Robert Wells - Elvis - The Siege of Graceland and Other Stories

He didn’t quite catch what he was saying but there is no time to ask him to repeat it, so the President continues, “You won’t believe this, Elvis, but it’s my daughter Patricia’s favourite movie. I can hear her now singing that cute song, ‘But I Don’t Have a Wooden Leg’…”

Ends

2. Greta Garbo’s Movie Comeback

Colonel Parker is looking tired, harassed and you could grate cheese on the stubble on his sagging chins. There are letters and invoices strewn across the floor of his office at Graceland and the air is thick with cigar smoke – like a London smog but much more dangerous to health.

As he walks in, Elvis keeps waving his hand in front of his face to beat away the choking fumes but the Colonel assumes it is a greeting and he waves back in return. He invites him to take a seat and puts down the phone while brushing off the small mounds of grey ash that have collected on the front of his orange Hawaiian shirt, like the debris of a volcanic eruption.

Elvis has arrived for an update on his manager’s latest ‘Big Idea’ to breathe new life into his movie career and to make the sort of money that would represent the national debt of some small states. Only Colonel Parker could come up with an idea so breathtaking in its audacity and scope – nothing less than to persuade Greta Garbo to come out of retirement to make a musical with Elvis.

When he first mentioned this to him, Elvis’s initial response, which he hoped would convey his utter incredulity, was to respond with an “huh-huh”. While not particularly au fait with her career, he believed she hadn’t made a film for more than 30 years and had certainly never made a musical.

“Why, Colonel, sir? Why Greta Garbo? After all these years, why shouldn’t we just leave her to rest in peace in her retirement? Why don’t we get Ann-Margret back again? She can dance and sing, she’s Swedish and probably young enough to be Greta Garbo’s granddaughter.”

“Please, son, don’t use words like ‘rest in peace’ about Greta Garbo. She is a movie legend, worshipped like a goddess, and if we can get her back in front of the cameras in a film with you, it will amaze the world. It will be the biggest sensation in pictures since the talkies.”

Elvis looks again at his manager and asks where his assistant, Bubba, is and shouldn’t he be there helping him with the chaos of the paperwork. “You’re looking like 10 miles of bad road, Colonel, sir, if you don’t mind my saying.”

He tells Elvis that at this moment his assistant is sitting in a police station in Manhattan, helping them with their inquiries. He shakes his head sorrowfully and admits it is all his fault because he will not give up on his idea of shooting for the stars and getting Elvis and Greta Garbo in a film together. He conjures up images of huge posters proclaiming ‘Garbo Sings’ alongside ‘Elvis Sings’ and he is convinced it will be the first billion-dollar movie in history. The silver screen will become gold-plated.

He called in a lot of favours simply to get hold of her phone number, but when he did get through, she dismissed the whole idea as being ridiculous.

“It’s the motherlode and just too good to give up without a fight,” he says, continuing to puff distractedly on his Walmart cigar.

He tells Elvis how he followed up by sending her a copy of the script based on her old movie ‘Queen Christina’ that had been drafted by movie producer Hal Wallis’s team of writers. It came back with the word ‘No’ scrawled across the front, and a PS: ‘Leave me alone’. A personal letter and a photo of Elvis over which he had gone through so much trouble to autograph were similarly ignored. In a last throw of the dice (and gambling is something at which the Colonel is notoriously unlucky) he decided to send his assistant Bubba to New York to try and catch her and plead with her on one of those rare occasions when she emerges from her apartment on 52nd East Street.

Not unreasonably, Bubba demands to know, “What does she look like, Colonel? I’m flying blind here. I mean, how can I be sure if it is Greta Garbo I’m talking to?”

“Well, she’ll be smartly dressed, in her mid-Sixties and wearing dark glasses,” the Colonel replies.

“But that describes about half a million women living in Manhattan,” Bubba protests bitterly.

Inevitably, the police pick him up after complaints are made that a man has been pestering women in the street for a couple of days, asking if they are Greta Garbo and would they like to be in a movie.

Colonel Parker admits he is worried that he can’t think of a way of getting Bubba out of gaol, and also about the possible reputational damage if his assistant happens to mention his links to Elvis and himself. It could turn ugly in the press.

“The whole thing sounds like it’s some sort of routine from Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in,” declares Elvis. “I’d be roaring my head off if it wasn’t so serious.”

“What was that you said, son?” says the Colonel, suddenly becoming animated.

“I was just saying it sounds like a comedy sketch from a TV show.”

“I think you’ve just given me an idea.” He says he’ll call Hal Wallis, who is currently in New York talking to the money men about financing the new movie with Garbo, and to see if he can help to get Bubba released.

The movie producer explains to the police captain that his officers mistakenly arrested Colonel Parker’s assistant during the filming of a Candid Camera sequence for Elvis’s next movie. Has he ever seen Candid Camera on TV? There is a shake of the head in reply. The idea is that there’s a hidden camera that films how ordinary members of the public react differently in the same situation. It’s just a bit of fun and it is a routine that’s familiar to and popular with millions of Americans, apart from the police in Manhattan, that is, he adds. The bungling intervention of his two cops in arresting the Colonel’s assistant has scuppered the whole project, he says, nodding his head sorrowfully.

“What can I say?” confesses the police chief.

“You can try sorry,” replies Hal.

“To think, Elvis and my company, Paramount Pictures, were coming to New York to make his next big bucks movie and this is how we are treated,” he continues, reaching for an imaginary trowel to lay it on as thickly as possible.

“I’m sure no one will want to blame you personally, Captain – May I just make a note of your name – but what would it have been worth to the Borough of Manhattan to have a film like this shot here? Who knows how Elvis is going to feel after all this… Who knows how far up the chain he will send this – the Police Commissioner, the Mayor, the State Governor, Frank Sinatra…”

By now the police chief is wringing his hands and saying he will go immediately to release Bubba and personally apologise to him.

“Let’s hustle,” says Hal. “We still may be able to save the movie.”

When Bubba calls Colonel Parker on his release from the cells, he is told to go back to where Greta Garbo lives and try and persuade her – whatever it takes – to make the movie.

“But you cannot be serious, sir. In all probability, I’ll be arrested again as a repeat offender. They’ll throw the book at me and I’ll end up in Rikers Island gaol.”

But the Colonel is adamant and so Bubba gloomily heads back to 52nd East Street while pondering his possible fate as an inmate, sharing a cell with a tattooed thug serving life for murder. After hanging around for some hours and trying not to look furtive, he manages to sneak into the building behind the mailman as he presses the entry code buttons. Since knocking on the door of Garbo’s apartment elicits no response, he gets down on his hands and knees and shouts through the letterbox near the bottom of the door, “I’m Bubba and I’m here on behalf of Colonel Thomas Parker and we want to talk to you about doing a movie with Elvis Presley.”