Jeannie Out Of The Bottle (10 page)

But Elvis was still concerned.

“I’m really worried that she’s too young,” he said.

Time, of course, would prove him right, because when Priscilla grew up, she would ultimately leave him. But all that was years in the future, as was his gargantuan weight gain.

I’d been on a diet for what seemed like my entire life. I routinely ate coffee, toast, and grapefruit for breakfast, a meat patty and a boiled egg for lunch, and a salad for dinner. But despite my meager diet, my battle against putting on weight was ongoing, and I told Elvis as much.

“I’ve got to watch what I eat, because I’m like my momma and she and I always gain weight. So I have to be real careful,” he acknowledged.

His mother had died two years before, and Elvis clearly venerated her memory. Family meant everything to him, and when he found out that my younger sister, Alison, was one of his biggest fans, he sent her a signed photo inscribed with the words “I’m glad to hear there’s another one like her at home.”

I was flattered. But while I adored Elvis, my heart belonged to Michael. As for Elvis, he was always courteous and respectful to me at all times, and there was never any suggestion that he harbored thoughts of putting our relationship on a less-than-professional footing. Not a glimmer. He was such a good actor.

It was clear to me during our time working together that he was achingly serious about making a success of the movie and about honing his craft. There was a great deal of honesty in his performance in Flaming Star, and it saddens me to think of how much better an actor Elvis might have become had the Colonel managed his career differently and made better artistic decisions on his behalf. In my opinion, Elvis could have become a really fine actor, but instead he became a superstar, an icon.

During the seventies, when he was headlining at the Las Vegas Hilton and I was married to my second husband, Chuck Fegert, Chuck and I saw Elvis’s show there and went backstage to see him afterward.

Decades had passed since Flaming Star, but somehow I still nurtured the faint hope that Elvis might have retained the same southern-boy sweetness he’d once had. Sadly, I discovered that he was no longer the slim young man I remembered, but he was still using those southern manners with me.

In the dressing room, he took one look at Chuck and said bluntly, “I wanna know just how you got her. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me!”

It had never occurred to me, all those years ago when Elvis and I worked together on Flaming Star, that he had any romantic designs on me, and I was shocked. He had been such a gentleman, but was that just a cover for his true intentions? All that vulnerability and self-disclosure—was it genuine, or was I still hopelessly naive and Elvis had just been using a cynical ploy to seduce me?

Thinking back to George Schlatter’s revelation about Elvis’s request after he saw me at Ciro’s, I think I know the answer.

One final coda to my time with Elvis, and a tragic one at that: When I was doing my nightclub act in Reno, during the seventies, I came down with a terrible cold. The show booker was most sympathetic and offered to take me to what he described as “a very special doctor,” provided I promise that I’d only see him this once. Far too sick to question the booker’s odd warning, I agreed and went to see the doctor, who prescribed some pills and gave me a shot.

The next morning, my cold had completely vanished. Delighted, I noted the doctor’s number, in case I might need it the next time I played Reno. Then I remembered my promise to the booker.

“Why don’t you want me to consult that doctor again?” I asked.

The booker hesitated, then finally said, “Well, Barbara, we had Elvis up here last month and he’s not well. He has people around him who don’t care about him as a person, but only care about him working, no matter how bad he feels, no matter how sick he is,” he said.

I flashed back to Flaming Star and a conversation Elvis and I had had about work. I love it, Barbara. Give me a guitar and I’m happy, he’d said.

“So what did the doctor do to Elvis so that he could keep on working?” I asked the booker.

He hesitated again. “Elvis’s butt looked like a pincushion. It had so many needle marks in it,” he said at last.

The thought of my beautiful, handsome, gentlemanly Elvis in that condition was almost too much to bear.

A classic Jeannie photograph.

A baby picture taken of me at a Tuscon photo gallery, along with a rabbit; not mine. At the end of the shoot, I accidentally sat on the poor rabbit!

Me at three, dressed, as always, in plaid, on an outing in El Paso with my two grandmothers. A day I shall never forget, as I had my first taste of pink lemonade along with a homemade sugar cookie.

This photograph of me trying to look happy with a black patch over my eye was taken in front of our house on Ocean Avenue, San Francisco. My dog, Spotty, is beside me.

