilder, a crony of Elvis's nefarious manager, Colonel Tom Parker, conducted one of the few, and most famous, interviews with Elvis for TV Guide TV Guide. Backstage before the show in Lakeland, Florida, Wilder got Elvis's dander up when he read him a review from the Miami Herald Miami Herald that criticized both his voice and his guitar playing. "What remains, unfortunately," the article concluded, "are his pelvic gyrations. And that's the core of the whole appeal-s.e.x stimulation." that criticized both his voice and his guitar playing. "What remains, unfortunately," the article concluded, "are his pelvic gyrations. And that's the core of the whole appeal-s.e.x stimulation."

"Any answer to that one?" Wilder asked.

"Well, I don't roll my-what'd he call it-pelvic gyrations," an indignant Elvis replied. "My pelvis had nothin' to do with what I do. I just get kinda in rhythm with the music. I jump around to it because I enjoy what I'm doin'. I'm not tryin' to be vulgar, I'm not tryin' to sell any s.e.x, I'm not tryin' to look vulgar and nasty. I just enjoy what I'm doin' and tryin' to make the best of it."

It was a fib, of course. Even then, he knew the power he had onstage and off, the way he could "charm the pants off a snake," in novelist Bobbie Ann Mason's Southern expression.

She touched my hand, what a chill I gotHer lips are like a volcano that's hotI'm proud to say she's my b.u.t.tercupI'm in loveI'm all shook upMm, mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!

For a man who was literally pawed, groped, scratched, and had his clothes ripped away by women for his entire twenty-three-year career, Presley demonstrated a remarkable tolerance for his audience. He rarely seemed to resent their overexuberant physical presence, their endless requests for autographs, or worse, the way their desire to possess him kept him a virtual prisoner in hotel rooms and at home in his beloved Graceland. In that regard, he stands almost alone in the pantheon of great rock stars, many of whom despise the very people who made them. away by women for his entire twenty-three-year career, Presley demonstrated a remarkable tolerance for his audience. He rarely seemed to resent their overexuberant physical presence, their endless requests for autographs, or worse, the way their desire to possess him kept him a virtual prisoner in hotel rooms and at home in his beloved Graceland. In that regard, he stands almost alone in the pantheon of great rock stars, many of whom despise the very people who made them.

"He enjoyed the feel of being with fans," remembers photographer Alfred Wertheimer, who gained unprecedented access to Presley in 1956 and captured some of the best-known images of young Elvis. "He loved being with girls. Later on, I found out whether the girls were eight years old or eighteen or sixty-five or seventy, he just liked women."

Hank Saperstein, the merchandiser who plastered Elvis's likeness on everything from panties to record players to lipstick in Tutti Frutti Red and Hound Dog Orange in 1956, noticed that both women and and men responded equally to Elvis's sneer. "His sneer was all-important. It was a good-looking, lovable sneer." But if both s.e.xes inherently embraced the cruelty and playfulness in that curl of the lip, why did only women faint at Presley's concerts? men responded equally to Elvis's sneer. "His sneer was all-important. It was a good-looking, lovable sneer." But if both s.e.xes inherently embraced the cruelty and playfulness in that curl of the lip, why did only women faint at Presley's concerts?

The word fan fan comes from comes from fanatic, fanatic, of course. But a more interesting focus is the origin of of course. But a more interesting focus is the origin of hysteria. hysteria. A Greek medical term, A Greek medical term, hysterikos hysterikos, it means dysfunctional or "wandering" uterus. Hippocrates coined the word, believing that madness overcame women who adhered to s.e.xual abstinence, and that the uterus wandered upward, compressing the diaphragm, heart, and lungs.

There's poetry in the fact, then, that Elvis learned certain of his stage moves from women, one of the surprises of this book. And it suggests that part of his potency was not just his ability to translate precisely what turned women on, but to mimic their actions back to them.

However, so much of what made Elvis Elvis Elvis sprang from his a.s.similation of black culture, both in his native Tupelo, Mississippi, and in his adopted hometown of Memphis. sprang from his a.s.similation of black culture, both in his native Tupelo, Mississippi, and in his adopted hometown of Memphis.

