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Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even earn the label crime of the century.But the stories that made headlines in decades past aren't necessarily remembered today.
I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author.And in each episode of this show, I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened. This is Crimes of the Centuries.
Andreas Cornelius van Couier may or may not have bludgeoned to death.Anna van den Enden, a newlywed who lived behind her fruit shop in Holland in the late 1920s,
The 23-year-old Green Grocer's wife, who probably had known Andreas from their earliest years together in their small Dutch town of Breda, died on Friday, May 17, 1929, while she was at her kitchen sink in the home that adjoined the shop.
A man had been seen leaving the shop around the time the murder occurred, wearing what one witness described as a fantasy coat, very much in the style of Couier's typical dress.
Or maybe it was an unusual yellow raincoat, which was his favorite color, much like one found in his closet later. Anna had died so violently that many wondered what the motive could possibly have been.
Why smash her head in so brutally that brain matter was exposed?Why try to bind the already dead woman's wounds with cloth found inside the home?Why sprinkle white pepper around her body and on all the surfaces the murderer might have touched?
Did you know that all German shepherds had been trained to pick up scent and track it and were, even at this early date, being used by the Dutch police?Andreas knew a lot about training dogs.
Because the bedroom and bathroom had been ransacked, the police decided that the killing had been a robbery gone wrong.But the killing had been done with such fury.Confusing, really. No one has ever been charged with a crime.
In fact, decades later, it would be discovered that Andreas Van Couier's name had not even appeared in the police reports pertaining to the murder.
But Andreas Van Couier, a boy who had already left his country once, but, evidence suggests, had returned to celebrate a Catholic holiday there with his family that Whitsunday weekend, left his native land that Friday and never returned.
Andreas, who also went by Andre, lost almost complete contact with his family after that day, writing only sporadic letters to his mother back in Breda.
Sometimes he even wrote letters the family knew were from him, but he signed an American name they didn't recognize. They did not know why he never showed up for work that Friday or any time after leaving most of everything he had behind.
A few neighbors thought they had heard him arguing with his mother that day.Some saw a man in a yellow raincoat leave her house that day.
Decades passed before a letter to a Dutch journalist implicated Andre in the heinous crime against Anna, but without any real evidence, the matter died. By that time, Andre had somehow gotten to the U.S.
Maybe it was by ship, under an assumed name, maybe he stowed away.
He'd chosen a different name in the United States, claimed to have served in the American military, trained dogs and horses for carnival shows, married a dancing girl from the carny, and met a man who, I think we can make this claim without a lot of explanation, went on to change the very culture we live in today.
But hold on, I'm not going to hang this episode on a crime that he may or may not have committed.The crime Andreas Van Couier is most certainly guilty of is theft of mind bending amounts. You might have heard of him, even if you don't think so.
It's just that the name you would know him by is Colonel Tom Parker.This is the man who met, managed, some even say made, and swindled millions of dollars out of Elvis Presley.And a lot of other people too, but mostly Elvis.
Some of the financial chicanery was done with Elvis' consent, though God only knows if that country boy ever understood the contracts he was signing or how badly he was being taken.
Some of the thievery was done without his knowledge, because he had turned almost everything over to Colonel Tom Parker, who, maybe because of that, saw Elvis as a rube.
Hal Cantor, director and screenwriter of two of Elvis' movies, Loving You and Blue Hawaii, talking about Parker.
He was one of the sharpest, calm men that I've ever run across.
After Elvis' death, Parker was asked if he indeed took half of what Elvis made.No, you have it wrong, he responded.He took half of everything I earned.
The fraud perpetuated on the man with one of the most recognizable faces on the planet still absolutely earns the right to be a crime of the century.
Because without it, Elvis may never have gotten as big as he did, may never have taken the path he did, never chosen the songs he recorded, never agreed to the movies he made, and never ended up the way he did.
Although admittedly, that last point is debatable. So am I implying that Elvis becoming Elvis is to be filed under bad things?No.I'm just saying that theft is theft.And Andre Van Couier slash Colonel Tom Parker never regretted a minute of it.
