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Elvis made 31 excruciating formula films in 13 years. One off-screen date, Natalie Wood, said he was "terribly conventional ... He didn't drink. He didn't swear. He didn't even smoke! It was like haying the date that I never ever had in high school." But for diversion, "the Guys," Elvis' entourage of good ole boys, would procure women. The requirements: under 18, under 5 ft. 3 in. and under the Elvis spell. Some starlets cooperated by forming threesomes, wrestling in their under pants while the excited King, sated on cheeseburgers, watched from his bed.
No voyeurism could aid his performing career in the early '70s. Always a supreme ironist and imitator, a fan of Monty Python and Dr. Strangelove, Elvis began to kid his early songs. Near the end, in the kind of Bible Belt town where he had first gained fame, Elvis even gave away expensive jewelry to win over an audience that failed to appreciate the 255-lb. monster parading as Presley.
Goldman is particularly acute as he recounts the final decade in Graceland, with its turn-of-the-century whorehouse décor of red plush and smoked mirrors. Elvis subsisted on a diet of charred bacon, mashed potatoes and very sophisticated opiates and uppers. His affairs in shambles, he fired most of his faithful retinue in a paranoid frenzy of firearms and pills. An abject drug addict, he flew to Washington for a spur-of-the-moment meeting with Richard Nixon in connection with his role as a spokesman for the President's antidrug campaign. Said Nixon: "You dress pretty wild, don't you?" Replied the sedated Elvis: "Mr. President, you got your show to run and I got mine!"
But the show had run its course. Elvis was so stoned he could not get to the bathroom at night. He was pinned into bathtowels to keep the sheets clean. When he died of "heart failure" in 1977 at age 42, keeping his insomniac vigil in the reading chair of his opulent bathroom, one Hollywood kibitzer acidly remarked, "Good career move."
Goldman's arch, stinging overview echos that bitchy comment. All too often, he relies on shallow dazzle and backup effects. His subject is a compelling case history, an exploited talent with a wasted, truncated life. But that is not enough for Goldman. The biographer insists that each kink in his subject's psyche represents a tremor in the nation's collective unconscious. When Goldman finishes his juicy recounting of Elvis Presley's life, however, the mystery of the King's fascination remains. For that, fans and readers should rejoice. As Elvis always insisted, "You don't come back for an encore."
—By J.D. Reed
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