The Miss California beauty pageant, 1951. I am the third from the right in the top row, and not thrilled to be there. The girl who became Miss California is second from the right on the bottom row. I wasn’t disappointed that I didn’t win and was voted Miss Congeniality.

This photograph was taken for an album cover that I got after spotting the advertisement on that famous notice board at the Studio Club.

Sunning myself in a leopardprint bikini with my cream poodle, Maggie.
(Photo Credit i1.1)

A classic Fox publicity shot.

My dance with Desi Arnaz, and as close as we were ever to get, despite Desi chasing me around the studio in an attempt to get ever closer.
(Photo Credit i1.2)

A publicity still from the TV series How to Marry a Millionaire. My character, Loco, is reading a comic (difficult, as my shortsightedness is a running gag on the show). Lori Nelson is in the middle, and Merry Anders on the right.
(Photo Credit i1.3)

A serious moment from Flaming Star, which matched the seriousness of Elvis’s approach to his acting craft and the importance of my own commitment to my marriage vows to Michael Ansara, despite such temptations as Elvis and Paul Newman.
(Photo Credit i1.4)

My scene with Paul Newman in From the Terrace. Paul Newman confided in me that he was delighted to be working with an actress he could look down on. Meanwhile, I was rigid with nerves at being so close to the impossibly handsome Mr. Newman.
(Photo Credit i1.5)

A still from The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, with me looking demure. When we were on location in Germany, my colorful co-star, Laurence Harvey, convinced me to have the most unpalatable meal of my life!
(Photo Credit i1.6)

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was one of the few movies in which my first husband, Michael Ansara, appeared with me. That’s him in the wet suit, along with Joan Fontaine and Robert Sterling.
(Photo Credit i1.7)

A lighter moment with Clint Eastwood on the set of Rawhide. I didn’t know that I was pregnant with Matthew at the time.

A posed shot from All Hands on Deck just before I gave Pat Boone his first on-camera kiss.
(Photo Credit i1.8)

A publicity photograph for The Brass Bottle, with my amusing co-star, Tony Randall, and the less-than-well-behaved Burl Ives, who played a djinn with magical powers.
(Photo Credit i1.9)

WHEN I WAS cast in Flaming Star, I wasn’t remotely nervous at the thought of meeting Elvis, but on the day that my stand-in, Evie Moriarty, announced, “My other star wants to meet you,” and led me onto the Something’s Got to Give sound stage to introduce me to Marilyn Monroe, my nervousness knew no bounds.

Like millions of Americans, I loved and admired the screen siren. But through Evie, I also knew the woman behind all the glamour and the glitter. Evie, a beautiful blonde with large blue eyes and endless legs, never gossiped about the stars for whom she acted as a stand-in. But then Evie was much closer to me than she was to most people.

She and I went way back to How to Marry a Millionaire, when she had first doubled for me, and we had become friends. Our friendship was cemented when Michael was away on location and she stayed overnight at our apartment to keep me company.

Evie was fun, sassy; she knew and understood show business, and helped me get through the lonely evenings when Michael was working far away and I felt isolated and abandoned. Luckily, Michael approved of Evie, and the three of us had a running joke that she was “babysitting” me in his absence.

Beneath her Kewpie doll looks and showgirl glamour, Evie was relatively down-to-earth. For many years she’d been the girlfriend of Carl Laemmle Jr., whose father founded Universal Studios. She’d often turn up at the studio, her wrists weighed down with bracelets and her fingers with rings.

“Aw, Barbara,” she’d say, “just look at what Junior gave me last night! What in heaven’s name am I going to do with them? I never wear diamonds.” Then she’d roll her big blue eyes up to the sky in mock distress.

She was so pretty, and a born actress, that I always wondered why she hadn’t pursued a Hollywood career. She definitely had the looks, the sex appeal, and, of course, the contacts.

Her answer was invariably to screw up her pretty face and go, “Oh, Barbara, I can’t even walk a straight line. And I can’t walk and talk at the same time, either!” Subject closed.

The topic of Marilyn, however, was an ongoing discussion between us. Evie knew how much Marilyn fascinated me, and that I was one of the few people in town she could open up to without fear of what she said ending up in Hollywood Confidential.