Alana Nash, the music journalist who wrote his definitive biography, The Colonel, spoke on a podcast called Splat from the Past about Parker, whom she interviewed a few times before his death.
She said Parker was quite kind to me, but he could also be cutting and insulting if you, you know, if you pressed him very much for information or just to try to get inside of his head a little bit more.So, you know, he's kind of like
How's that for a reputation?
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That's buy one get one 50% off when you head to 3DayBlinds.com slash COTC. One last time, that's the number three, d-a-y blinds dot com slash c-o-t-c.A few things you should know about Colonel Tom Parker before we get to the Elvis part.
First, after he arrived in this country, he never used his real name again.He would repeatedly tell people he was born in Huntington, West Virginia.Elvis never even knew he wasn't.
Secondly, he was through and through a carny, a man besotted by the carnival life, the people in it, the travel, the hucksterism, the rawest of entertainment. Next, he did not earn the title of colonel.
He was made an honorary colonel in the Louisiana State Militia in 1948 by Governor Jimmy Davis, because he helped with the governor's election campaign.
He was never naturalized as an American citizen, something that seemed odd on its face, wrote Nash, and he never owned a passport.
He was very mysterious and he went to great lengths to protect the fact that he was here in the country illegally.
While he did serve in the U.S.Army for maybe two years, he wrote letters to his mother in which he claimed to be in certain regiments that didn't exist.
Now we know that he served because we have documentation that he went AWOL, absent without leave, in September, 1932.
Interestingly, at the same time that Ringling Brothers Circus was in Pensacola, where he was stationed, and then he was classified as a deserter. He was away from his post for five months.
He either came back after that or was brought back, jailed for the offense and placed in solitary confinement for two months.There, Parker had what medical personnel at the time called a psychotic break.
He was sent away for treatment, but the army was not terribly progressive about such things back in the day, ultimately giving him an honorable discharge when he was 24.
Parker was then released into the wider world, given a little more than a hundred dollars and a certificate of disability explaining his differential diagnosis of constitutional psychopathy.
A psychopath, yes, who is also suffering from acute depression and emotional instability.
His future did not look promising, but he ran straight back to the life he knew and loved, to be a carnival barker, a sideshow talker, a fortune teller, an animal trainer, and the front man for the girly shows.
He even sold hot dogs that had a bit of meat at each end and were filled with onions and mustard in the middle.
He was a carny.So he saw everybody as a mark.And he had this motto, you either con or you get con.So he was always, seeking leverage in every deal or every interaction, really.
And really, that was his true talent, seeing everything as an opportunity for a con and everyone as someone who could be tricked.
He married one of the pretty girls in the girly show, or so they both maintained, though no marriage certificate for him and Marie Ross, his companion until her death, could ever be found.
Marie, who was a lifelong kleptomaniac, brought to the marriage a son whom Parker treated well.
Last thing you need to know is that Parker was likely the inspiration for the 1973 movie, Paper Moon, which starred Ryan O'Neal and his 10-year-old daughter, Tatum, who was still the youngest person to have ever won an Oscar.
Tatum O'Neal is to the Oscars, what Daisy Egan is to Tony's.
If you don't know or can't quite remember the plot, Paper Moon is about a traveling salesman named Moses Prey who cons new widows into buying pricey Bibles, freshly monogrammed that morning after he read the obituaries.
Telling the newly grieving widow that her husband had put money down on the Bible as a gift for her, he could let her have it if she'd pay the remainder of the high price her husband had agreed to. To be clear, Parker actually did this.
From a documentary by Unreal.
In both real life and in the movies, the tender widows almost always paid up.
Then in the late thirties, Tom Parker decided to go into showbiz, helping the failing career of a once big time country crooner named Gene Austin.
Parker took a liking to the promotions game, even though the gig with Austin only lasted for a short time. In need of money, he then took up the job of field agent for the Hillsborough, Florida Humane Society.
He parlayed that into sweet deals where he staged rescues, got rewarded, and traded donated dog food for food for his family's table.
