Baby,Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women who Loved Him by Alanna Nash ✔✔✔

Another Elvis bio!  He's such an interesting character, and after reading the Guralnick books last year, I found this in the Coles Store on Queen St. E, but didn't buy it till this past spring - I've never seen it anywhere else.

The Guralnick books concentrated more on Elvis'career, although certainly his many girlfriends were mentioned, but this book focuses on his relationships - all of them - and there were thousands! All of them stem from his obsessive relationship with his mother, and even more so after she died, although his losing his older twin at birth certainly had a major impact,too. He was particularly drawn to girls with dark hair - like Gladys - and seemed to be eternally searching for her replacement.  In his final years, which are quite hard to read about, he even reverted to baby talk, fetal positions, and play-acting in which he would be the baby and his girlfriends the mother.

I didn't like Elvis as much in this book for sure, and I didn't like many of the women who basically gave up their lives - they had to! - for him. Ann-Margret appears to have been the love of his life, the marriage with Priscilla was over even before they actually married, although they remained good friends right to the end, and Colonel Parker was an asshole who manipulated and controlled Elvis to feed his own gambling habit.  Even when Elvis was gravely ill towards the end of his life, and the Colonel saw how ill he was, he just barked out orders to the "entourage" to get him better fast because he had a show coming up.

This was another long bio - over 600 pages - but I think I'm done reading about Elvis now!