#larry geller

[elvisbooty76]

[hooked-on-elvis]

[STORY TIME] 🤢🍹 DRUNK ELVIS (1968)

Story told by Charlie Hodge.

Next to him are Joe Esposito and Larry Geller. All men, Memphis Mafia. You can hear the story on the video above, if you prefer, or you can scroll down and read it (Charlie is the way to go, press the play button). But before the story, just wanted to say: Charlie was so funny! The "huey" joke! LOL! I adore him. ♥ Rest in peace, sweet Charlie, also Joe. God bless your souls.

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[STORY TIME] 🍹

Well, as we know, Elvis was not a drinker. Hardly he'd get interested a few drinks, but that's the thing: when a person like that drinks and gets carried away, he goes all the way, not knowing his own safe limits; in reality it doesn't take that much alcohol to make 'em tipsy. As any person who didn't drink often, Elvis' tolerance for alcohol was very low - taking from the stories told over the years. Sometimes disasters happen when one not used to drink have too much drinking, other times just funny things take place. Charlie is talking about one of those moments for Elvis, a funny one.

According to Hodge, he and the guys (Memphis Mafia) were with Elvis in Palm Springs, on set while he was filming a movie during the 60's. Charlie recalls it as being 'Live A Little, Love a Little' — for which filming began on March 13th, with principal photography ending in May 1st, 1968, so that story happened in early 1968.

Elvis and Michele Carey on scene from 'Live A Little, Love A Little" (1968)

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Charlie says Elvis was filming one of the scenes he's in the sea, when he complained the water was too cold. He then asked his guys if they happen to have anything to drink, so could use the liquor to help keeping his body warm while he was filming that sea scene. They didn't have any, so they sent Charlie to buy some. Charlie bought a peach brandy and rum, so he came back with it and Elvis drank it... but it turns out he liked the peach liquor, a little too much.

Normally people who don't drink they go ease with sweet tasting liquor and they don't stop drinking, simply because don't feel getting drunk... until they are hammered. This happened to poor Elvis a few times.

When he finished the one peach brandy drink he had, on their way home after shooting day was over, Charlie mentions how Elvis was already slurred speech/swaying drunk but he said he liked the drink and wanted to go buy some more. The guys stopped by a liquor store. There, silly Elvis enters the store and absentminded goes walking around, calmly checking the options as if nothing was happening around, while "poor Joe", as Charlie says, was desperate to get him back in the car, in fear some mob took place if people found out Elvis was there.

Well, they got home safely after all, and El had all the drinks he wanted until everybody heads to their own bedrooms. Charlie says Elvis was wearing his blue nylon jammies and, he jokes about it, saying all the guys too were wearing blue nylon jammies that night, actually; in his words, "because we figured, if Elvis looks good in blue nylon jammies, we do too!" 😆

Scene from 'Live a Little, Love a Little' (1968)

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Shortly after, Joe Esposito hears a knock on his bedroom door. He opens the door and sees Elvis standing two-hands leaned against Joe's bedroom door frames, ill looking (clearly sick from the drinking).

El looked at Joe and said,

"Joe, I'm dying."

Esposito tried to calm him down, telling him he was alright and he should go back to his bedroom and just lay down and sleep, but Elvis ignored.

"Call daddy" (Vernon)", he said to Joe.

"Tell him to sell Graceland. He doesn't need that big old place... and sell all the cars, he don't need them too."

Joe continued trying to calm Elvis down, ignoring the nonsense the man was saying, but El (as any good wasted person who thinks he's in perfect clear estate of mind), insisted,

"I'm not kidding, I'm dying!"

Finally Joe got to send Elvis went back to his own bedroom, but soon EP was back repeating the same things. "I'm dying." According to Charlie, this went on for about three times. On the third time, as soon as Elvis said, "I'm dying" again, he threw up right in front of Joe. 🤢

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Can you picture drunk Elvis? (LOL) Those little anecdotes of Elvis Presley's life are just so fun to hear about! That bring him closer to us, making that god-like looking man feel like any friend of ours, or even ourselves. I love hearing those "hammered Elvis" stories, don't you?

Elvis in scene from "Wild In The Country" (1961)

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What kind of drunk person you think our sweet El was?

I think he would get extra affectionate, mellow and even needy, which makes me crave to be right there with him. ♥

[presleygarden]

“There’s no hiding from her, that’s for sure.