And once again, his mind was working overtime.He noticed how much people love their pets and thought, why not start a dog cemetery?
So he built a shabby pet cemetery on other people's sincere devotion. He was making good for the Humane Society, which erased its debt and upped its image while he was on board, while he also made good for Tom Parker.
He would take your dime to show you the world's shortest horse, a pony he had planted upright in the dirt and stuffed hay at his ground-level knees and taught to hold still.
When World War II required even more men to fight abroad in 1944, the 36-year-old Parker was classified 4F, as in unfit for physical, mental, or moral reasons.Now the small-time hustler just knew he was made for bigger things.
So on weekends away from his Humane Society gig, he began trolling Nashville to find some talent to rep. There, he found the very promising Eddie Arnold, a man who had idolized Parker's first-ever client, Gene Austin.
The man had found an inn and, after adding up-and-comer Ernest Tubb to his client list, he set up tent shows throughout the South that offered a respite from the long war.
Parker was booking agent and advanced man, road crew and promoter, front man and in the wings.He did the work, figuring to put shows in small Southern towns who had only heard their heroes on the radio.
As author Nash explained, he would choose a town that didn't even have a venue the talent could perform in.That didn't stop him.
And one small town in Oklahoma, population 1,500, Parker was so effective a promoter that more than 1,100 people showed up to buy tickets to sit bunched together in the damp southern heat to be entertained.Nashville took note.
All Parker had to do was show the city slickers elsewhere in the nation that the country boys were worth their investment.And so was he. Soon enough, he got Arnold, a country singer known as the Tennessee Plowboy, a deal with RCA Records.
Big time, here it was. Then, sometime in late 1954, and really nobody knows exactly when this happened, Parker took note of a very young Elvis Presley, probably on a live weekly show that was broadcast by radio called the Louisiana Hayride.
So little did he know about Elvis, the first time he heard him, he thought he was a black performer. We do know that by early 1955, Parker saw what a lot of people didn't.Big potential.Huge.
The trick was not watching the performance, but watching the audience.They were the barometer. As actor Tom Hanks, who played Parker in the 2022 movie Elvis, told Stephen Colbert.
And it's one thing to see young girls to be excited by the likes of Elvis Presley.But when their 40-year-old moms also are literally having feelings that maybe they shouldn't have in public, he said, hmm, I might be able to make some money at this.
What was it that was so said, oh honey, he's just a big hunk of forbidden fruit.And he said, ah, forbidden fruit is sold at a premium in most supermarkets in America.So he, he jumped, he was a diabolical genius in every way.
Truth was, Parker never liked Elvis's music, but that wasn't important.Selling him was.But there was a hitch.Elvis already had a manager. Crimes of the Centuries is sponsored by MiracleMaid.I just ordered another set of MiracleMaid sheets yesterday.
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When Colonel Tom Parker, quote unquote, discovered Elvis Presley, his manager at the time was country music promoter, Bob Neal.And guess what?Neal was actually Elvis's second manager.
His first had briefly been Scotty Moore, a legendary guitarist who formed the group, the Blue Moon Boys, Elvis's backing band. Neil took over in 1954 after Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records, gave him an acetate disc of Elvis' first record.
Neil promoted it on the Memphis radio station WMPS and set up Elvis' first live performance at Overton Park on July 30, 1954.Neil signed on to become Presley's second manager in January of 1955.
It was amended three months later, and from that point it was supposed to last one year with Neal forming Elvis Presley Enterprises, a corporation designed to promote the product called Elvis Presley.Neal was to get 15% commission.
Things changed once Parker zeroed in on Elvis. He quickly sized Elvis up as a mama's boy and decided that he would have to convince both of Elvis' parents, Gladys and Vernon Presley, that he was the man who should run their good-looking boy's career.
He started slow, having them sign a contract that designated him as a special advisor to their son.For that, he would be paid $2,500 a year, payable in five installments.
But by the end of 1955, Parker had pushed aside the other manager, bought out Elvis' Son Records contract for $35,000, a massive sum at the time, and made sure that RCA, not he, paid the bill.