This was true both of his music-a greasy, intense union of white and black in its mix of country and blues and gospel and pop-and in the fur-trimmed flamboyance of his personal style. His "s.e.xual savagery" onstage challenged the traditional view of white masculinity, particularly as he arrived on the national consciousness in the staid, b.u.t.ton-gloved Eisenhower era, dominated by the bland orchestras of Mantovani, Hugo Winterhalter, and Percy Faith. Everything about him-from his exotic looks (hooded eyes giving way to an impossibly pomaded ducktail) to his sound (the haunting spookiness of "Heartbreak Hotel")-suggested an alien inexplicably fallen to earth.

"People wonder why everyone impersonates the old Elvis," says Kevin Eggers, the founder of Tomato Records, who met Presley at a touch football game in Beverly Hills, California, as a teenager. "But if a young person could do the young Elvis, they'd be a superstar. That raw talent, that incredible creature came onstage and changed everything."

Including, to some degree, the perception of male beauty and the acceptance of androgyny, since Elvis crossed the s.e.x barrier just as he had the race barrier. From the first, he wore eye shadow and mascara to accentuate his likeness to his mother, Gladys (and to emulate Rudolph Valentino, the silent screen star once accused of the "effeminization of the American male"). And by his early Las Vegas incarnation, Elvis personified the glam rock movement that was then burgeoning in the United Kingdom, blending the s.e.x appeal of men and women in his choice of flowing stage wear.

Perhaps not surprising, Elvis's contemporary appeal does not stop with heteros.e.xual women. Female Elvis impersonator Leigh Crow, aka Elvis Herselvis, who identifies as a drag king, predicts that Elvis will become a lesbian icon just as Marilyn Monroe is for gay men. "Like k.d. lang," she says, "the whole image that she's got . . . that's where it came from." And lang bears it out: "He was the total androgynous beauty. I would practice Elvis in front of the mirror when I was twelve or thirteen years old."

For so many reasons, then, "Elvis swims in our minds, and in the emotions, all through time," offers film director David Lynch. "There's the word through time," offers film director David Lynch. "There's the word icon, icon, and I don't think anybody has topped that . . . not one single person has ever topped Elvis." Except financially. In 2006, Kurt Cobain bested him on the and I don't think anybody has topped that . . . not one single person has ever topped Elvis." Except financially. In 2006, Kurt Cobain bested him on the Forbes Forbes "Top-Earning Dead Celebrities" list, only to have Elvis take back his crown in 2007, the thirtieth-year anniversary of his death, hauling in $52 million. But in 2009, he slipped to fourth place, with $55 million, dwarfed by Yves Saint Laurent ($350 million), Rodgers and Hammerstein ($235 million), and Michael Jackson ($90 million). Still, $55 million is more than many of the music industry's most popular living acts command. "For a dead man," writes author Rodman, "Elvis Presley is awfully noisy." "Top-Earning Dead Celebrities" list, only to have Elvis take back his crown in 2007, the thirtieth-year anniversary of his death, hauling in $52 million. But in 2009, he slipped to fourth place, with $55 million, dwarfed by Yves Saint Laurent ($350 million), Rodgers and Hammerstein ($235 million), and Michael Jackson ($90 million). Still, $55 million is more than many of the music industry's most popular living acts command. "For a dead man," writes author Rodman, "Elvis Presley is awfully noisy."

In the spring of 2007, I received a call from an editor at Ladies' Home Journal, Ladies' Home Journal, who wanted an Elvis story for the August issue to mark the anniversary. But exactly what kind of article she didn't know. Since it was a women's magazine, I suggested what I thought was the obvious-an oral history of some of the women in Elvis's life, both platonic and romantic, from girlfriends to family members to actresses to backup singers. I wanted to know how his status as one of the greatest s.e.x symbols of the twentieth century informed his stage act and his interactions with the opposite s.e.x. who wanted an Elvis story for the August issue to mark the anniversary. But exactly what kind of article she didn't know. Since it was a women's magazine, I suggested what I thought was the obvious-an oral history of some of the women in Elvis's life, both platonic and romantic, from girlfriends to family members to actresses to backup singers. I wanted to know how his status as one of the greatest s.e.x symbols of the twentieth century informed his stage act and his interactions with the opposite s.e.x.

