The Colonel (38 page)

Elvis joins Parker, sporting fake goatee (back row), with RCA brass Bill Bullock (back row, far left), Steve Sholes (back row, center), and Hill and Range liaison Freddy
Bienstock (front row, left), circa 1956. (The collection of Robin Rosaaen)

As a birthday present for Steve Sholes, Colonel Parker had an elaborate dog house built in honor of Nipper, the RCA mascot. Elvis poses in front of it with the Colonel and Marie
(right) at Sholes’s party at the Beverly Hills Hotel, 1957. The “Frank” mentioned in the legend over the door (“The Dog House That Frank Helped Build”) is Y. Frank
Freeman, the famed Paramount Pictures executive, and alludes to Elvis’s films helping sell records. (The collection of Robin Rosaaen)

Loving You,
released in 1957, costarred Lizabeth Scott as Glenda Markle, a manipulative press agent and manager who reprised a number of Colonel Parker’s real-life
publicity stunts. (Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)

The Colonel and Elvis make merry in a red BMW Isetta “bubble car,” Presley’s Christmas gift to his manager, December 1957. (Nashville Public Library, The
Nashville Room)

When Texas Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson invited Eddy Arnold to entertain Mexico President Adolfo Lopez Mateos at the LBJ ranch in October 1959, Parker went along, and parlayed a
meeting into a friendship. Johnson’s daughter, Lynda Bird, watches at right. (Oliver Atkins / George Mason University.)

Vernon Presley, the Colonel’s ally, accompanied Elvis to Germany in 1958, and conducted business with Parker in the U.S. by letter. Here, Vernon enjoys a press item with
his son. (Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)

Parker, dressed in his favorite get-up, a Confederate uniform, dances with Marie at a party on the set of
G.I. Blues,
1960. (The collection of the Bitsy Mott Family)

Parker loved getting the best of Hal Wallis, seen here in the Colonel’s Paramount office in 1960, modeling a paper hat stamped “G.I. Blues.” (Courtesy of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)

Elvis chuckles at a get well letter the Colonel wrote to Harry Brand, head of publicity for Twentieth Century Fox, during the making of
Flaming Star,
1960. From left:
Bitsy Mott, Tom Diskin, producer David Weisbart, Parker, Elvis, director Don Siegel, and music/sound effects editor Ted Cain. (The collection of the Bitsy Mott family)

“We do it this way, we make money; we do it your way, we don’t make money,” Parker seems to be telling his client in this undated photograph, probably from the
early 1960s. (The collection of the Bitsy Mott family)

A cozy pose with Hal Wallis, probably during the making of
Blue Hawaii,
1961. (Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)

Parker with “Miz Ree,” as he jokingly called his wife, on Waikiki, 1961. The picture is inscribed to Bobby Ross’s family. (Courtesy of Sandra Polk Ross and
Robert Kenneth Ross)