It was all part and parcel of the new recording contract with RCA, a much bigger player on the stage than Son had ever hoped to be.
Then, quite masterfully, Parker made the three men who had been with Elvis all along in the Sun Records recording studio and on stage, guitarist Scotty Moore, double bass player Bill Black, and drummer DJ Fontana, into employees instead of equals.
That meant they got paid a salary instead of a percentage.Then Parker negotiated another fine deal with William Morris, the leading talent agency in the world,
That contract gave Parker quote, final approval of all contracts to be entered into for Elvis Presley and quote, for the duration of their association.This meant exactly what you think it meant.Elvis couldn't do a flipping thing without the colonel.
And if he did it with the colonel and it made money, the colonel got a mighty generous take of the hall.Fun fact to no one tell, Parker required that every contract he ever signed was to be no longer than a page.
Apparently he wasn't much for legal minutia.
And he had his motto to live by, which is always have something better than a contract.
Elvis, who had just turned 20, was mighty pleased.Then Parker did the thing he should be most remembered for.He took over the whole enterprise of selling this product called Elvis in any and every way possible.
He made commercialization of an artist a new art form.Call it branding, fine, but eventually he figured out how he could sell lipstick
purses, scarves, jewelry, pens, clocks, paintings, packs of cards, blue suede shoes, a board game called Elvisopoly, toilet seat covers, and every imaginable doodad known to man, all with Elvis' name attached.
And all of that would be money in Elvis' bank account.But more so, it'd be money in his.Or maybe I'm not being fair.It really depends on who you ask.
Here's a mashup of differing opinions on the influence Parker had over Elvis, as presented by a documentary called The Colonel.
Colonel Parker never took 50 percent of Elvis earnings.Never.
Well, you know, everybody blames everything on everybody else.But ultimately, it's Elvis.It's Elvis Presley.He makes the decisions.
He should have let Elvis do what Elvis wanted to do because Elvis knew what he wanted to do and that was to play insane. He would always let Elvis make the creative decisions.
He would present it with opportunities, and Elvis would say yes or would say no.Do you want to do this movie?Do you want to do this script?Do you want to do these songs?All those creative choices were Elvis's.
Elvis had finished a picture, and I said, what do you do next, Elvis?He said, I don't know.The colonel hasn't told me yet.
He never interfered with the creative part of Elvis.He said, Elvis is a star.He knows exactly what he's doing.
It's confusing as hell. Under ideal circumstances, it should be as simple as, Elvis, once an adult, was responsible for his choices, and those choices included the choice to let Colonel Parker make choices for him.
But Elvis had some hang-ups that, once you learn about them, don't make his circumstances ideal. This was a guy who would bring his mom on dates and hold hands with her to ensure she didn't get jealous of the girl he was supposedly on the date with.
He was a teenager when he got famous.He had trouble making decisions for himself.What we know is this.Originally, Parker got 25% of Elvis's earnings, making sure all expenses came out of Elvis's 75%.
Parker also made sure that the great majority of the money for appearances was paid up front.
This had the effect of making those who booked Elvis do a lot of the promoting to make sure they had full houses, which was fine with Parker as that was money he did not have to spend.Elvis did not look at the bills.
He only wanted money in the bank so he could write a check for things he wanted.And Parker knew that.He counted on it. Here's Parker explaining Elvis's financial prowess.
Well, uh, Elvis makes a good deal of money and when he gets paid, he takes it home to his father, his mother, their financial setup actually is no concern of mine more than I know. at their very level-headed people.
I do not manage his financial affairs.
A few things happened pretty quickly that Parker never understood, really, but was ready to capitalize on.Number one, the nation's teenagers found the country boy irresistible.
Post-war pubescence and newfound teen income made for a cultural moment that no one could have predicted or planned for.The girls wanted him, the boys wanted to be him.He was James Dean without the danger. 2.When Elvis was booked on The Ed Sullivan Show in September 1956 to sing You Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog, 60 million people tuned in.
TV was nascent.That was 82% of all televisions in this country.