The resulting article, "The Women Who Loved Elvis," was one of the best-read features in the magazine, and sp.a.w.ned a segment on The Early Show The Early Show on CBS. Not long after, I was in Memphis, writing a story about Graceland for another publication. Staying in the Heartbreak Hotel across the street from the mansion's sprawl, I stared at the photos on the wall of my suite. In each of them, Elvis held the luminous gaze of one of his Hollywood costars. I thought of the millions of women who had loved him from afar, the hundreds who had physically known that embrace, and how he had died alone at home on the bathroom floor, a woman sleeping in his bed as the life ebbed out of him at the age of forty-two. on CBS. Not long after, I was in Memphis, writing a story about Graceland for another publication. Staying in the Heartbreak Hotel across the street from the mansion's sprawl, I stared at the photos on the wall of my suite. In each of them, Elvis held the luminous gaze of one of his Hollywood costars. I thought of the millions of women who had loved him from afar, the hundreds who had physically known that embrace, and how he had died alone at home on the bathroom floor, a woman sleeping in his bed as the life ebbed out of him at the age of forty-two.

How could Elvis Presley, one of the most romantic icons of his time, never have enjoyed a long-lasting, meaningful relationship with a woman?

That was the question I pondered as the idea for this book took shape. It was particularly puzzling since, for all his maleness, Elvis was a very woman-centered man. It was women he could really talk with, and from whom he drew much of his strength.

The answer, of course, is that it was simply easier for a man as complex as Elvis to have a relationship with the ma.s.ses, who asked nothing of him and provided unconditional positive regard.

"Bottom line," says Kay Wheeler, who headed Presley's first national fan club, "the most successful love affair was obviously between Elvis and his fans. And it has not died."

Elvis's s.e.xual history, that great Pandora's box on which Christgau and Rodman lifted the lid, held fascinating surprises.

-Alanna Nash

Gladys and Elvis, circa 1946. In future photographs, as in this one, the two would almost always be touching. (Courtesy of David Troedson/Elvis Australia) (Courtesy of David Troedson/Elvis Australia)

Chapter One.

"My Best Gal"

Gladys.

In rock-and-roll mythology, she is the proud, all-suffering Madonna, the commoner who birthed a king and died too soon, knocking his world off its axis. Like her famous son, her first name is all that's needed. Elvis called her "my best gal," but in the deepest psychological sense, she was not only his best gal, but also his only one.

In the well-known images from the late 1950s, she appears a defeated figure, her eyes sad and ringed by bruised circles, her mouth perpetually turned down and set in a sorrowful scowl. At the height of her son's notoriety, when she was ensconced in Graceland, the home and farm Elvis bought for her, surrounded by the kind of luxury she had never really wanted and rarely enjoyed, she spent her days as she always had-dipping snuff, drinking beer from a paper sack, staring out the window, and for a short time, until Elvis's record company complained it wasn't seemly, feeding her chickens out back. The hot-tempered woman who had been known to dump a pot of steaming beans on her husband's head when he crossed her was now a fearful soul, afraid for Elvis's safety ("She is always worried about a wreck, or . . . me gettin' sick"), the way the women mauled him at his shows, and worse, how his stratospheric career had changed everything so fast, wrenchingly pulling him away from her and from everything they had always known. As if to reverse it all and find some comfort, she made monthly visits to the area surrounding the small town of Tupelo, Mississippi, where she had grown up.

Earlier in her life, she had been an outgoing girl, a happy, joking person with a lifelong love of dancing. The Gladys of old had a light in her eyes, a future in her smile, and "could make you laugh when n.o.body else could," remembered Annie Presley, the wife of Sales Presley, a first cousin to Elvis's father, Vernon.

That Gladys vanished once Elvis became famous. But one thing remained a constant: Gladys had always been so entwined with her son that it was hard to know where she left off and he began, even for the two of them. It came both from circ.u.mstances beyond their control, and from a need that was so great and pervasive as to be encoded in their DNA.

She was born April 25, 1912, in rural Pontotoc County, Mississippi, the daughter of Robert Lee Smith and Octavia Luvenia Mansell Smith. Gladys's mother was known by the name of Lucy and the nickname of Doll for her slim frame, porcelain skin, oval face, and small features. Not uncommon in farming families, the Smith children numbered eight, Gladys's arrival falling after the first three girls, Lillian, Levalle, and Rhetha, and before Travis, Tracy, Clettes, and John. (A ninth child did not survive.) Her parents romantically gave Gladys the middle name of Love.