The minute I walked into her room she knew exactly where I was at.

We just sat together for a while, first not talking at all, and then meditating.

She knew I was hurting without my saying a word, and she didn’t judge me or ask me questions.

She just held my hands.

It was so beautiful.

Like she was giving me love and strength with her eyes and her touch.”

-elvis speaking on daya mata

side note: i find it so wonderfully delightful & wholesome that ep got to experience this sort of connection with another person.

even if just for a while.

not matter how short lived or inconsistent these moments were— for him to feel whole or seen without effort must have been such a relief upon his shoulders.

the weight of the world being temporarily being lifted would have been so impactful.

inner peace seemed to be so agonizingly difficult for him to possess, so having someone recognize it & maneuver through these things with such understanding + care was of the upmost importance.

nonetheless, my heart breaks at that realization that he strived deeply to experience this type of connection in an eros way, rather than a platonic connection alone— you can tell it was of the upmost importance to him.

to connect in a even deeper way.

body, mind, soul + heart.

this left its mark.

it deeply impacted his psyche.

almost nothing beats this feeling.

this type of energetic, vibrational & telepathic connection with another person.

its as if the things that are left unspoken are the most powerful parts of expression between two individuals.

to be seen.

to be felt.

to be understood.

to be comforted by another’s presence & wavelength.

get you a daya mata (or better)🫀

•quote from elvis is from leaves of elvis’ garden by larry geller

[presleypictures]

Elvis lifting up little Jova (Larry Geller's son) at Graceland, 1965.

[alienelvisobsession]

[elvislittleone]

“For the next four hours he was like a parched man in the desert: he bared his entire soul. He told Larry about his mother; he told him about the hollowness of his Hollywood life; he told Larry all the things he secretly thought and could share with no one around him. “Man, Larry,” he said, “I swear to God no one knows how lonely I get. And how empty I really feel.” With that he burst into tears." Excerpt From: Guralnick, Peter. “Careless Love.”

[hooked-on-elvis]

How did Elvis took care of his awesome hair? 🚿🍃

Plus, a quick overview on one of the King's hairdressers and Memphis Mafia man, Larry Geller: How somewhat he was the friend Elvis needed and how Elvis' over-controlling inner circle banned Geller from their surroundings for a while.

I was actually looking if I could find Elvis' haircut name - precisely the type of haircut he had on the '68 Comeback Special and "Charro!" (1968), since I'm a girl and I have zero idea about the names for male haircuts but I just love that haircut he had so much I wanted to talk about it... anyway. But I found an article about Elvis' hair care routine and that sounds very interesting to me, so it might be something you wanna know too.

This is told by Larry Geller, so this means this was Elvis' hair routine starting from mid 60's on, precisely from 1964 to 1967, and possibly also from late 1972 to 1977 *, periods in which Larry was responsible for taking care of the King's hair.

Geller, who will be launching his own line of organic hair products later this year, tested out some of his first custom mixes on Elvis. “I used to go to the health food store and get a benign base shampoo and get some vitamin capsules and pour 99 percent pure aloe vera and other herbs into it, and shake it up,” Geller tells Yahoo Beauty. “That’s what I used on Elvis’ hair. He said to me, right from the get-go, ‘You can do whatever you want with my hair, but one thing — make sure I keep it!’” Source: Yahoo Beauty: Elvis Presley’s Hairstylist Spills the King’s Secrets by Lilit Marcus. The article was shared on a Graceland's website on January 28, 2014.

Elvis, you're the best, man. LOL. Just that comment is worth this entire post. It made me laugh. But the article goes on.

Then there was the daily routine. “I shampooed his hair regularly, usually every day. I would massage his scalp for a few minutes, then brush his hair at least 50 or 60 strokes. I was focused on long-term health of his hair, which was so important,” Geller explains. He also used products like vitamin E and jojoba oil to style Elvis’ hair and replace conditioner. Hairspray was used to set it, with Geller alternating multiple brands so that none of them would dry out Elvis’ coif too much. As for its color, Geller dyed Elvis’ hair every two to three weeks with a L’Oreal formula. What did the two men discuss during all that grooming? Religion, philosophy, books, life, and anything else you can think of. “Elvis had everything,” says Geller. “He was an extraordinary human being. He had the greatest eyes, the greatest voice, fans galore. He also had great hair.”

Elvis in "Frankie and Johnny" and "Spinout", both 1966 movies.