Three, he recorded Heartbreak Hotel, the first of many he'd do for RCA, and that was his first million seller.It reached the top five on the Country and Western chart, the Pop chart, and the R&B chart simultaneously.It was certified double platinum.
And four, Elvis, who used to make $300 for a live appearance, now upped the going rate to $25,000. By 1957, a live TV performance would cost the network $300,000.Let me do some math for you here because the numbers are about to get bigger.
You need a frame of reference.Let's take that last fact.In today's money, Elvis used to make about $3,500 a live appearance. It was then upped to about $295,000.
By 1957, a live TV performance would cost the network $3.5 million if he were being paid that rate today.He rightfully thanked the Colonel for that. The money was real.
The songs, by the way, were custom-made for him, and Parker had a piece of that pie too. At some point, Parker restructured the contracts for the music publishing rights to Elvis's songs.
40% went to Parker, 15% to Elvis, 45% to Parker's friends, and because he could, 25% of Elvis's 15 would be allotted to Parker because that was, of course, stipulating in his overarching contract with his only client.Sounded fair to him.
He booked Elvis into Las Vegas, though the young man did not gamble or drink.Parker didn't either.Drink, that is.He most certainly gambled.Despite the fact that Elvis would one day rule Vegas, this first effort was rated only so-so.
Not the right time for this crowd, which skewed older.Move on.Now it was time to put the boy into the movies, because that would sell music. Parker had no faith that Elvis could act.
But by now, a man who couldn't carry a tune in a bucket knew the boy could sing.And Hollywood was a damn sight closer to the roulette wheels in Vegas than Nashville was.
To facilitate Elvis Presley's foray into Hollywood, Colonel Tom Parker began talking to legendary film producer Hal Wallace.He'd produced Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon and, in his lifetime, got 19 Oscar nominations.
At the heart of the talks was a movie concept in which Elvis would sing some marketable tunes around some inane plotlines and turn both into celluloid gold.
Parker's so-called partners at William Morris were trying to help, but he feared they might get too close and might do some math and discover that the way Parker had structured some deals meant that he was making more than 50% of Elvis' take.
He had even arranged to have all the monies due them both sent through him so that he could parcel it out. Pat Broski, co-author of Down at the End of the Lonely Street, The Life and Death of Elvis Presley.
The deal is outrageous.The Colonel is becoming fabulously wealthy.
Though there's no evidence to verify it, it's believed that by now, Parker was already in serious gambling debt.Serious being something like a million dollars.
Here's where the story changes, when a man who loved control became a man who needed money, and where he would have to risk losing everything against a future of possibly making millions more.
When it came to the movie deal then, Parker, again, negotiated with Parker in mind. He got a three-picture deal with Elvis getting $100,000 for the first, $150,000 for the second, and $200,000 for the third.
A bonus would be forthcoming if the box office grossed $5 million. Truth was, by the time the third picture, Jailhouse Rock, was made, renegotiations had given Elvis, and thus Parker, 50% of the profit from it.
Elvis, of course, is not really getting 50% of the profits for those pictures because of the way his deal is structured with the colonel.
Regardless of the split, it's this part about the percentage of the movie's take that would shake the ground in Hollywood.
Before Elvis Presley, nobody ever got a piece of a movie.They got a salary and that was it.Colonel was the only one that started where artists got a piece of the picture.
So that changed how a lot of other managers and agents started doing that with other stars.Colonel was always very tough when it comes to money.
Money up front, because he knows by the end, when he goes through all the bookkeeping in Hollywood, you never get a dime.
That's Joe Esposito, Elvis' road manager and friend.A tiny aside, though Parker never believed it, there were quite a few in Hollywood who had seen some of Elvis' early work and genuinely thought he had talent.
Elvis wanted the roles that may have otherwise gone to James Dean, who died in the fall of 1955.He thought the songs in his Hal Wallace movies were nothing but a gimmicky stunt.No one cared what he thought.
By now, of course, Elvis was a man of draft age.The draft board had come a calling.A gambler, Parker, took the risk and advised Elvis to enlist.Better optics, as they say.