At two, Tracy, who was already mentally impaired, contracted whooping cough and lost his hearing. But the real invalid of the family was Doll, Gladys's mother, who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis as a child. Doll, everyone knew, was a relentless flirt, and having been babied by her parents for her affliction and her birth order-she was the youngest of seven-expected the same from everyone around her. When she finally chose to marry, at age twenty-seven, she picked a younger mate, her first cousin Bob, a handsome man with dark, deep-set eyes that attested to his mix of Scots-Irish and Indian ancestry through the marriage of William Mansell and Morning Dove White, a full-blooded Cherokee.

Gladys's roots would prove even more fascinating.

White Mansell, the son of John Mansell and grandson of William Mansell, was an Alabaman who moved to northeast Mississippi at eighteen to homestead. There, in 1870, marking an X X for his signature, he married Martha Tackett, whose mother, Nancy J. Burdine Tackett, was Jewish. Among their children was Doll, Gladys's mother. Since by Jewish orthodoxy the mother continues the heritage, Gladys was technically Jewish. for his signature, he married Martha Tackett, whose mother, Nancy J. Burdine Tackett, was Jewish. Among their children was Doll, Gladys's mother. Since by Jewish orthodoxy the mother continues the heritage, Gladys was technically Jewish.

Like many southern broods, the Smith family was strongly matriarchal. Doll's illness rarely allowed her to leave her bed, but she ruled the family with her sickness. Her feelings of ent.i.tlement allowed her to keep a comb and mirror hidden beneath her pillow, while her children slept together on the floor on a mattress padded with crabgra.s.s, held their flimsy shoes together with metal rings culled from the snouts of slaughtered hogs, and fashioned toothbrushes from the branch of a black gum tree. When the Smiths moved, as they often did, dotting the communities around Tupelo in Lee County, "She would be carefully carried on a trailer in a supine position, like a priceless artifact in a traveling exhibit," as Elvis biographer and psychologist Peter O. Whitmer wrote in The Inner Elvis The Inner Elvis.

Her husband, Bob, desperate to scratch out a living from a land where poverty was the norm, demonstrated no love of farming, especially tenant farming, by which he fed his family. He also relied on handouts. Mertice Finley Collins remembered her mother, Vertie, would say to the Smith children, "Bring a bucket," and then "she'd put the leftovers in it for the Smith children to eat." Years later, once Elvis became famous, the press labeled the whole Presley clan "white trash." The Smiths still bristle at the term, even though rumor had it that Bob provided the extras Doll wanted from a less respectable trade.

"Just because you're poor doesn't mean you're white trash, even if you're a sharecropper," insists Billy Smith, Gladys's nephew through her brother Travis, a hard drinker with a violent streak for fighting. "I guess you couldn't be the son of a bootlegger and not drink. Because that's what my granddaddy Robert was, a bootlegger, even though he farmed, too."

It wasn't just Bob who catered to Doll, but her children, too. Though Lillian, somewhat Gladys's rival, reported her sister to always be "lazy as a hog," shirking her housework, she could rise to the occasion. By her teenage years Gladys was industrious, making her own clothes on her friend Vera Turner's sewing machine when she wasn't taking care of her mother or the crops. The harsh reality of life in Tupelo-the year Gladys was born, the town had only one short expanse of sidewalk, and no paved streets, let alone electricity-made death, religion, and sheer survival in unstable times the central themes of existence.

The late Janelle McComb, a lifelong Tupelo resident, remembered the kinds of tenets that helped most folks cope. "Old Dr. [William Robert] Hunt who delivered Elvis was my Sunday school teacher, and he was one of my granddaddy's best friends. When I was a little girl, he told me one day that I was going to heaven, and that I would walk upon streets of gold and have a mansion. I walked a dirt path, so I couldn't imagine that. My granddaddy ran a grocery store, so I walked in there and I said, 'Granddaddy, Dr. Hunt says that when I die I'm going to heaven, and I'll have a mansion.' Then I looked up and said, 'But, Granddaddy, how am I going to get get there?' He closed the store and he walked outside with me. There was a chinaberry tree in the yard, and he put my hand on it and he said, 'My child, the timber you send up is what your mansion will be made of. Don't ever send up bad timber.' That stayed with me all the days of my life." there?' He closed the store and he walked outside with me. There was a chinaberry tree in the yard, and he put my hand on it and he said, 'My child, the timber you send up is what your mansion will be made of. Don't ever send up bad timber.' That stayed with me all the days of my life."

Still, what got most people through day to day was the rural code of solidarity.