Marilyn aroused such a sense of protectiveness in Evie that she watched over Marilyn as fiercely as a lioness might over a fragile cub. And she didn’t mince her words when it came to anyone she thought was exploiting Marilyn or might be a danger to her in any way.

“People just aren’t nice to her. She’s insecure, they know it, and they build on it. Like that Strasberg woman, her acting teacher. She hangs around Marilyn like some kinda albatross,” she said in a voice full of scorn. “And poor Marilyn is so petrified of not being a good enough actress that between scenes, she lies down on her couch and says her lines over and over and over again, so she won’t make a mistake. They could all reassure her. But they won’t, because it suits them not to.”

Another time she told me: “Everybody is crazy about Marilyn’s body, but Marilyn, she says she’d rather look like Kate Hepburn—boyish, not round. I keep telling her that she wouldn’t be Marilyn if she looked like that, but she says she wouldn’t care.”

As time went on, Evie’s revelations about Marilyn grew darker, especially in the months leading up to my meeting with Marilyn on the set of Something’s Got to Give: hints that Marilyn had told her that she was being followed night and day, something about a man in a green Mercedes, her phone being tapped, even death threats.

By the spring of 1962, Evie was deeply worried about her “other star.” At the time, Evie was standing in for me on Five Weeks in a Balloon, on which shooting was already under way. I sensed that there was trouble ahead when she came clattering along the corridor in her impossibly high heels, much faster than usual, a clacking urgency echoing in her footsteps.

“Barbara, Marilyn needs me. I’m gonna have to leave your movie early,” she said.

Marilyn was the queen of Twentieth Century Fox. Evie was my friend. So I did my best to handle the news with as much grace as I was capable of mustering.

“Well, that’s fine, Evie. When does Marilyn start shooting?” I said.

“Tomorrow,” Evie said.

I must have looked a little startled, because she put her arm around me. “Barbara, honey, you don’t understand. Marilyn needs me right now. You’re a strong girl. You don’t need me.”

I wasn’t going to admit it to Evie or put pressure on her not to leave me in the lurch, but in fact I did need her. She was my friend and my stand-in, the only one I’d ever had, and so I was filled with trepidation at the prospect of not having her stand in for me on Five Weeks in a Balloon. But I wasn’t going to make things difficult for Evie, particularly if Marilyn needed her even more than I did.

As if she could read my thoughts, Evie went on, “Marilyn really does need me, Barbara. More than I can tell you.”

I told her I understood, and she thanked me. The next time I saw her, on April 10, 1962, she was pulling me onto the Something’s Got to Give sound stage because Marilyn had suddenly announced that she wanted to meet me.

So there I was in my clown outfit, complete with baggy plaid pants, about to be presented to the most glamorous woman on the planet. All I needed was a red nose and a dunce’s cap for my humiliation to be complete. But Marilyn wanted to meet me, and both my curiosity and the good manners my mother had drilled into me held me back from refusing.

So I let Evie drag me over to sound stage 14, where I waited with her in the shadows for Marilyn to appear. Judging by the tension on the set and Marilyn’s reputation for tardiness, everyone had been waiting for her for an inordinately long time. But no one complained. In fact, no one said a word. The air was electric with expectation, the stage quiet as a crypt.

Then Marilyn made her entrance: elegant, beautiful, vulnerable, wearing a black suit (the same one she wore in Let’s Make Love, which costume designer Jean Louis thought might be suitable for her to wear in Something’s Got to Give as well) and black pumps (which I knew were Ferragamo because afterward Evie nagged, “Barbara, you gotta buy them, they’re perfect for you”).

To me that day, everything about Marilyn was perfect, and for a moment I was rooted to the spot, almost paralyzed by anticipation.

She floated toward me, breathed the words, “Oh, oh, Barbara, it’s so nice to meet you,” and took my hand.

She really did talk like that. All air.

“Oh, Barbara, oh, Evie has told me so much,” she breathed again.

Almost tongue-tied, I eventually managed to blurt out, “Yes, Evie babysits me.”

Marilyn completely misunderstood and, to my embarrassment, said, “Oh, you have to come to the set again. And next time, do bring the kids.”