But he did it knowing full well there was a chance that two years away from music would end everything.Rock and roll could die.People could move on. His plan?To keep Elvis alive to everyone all the time.
Movies were scheduled accordingly, and Parker knew he could capitalize on everything that boy did while in the service of his country.For starters, Elvis reported for duty on March 24th, 1958.Ostensibly, he was like every other soldier.He was not.
The press was there, documenting everything.I won't bore you with the details of his military high life in Germany.He had his own housekeeper and met 14-year-old Priscilla, who would enchant him, ew, as no other young woman ever had.
But you should know that Parker promised him that he would come back as popular as when he left, as long as he left everything in Parker's hands. Elvis' family went to see him in Europe, the colonel did not, but he also kept his promise.
Everyone still yearned for more Elvis when he returned in March 1960.He was met with crowds as he whistle-stopped his way on the train home, with screaming girls waiting in the wee hours of the morning for him to whisk by, a hero just for showing up.
Newspaper and magazine reporters and photographers were on hand as well, as were some congressmen and senators, and in short order, there was a planned welcome home special hosted by Frank Sinatra.
The colonel had orchestrated a victory party for which everyone else paid. Soon, Elvis was on the movie set again, this time making G.I.Blues.His contracts were renegotiated as Parker played record and film executives against each other.
A deal with United Artists gave him $500,000 a picture, plus half the profits.They were back in business.A brief pause to reflect on an oddity here.
You know, early on, I posed the question about whether Andreas Van Couier killed that young newlywed, that he got out of Europe as fast as he could, that he entered this country illegally and never tried to become legal, that he lied about a lot of things.
But there was one thing he was scrupulously honest about, according to biographer Nash, paying taxes. He, and therefore Elvis, had no tax shelters and took advantage of no loopholes, nor did they get fancy with their deductions.
Parker did not want the IRS to find a reason to look too close, which made Elvis the nation's largest taxpayer on straight income.But back to the story.
Elvis got so big that a picture of him returning from duty showed up in a magazine in a Dutch beauty parlor where Parker's sister, who had not seen Parker in 30 years, was having her hair done.
There, in the background of the shot, was the Colonel, plainly visible.The family was certain it was their brother and they began to write him. Parker wrote back, rather cryptically, referring to himself in third person and as a plural entity.
In one response he used this phrase, quote, we will try to help in some way to at least make up for any mistakes someone may have made without meaning to do so, end quote.Is this a confession of sorts?I don't know.
But Parker eventually paid for a brother to come visit him in the U.S.where they spoke, though no one knows about what.The brother also met Elvis, he would later tell his family.
He would also tell them that his brother and his brother's famous protege were successful beyond all expectation and getting more so. In 1964, MGM paid Elvis $1 million a picture.He would eventually make 31 feature films.
Success did not bring him happiness. And while the Colonel would swear Elvis made all the decisions about his music and his movies, it simply wasn't so.Elvis became unhappy, depressed, really.His mother had died while he was in Germany.
He gained weight.He took amphetamines to try to control his appetite.He hadn't been on stage in years.He had Priscilla tucked away in Memphis while he was catting around with Ann-Margret in Vegas and didn't know what to do.A boy, now in a man's body.
Still in 1965, Elvis made around $5 million.The 25% commission that Parker made at that time would have earned him about 1.25 million bucks.
But, and this is a big but, the Colonel's gambling losses equaled about a million dollars at just one hotel, the International.And Parker often bet at multiple establishments. His take from the bank of Elvis wouldn't have made a dent in his losses.
That's when the Colonel had Elvis signed yet a new contract.In early January, 1967, the Colonel's management percentage doubled from 25% to 50%.His percentage of Elvis's music involvements also increased to 50%.
According to Nash, the industry standard was nowhere close to 50.Those who managed entertainers usually got 10 to 15%, you know, on par with what Bob Neal made that first Elvis manager I mentioned a bit ago.