"This tiny impoverished community somehow survived by mutually sharing good fortune," the late Elaine Dundy, author of Elvis and Gladys, Elvis and Gladys, said in 2004. "The one existing home-owned Kodak became the communal camera, as did the few radios on the streets." If a few folks chafed at the idea, they hid it well and maintained their standing "by practicing the art of good manners with an almost ritualized politeness and having an att.i.tude of optimism in spite of everything." said in 2004. "The one existing home-owned Kodak became the communal camera, as did the few radios on the streets." If a few folks chafed at the idea, they hid it well and maintained their standing "by practicing the art of good manners with an almost ritualized politeness and having an att.i.tude of optimism in spite of everything."

Dave Irwin, his son Len, and wife, Lily Mae, ran a general store in East Tupelo, and remembered that though the Smiths might be poor, they still found money to buy things-especially after Bob got a loan from the bank and moved the family to an untenanted farm of thirty acres and a house with hedge roses growing around the front door. To Len, "It seemed like the Promised Land to him." Gladys, particularly, held her head high. She looked nice-showed off her new homemade dresses-kept her clothes clean, and seemed to come into the store sixty times a day, often in the company of her younger sister, Clettes. First it might be a box of snuff to keep hunger at bay, then next trip maybe a rope of licorice or a Nehi soda, and on subsequent visits a bottle of Grove's Chill Tonic for Doll, and then perhaps some peppermint sticks.

By all accounts, Gladys was a lively, pa.s.sionate young woman who hoped to make a good impression and be accepted by others. She loved to buck dance for the neighbors on Sat.u.r.day night and dreamed of being either a singer like Mississippi's own radio star Jimmie Rodgers, or an actress like Clara Bow, whose new talking pictures Gladys watched on a makeshift movie screen on the back of a flatbed truck. But for all her gaiety, her ire could flare like a firestorm, and no one wanted her wrath. Gladys had inherited not only her father's deep-set eyes, but also his irritability.

"Everybody in that family was scared of Gladys and her temper," says Lamar Fike, a member of Elvis's entourage, the Memphis Mafia, who came to know Gladys well. "She ran all those kids, even her eldest sister Lillian. Everybody knew not to mess with her much. With a couple of exceptions, the Smith family was just wilder than goats. By G.o.d, they were tough! Tougher even than the Presleys, and they were violent people."

Coupled with her muscular build, her big, wide shoulders making her resemble a man at times, Gladys's temper made her a force to be reckoned with, even as a child working on Burk's farm, where sharecroppers, "getting a little for themselves and making a whole lot more for someone else," as Billy Smith puts it, were regarded as little more than animals.

"Aunt Gladys was a strong-willed individual. If you scared her real bad or made her mad, she'd lash out at you. In Tupelo, they still talk about when she was sharecropping with her family. The guy who owned the farm come by on a horse with his high-topped leather boots and a whip. And he jumped on her father and her sisters with it. Gladys was ten or eleven years old, but she ripped a plowshare off and took the point and hit him in the head with it. d.a.m.n near killed him."

Still, Gladys had her vulnerabilities, most of them emotional. Though she attended religious services-worshipping at the Church of G.o.d and Prophecy-Gladys held to primitive superst.i.tions, and not even her faith could completely quell the anxiety and impulsivity that plagued her from the time she was a small child. In Lillian's view, the young Gladys was "very highly strung, very nervous . . . She was frightened by all kinds of things-by thunderstorms and wind. She was always hearing noises outside at night and imagining there was someone in the bushes."

In time, her uneasiness with life would escalate to full-blown phobias. Once she moved to East Tupelo-which sat across Town Creek from the more prosperous Tupelo proper-she had all the bushes around her house cut down, terrified that "dark things" were moving in them. Her anxieties came and went without warning. She seemed better with the promise of social outlets, when she had something to look forward to, something that would take her mind off the dreariness of existing hand to mouth.

And one of the things that most stirred her imagination was the opposite s.e.x. As a young child, Gladys seemed scared of boys. Her sister Lillian recalled that the first time a boy asked if he could walk her home from school, Gladys took off her shoes and ran. When he caught up with her, he walked way on one side of the road, and she way on the other. Such an extreme reaction may have been in response to her parents' teachings, as her father forged a rigid code of courtship, ruling that the boys who came calling on his daughters go no further than holding hands. Kissing was strictly forbidden, as it inevitably led to other things.

By her late teen years, Gladys was well over her fear of boys, and now it was she who chased them. Years later, Pid Harris, who dated her in her youth, reported she was "fast" and "liked to play," which, of course, was a scandal. He remembered her fighting with another girl, the two of them slapping and hitting-"We had to pull them off of each other"-evidently over a man. But one by one, her older sisters were leaving home to marry, and now Gladys felt the pressure. Her impulsiveness-coupled with her desire to escape the oppression of toiling the fields and caring for her mother and younger siblings-led her to elope with a young farmer when she was in her late teens. Her embarra.s.sment knew no bounds when she learned the man was married. In two days' time, she was back, morbidly ashamed and heartbroken.

Gladys's emotional state grew more fragile in 1931 with the tragic and sudden death of her father from pneumonia. The family was stunned with disbelief-Doll had always been the sickly one-and so unprepared they had to borrow a winding sheet from Mrs. Irwin, the coproprietor of the general store, to wrap the body for placement in an unmarked grave in Spring Hill Cemetery. But rather than stepping up and taking charge, nineteen-year-old Gladys seemed to crumble. Coming so soon after her failed elopement, the loss of her father was a double blow. Bob Smith had been the one stable man in her life.

His death immeasurably increased Gladys's responsibilities with her mother, three younger brothers, and twelve-year-old sister. But try as they might, they could not bring in the crop, and the family's sudden reversal of fortune meant that they would lose the new house and farm. Worse, the family would be split up, with Doll going to live with Levalle and her husband, Ed. Gladys, feeling responsible for the rest of the family, would have to find a full-time job in a town that offered little employment outside of the cotton mill and textile plant.

In the weeks that followed, Gladys fell into a complete and total collapse. At first, she seemed to revert to the lethargy that had so annoyed Lillian when Gladys was an adolescent. But then she began displaying the cla.s.sic symptoms of what psychologists call conversion hysteria, in which grief becomes manifested in physical ailments. A friend remembered she became so anxious that she could not walk. "Gladys got herself into such a state that her legs would start shaking every time she was fixing to go out of the house." Finally she took to the safety of her bed, unable to move without the help of others, replicating the state that her mother had manifested for decades.

"Conversion hysteria acts to block the mental pain from conscious awareness, and also provides the benefit of allowing its victims to avoid unwanted responsibilities," wrote psychologist Whitmer.

In short, Gladys, overburdened with grief and unable to deal with reality, infantalized herself.

Ten years later, in the winter of 1941, she had a similar reaction to another tragedy. This time, conversion hysteria rendered her mute. Annie Presley, Gladys's cousin and neighbor, heard a knock and opened the door to find Gladys in such a high state of anxiety that "she could not move. She just stood there, saying nothing. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She was wringing her hands over and over." It was only from a neighbor that Annie learned that Gladys's older sister, Rhetha Smith Loyd, had died a terrible death.

"Back in them days, we had woodstoves, and she went to build a fire in the stove to cook dinner, and thought she had got all of the sparks out from the one before. She poured a little coal oil in it, and it flamed up and caught her on fire and burned her." Rhetha lingered a few agonizing hours before expiring.

In both instances, the only thing that freed Gladys from psychological paralysis and restored her to normalcy was her religious faith, particularly after she began partic.i.p.ating in Pentecostal services at the tiny a.s.sembly of G.o.d church in the economically deprived East Tupelo, sharply divided from Tupelo by a levee and cotton fields. There, in a tent pitched on a neighborhood lot, some thirty worshippers gathered each Sunday to pray, sing, and feel the spirit take hold way down inside them. Later they moved to an old building up on the highway. Annie Presley termed it a tabernacle.

"Just a roof and a couple of sides. Didn't even have a front. No pews or chairs. Just things set up with long planks across them. They called 'em benches." The congregation also met in an old movie house, ironic, since the a.s.sembly of G.o.d frowned on picture shows, if not music.

"In all of our church services, music and singing were very meaningful parts," recalled Reverend Frank W. Smith, who became pastor at the church about ten years later. "We would always begin our services with congregational singing. Not loud singing, but worship singing. We had a song leader, and everyone would join in and sing along together. Sometimes there would be no worshipful expressions during this part of the service, just singing."

As in other Pentecostal churches, the a.s.sembly of G.o.d revered speaking in tongues as evidence that the Holy Spirit talked through the parishioners. Both the speakers and the interpreters of the sounds, variously called "the barks," "the jerks," and "the Holy laugh," were held in the highest esteem.