Anyway, on May 1st, 1967, Elvis and Priscilla got married.The Colonel was in charge of the arrangements.They wed in Vegas.Of course they had a baby. Elvis made some serious music with new people to reflect the changing times.
Songs like In the Ghetto, Suspicious Minds, and Kentucky Rain.He went back to Vegas.This time the audience was ready for him.He was playing to the crowd who knew him and had loved him now for years. He was a smash.
He told reporters he wanted to go to Europe and Asia to play huge arenas of fans who embraced him to earn a million dollars a night.One promoter offered him $1 million to play London.Elvis was gung-ho.
Parker instead arranged a tour throughout the U.S.to distract him. More and more offers poured in that would send Elvis overseas, and time and again, Parker kiboshed the offers.Industry folk found it odd.
Why wouldn't Parker take Elvis overseas, where he would surely make a ton of money?It made no sense, especially considering that the more Elvis made, the more Parker would rake in.
Rona Barrett, Hollywood gossip columnist and talk show host, always wanted to know more about Elvis to share with his fans.
If I ever saw the Colonel, and I saw a lot of the Colonel in Palm Springs, I would always ask him about something.And he'd say, ma'am, I don't know anything about the other side of Elvis's life.Talk to me a little bit about the business life.
I can tell you everything about the business life.And please know that I have 50% of everything he makes.
Again, maybe it's time to do some celebrity math.
According to James L. Dickerson, author of Colonel Tom Parker, The Curious Life of Elvis Presley's Eccentric Manager, Parker planted a story that a Las Vegas hotel had offered Elvis $5 million for a 10-year deal.
The International Hotel, where Elvis always performed, then counter-offered a five-year contract at $1 million a year, booking two four-week stints a year, each with 57 shows.That deal was accepted.
Now, a million a year divided by two was obviously 500,000. Considering the tax rate for a man making that kind of money, Elvis at most would have made $250,000.Not chump change in America in 1970, but the man also had to keep up appearances.
He had a wife and a child.He had to pay his own father's gambling debts.
He had to maintain a large house in Memphis, you know it as Graceland, and he had a lot of buddies who were hangers-on who mooched on the king of rock and roll every day of their lives.
When Elvis was in residence in Las Vegas, Parker regularly lost up to a hundred thousand dollars a night.So yeah, Parker was biting, nay gobbling, the hand that fed him. Elvis' last great moment was his 1968 TV special for NBC which ran in December.
He had a sexy back.He looked 19 in black leather pants, tanned, slim and healthy and in that full and glorious voice that he could wield to bring an audience to tears.
TV critic John Landau wrote, quote, There is something magical watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home, end quote.If only.
Elvis began his slow descent into a personal hell that led to his shocking death at the age of 42.Shocking only to the rest of us.For those who knew him, it had been a long time coming.
In late 1970, Elvis did that weird thing where, high as a kite, he offered himself, in person, to President Nixon to be an FBI agent at large, a job that didn't exist.
He was sure of his abilities to help the government stop drug use, even while he could not go to sleep or awaken or work or play or even fornicate without the help of synthetic substances illegal to those without prescriptions.
But he had a doctor, so that made it okay.He also had a wife, a woman with whom a million women would have willingly changed places, who left him in 1972.And really, who could blame her?
It can be argued he had groomed her when she was 14, and it can't be argued that he cheated on her left and right.Parker booked Elvis in myriad U.S.
cities, where the now-large man sweat profusely on stage in white jumpsuits, bejeweled capes, and a dazzling array of colorful scarves that he wore for a minute or two, then flung into the crowd to gift some lucky someone as a souvenir.
While Elvis perspired, Parker saw the handwriting on the wall, inking six large deals that, in effect, sold Presley's master tapes and the rights to all royalties that came from their use.
As if Elvis had already died and had no use for them, or had no control of, or didn't want to hand to Lisa Marie to secure her future.But Parker saw the future, maybe as he always had. Parker's first wife had died, and he had remarried.
According to Loam Parker, the colonel returned from a planned meeting with Elvis.
And he came back to the room one night, and he was crying.He said, I've lost him.My friend is gone.