Four months after the horrific trauma of Rhetha's death, Gladys attended yet another tragedy and demonstrated previously unseen emotional strength. Annie's third baby, Barbara Sue, delivered at home, died eight hours after birth from asphyxiation from too much mucus in her lungs.

"Gladys was in and out all day, but she had been there from about five o'clock on that evening, because the baby was strangling pretty bad, and we called Dr. [Robert] Pegram about three times, and he wouldn't come. By the time he got there, she was dead. Gladys was the one that took the baby out of my bed and put it over on another bed when she died. She stayed right with me."

Annie, only nineteen, was too weak and distraught to go to the graveyard, so Gladys stayed with her then, too, while everybody else went. "Your belief in G.o.d will get you through," Gladys told the devastated mother over and over. "Look to G.o.d."

Gladys's faith in a higher power brought her more than spiritual salve, however, for it was in that East Tupelo church in the spring of 1933 that Gladys Love Smith, who had just turned twenty-one and operated a sewing machine at the Tupelo Garment Company for two dollars a day, first laid eyes on Vernon Elvis Presley. He was blondish, fine featured, well mannered around women, and with full lips that curled into an easy sneer, he looked like a backwoods Romeo straight out of it was in that East Tupelo church in the spring of 1933 that Gladys Love Smith, who had just turned twenty-one and operated a sewing machine at the Tupelo Garment Company for two dollars a day, first laid eyes on Vernon Elvis Presley. He was blondish, fine featured, well mannered around women, and with full lips that curled into an easy sneer, he looked like a backwoods Romeo straight out of Tobacco Road, Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell's cla.s.sic novel of s.e.x and violence among the rural poor. Erskine Caldwell's cla.s.sic novel of s.e.x and violence among the rural poor.

They eloped two months after they met, on June 17, 1933, in Pontotoc County, where Vernon, barely seventeen but looking every bit a full-grown man, could pa.s.s as one. He borrowed the money for the marriage license, which spelled his name "Virnon," either because the clerk made an error, or because Vernon, who was only semiliterate throughout his life, knew no better. Both he and his bride lied about their ages, Vernon adding five years, for twenty-two, and Gladys subtracting two, for nineteen. In a photograph taken of them about that time, they can hardly conceal their hunger for each other, their heads pressed together, Gladys snuggled up to him from behind, her arm around his shoulder.

Yet it was not precisely love at first sight. Initially, Gladys dated Vernon's older brother, Vester, while her younger sister, Clettes, went with Vernon. "Gladys didn't like my att.i.tude much," Vester said years later. "I was too wild in those days. So Gladys quit seeing me and we quit seeing the Smith girls for a while." But soon it was a foursome again, as Clettes married Vester after Gladys wed Vernon-two brothers marrying two sisters. To further entangle the family tree-rooted in the first-cousin union of Bob and Doll Smith-Travis and John Smith, Gladys's brothers, also married sisters. "So their kids and my brother, Bobby, and me were double first cousins," explains Billy Smith. "You've got double first cousins on the Presley side, too."

Gladys's family was large, sprawling, and financially unstable, but in some ways, the Smiths were high-minded and genteel compared to the Presleys, another matriarchal southern clan. None of that was lost on the locals.

As Tupelo historian Roy Turner recounts, "When Mertice Finley Collins told her mother she had b.u.mped into Gladys Smith in town and learned she had married Vernon Presley, her mother replied, 'One of the Presleys above the highway, above the highway,' which was to distinguish where in the East Tupelo hierarchy they were. Even as Tupelo looked down on East Tupelo, East Tupelo was divided into two sects-the more prosperous below the highway, and the less fortunate above the highway. The highway being 78."

Vernon's grandmother, Rosella Presley, was the daughter of Dunnan Presley Jr., a Confederate army deserter and bigamist who abandoned the family when Rosella was a baby to return to his first wife and child. Rosella, who never knew him, grew up independent and freethinking, and continued the tradition, bringing ten illegitimate children into the world by various men who never stayed long enough to know their offspring. A sharecropper, she died at sixty-three without ever identifying the fathers of most of her children. But her youngest son, Joseph Presley, would say a man named Steele, part Cherokee Indian, sired at least a few of her brood.

"She was a very strict disciplinarian, but a loving mother. Despite the hardships, she always managed to give each of us a little present at Christmas-even if it was only a piece of candy or a secondhand pair of shoes." Though she had no real education, she wanted better for her children, and saw to it that they attended school.