He was still booking a tour when Elvis died in his bathroom on August 16th, 1977.
His autopsy revealed he was suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, glaucoma, liver disease, and had an enlarged colon likely caused by his overuse of laxatives.He also had emphysema, though he never smoked.
His heart was supposedly twice the normal size.
In his system at the time, he had as many as 14 different drugs, including significant quantities of codeine, morphine, quaaludes, valium, pentobarbital, and butobarbital, and a kind of synthetic heroin called Dilaudid.
At his funeral the next day, all of the Memphis hangers-on wore black.Parker wore a colorful Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap.He was asked to be a pallbearer, but declined.
Four days later, Elvis's father Vernon signed a contract with Parker to become the manager of Elvis's estate.
He had already made deals in the intervening four days to sell t-shirts outside Graceland and to lock up control of all images of the dead king. In 1980, Priscilla decided to wrest control of the estate from Parker on behalf of her daughter.
She hired a Memphis lawyer named Blanchard Toole to investigate where the money went.
Toole's report to the Shelby County Probate Court stated what few knew, quote, all agreements entered into between Parker and Presley from 1967 forward were unfair and that the amount of commissions were excessive, end quote.
He added that Lisa Marie had lost millions of dollars that were rightfully hers.He wrote that Parker had been quote, self-dealing and overreaching end quote.It was found that Elvis made $4.65 million off the work of a lifetime.
The Colonel made $6.2 million. Judge Joseph Evans gave Priscilla, on behalf of Lisa Marie, permission to look into all of Parker's financial dealings with Elvis.
She, with the help of Blanchard and an army of forensic accountants, did their best to unravel the morass of contracts he had negotiated for Elvis. On August 14, 1981, saying what Parker did shocked the conscience of this court.
Judge Evans required Presley's executors to sue Parker for fraudulent business practices and to do the same with RCA. A year later, unencumbered by dozens of lawsuits, Col.
Tom Parker, who had by now been unmasked as being one Andreas van Coulee of Holland, informed the court it had no jurisdiction over him because he was an illegal resident of this country.
on about that earlier possible crime back in his home country, the one that maybe caused him to flee in the first place?Well, it turned out that after 30 years, he was free from being questioned in Holland about any unsolved crime.
So, he was free, period.Anyway, lawyers lawyered and judges judged, and Priscilla got tired of the bullshit and settled.
Parker ended up getting $2 million from RCA, $225,000 for his share in various interests, and, yep, his ability to con had won again.He is said to have made $100 million more from his affiliation with Dead Elvis.
Legendary TV and radio personality Dick Clark, who hosted American Bandstand from 1956 to 1989, was always blunt when he spoke of Colonel Parker.
Colonel Parker was a very bad man.And they stole his money.They stole his career.They stole his library.They stripped him.He was like a puppet on a string.And Colonel Parker was at the heart of it.He was a bastard.
How did you feel about Colonel Parker?
Colonel Tom Parker died on January 20, 1997.He was 87.His favorite saying explained his whole life.The color of truth is gray. It isn't.But he shouldn't be tarred for every bad thing that happened to Elvis.
He once famously defended himself against charges that he had killed Elvis, saying while he helped make Elvis who he was, his death, well, he did that all by himself.In 2020, Elvis Presley Enterprises was worth almost $500 million.
To research this case, journalist Amy Wilson read The Colonel, The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley by Alana Nash and Colonel Tom Parker, The Curious Case of Elvis Presley's Eccentric Manager by James L. Dickerson.
She watched every imaginable clip on the internet that had Parker talking, though he never said much anyone could nail down.She also watched a lot of Elvis footage and fondly remembered when she took her mother to see Elvis in 1974 in Houston.
It was her Mother's Day gift. Crimes of the Centuries is available early and ad-free through Grab Bag Collab.
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Unless noted in the citations, this case was researched and written by me, Amber Hunt, and produced by Amanda Rassman and Henry Lavoie.Original music is by Bruce Hunt, Andrew Higley, and occasionally by my son, Hunt van Ben Scoten.
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