Larry Geller styled Elvis’ hair for: "Roustabout" (1964), Girl Happy (1965), Tickle Me (1965), Harum Scarum (1965), Frankie and Johnny (1966), Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), Spinout (1966), Easy Come, Easy Go (1967), Double Trouble (1967), and Clambake (1967). Geller prepared Elvis’ hair for the last time for his funeral in August, 1977.

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Elvis' hair must have been so good smelling and soft. Washed every day, organic products to make it smooth and shiny as it was. 🫠🥹

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Now, if you want to understand why there's a pause in Larry's association with Elvis, here it is:

LARRY GELLER QUITS WORKING FOR ELVIS IN 1967: INDIRECTLY CAUSED BY ELVIS' HEAD INJURY POSTPONING THE FILMING FOR 'CLAMBAKE'.

On March 9, 1967, Elvis was staying in him home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, and one incident (Elvis tripped over a TV cord in his bathroom and banged his head against a porcelain bathtub) caused the beginning of the production for the movie "Clambake", for which he was preparing to, to be postponed. Colonel Parker was fuming when he heard about the need for Elvis to take a couple of weeks of resting to recover from the mild concussion he had. It was a critical moment in Elvis' life. By the time the filming begun, Elvis even put up some weight from his normal 170 lb (77 kg) to 200 lb (91 kg) — I said it before, whenever this happened to Elvis' body it was because he was extremely distressed. He was an emotional eater.

Getting back to the accident, Parker even thought Elvis did it on purpose not to fulfill his Hollywood commitment since Presley clearly was not happy about his movies anymore, something Parker somehow blamed it on Elvis' spiritual quest. He pulled some strings to manipulate Elvis to remove Larry Geller from his inner circle by saying to him that all that spiritual thing was getting too much into his head, distracting him from his business obligations. If not enough Parker said to Presley that Larry Geller was brainwashing him because of some personal agenda he must have had in his mind — it's mentioned by someone, somewhere (i'm sorry, I'm not gonna remember where I've read it now) that Geller was planning on using Elvis' money to open a religious study center or something like that).

Basically, Parker thought Larry was a threat because if Elvis decided in throwing his career away, like some say he was by becoming a preacher, Parker would lose his most profitable and only client. Consequently all the religion and spiritual "shit" (as they called) that Larry Geller had put inside the King's head (as they thought), presenting him with many books and having deep conversations for hours with Elvis about several religious and spiritual subjects but not exclusively that, they also talked about meditation and self improvement as a human beings, astrology and so on, all of that was threatening Parker's plans over Elvis.

But Parker didn't make it on his own. Even Priscilla says in her memoir book that Elvis was obsessively reading non-stop and wanting to share his learning with everybody else, but his friends and herself didn't care about none of this self-improvement and religious talk. His inner circle even looked at Presley's spiritual quest as somewhat annoying, including Priscilla. Their thoughts about Larry Geller were something like "Larry changed his mind. Elvis is not spending time with us as he used to." Ugh!

Nobody actually told Larry to leave, tho, and Elvis wouldn't do such thing if he didn't have a good reason to - until this point Larry was a confidant to him, one of the only people he could talk about life and wonder what was God's plan for him, his true life mission, something Elvis would never cease trying to understand. However, Elvis' inner circle and Colonel Parker begun making Geller feel uncomfortable, unwelcome among the group, while they took Elvis' attention back to them, practically forcing Geller to decide to finally leave and go away for good, and he did it. But it was not something definite.

Many things happened in Elvis' life since Larry Geller and him went different ways but by August 1972, tho, Geller got back in contact in Elvis when he attended one of Presley's concerts in Las Vegas, and from then on Larry begins working for Elvis again, till the end of the King's life in 1977.

[presleygarden]

“I want you to put yourself in my shoes, and think about it. How could I ever know if a woman is in love with me…or Elvis Presley? Think about it. How could I ever really know for sure?”

Elvis had played the Pygmalion role with Priscilla and others.

He was older now, twice Ginger’s age; he fit the role better than ever.

As with most of us, his relationships followed a pattern, a series of stages.

With this final relationship, he was moving through the stages at an accelerated pace. Everything in Elvis’ life seemed to exist in a different dimension of time in 1977.

It wasn’t long before the first glow of infatuation began to fade with Elvis’ doubts and fears rising to the surface.

He tried to bridge the gaps between them by bringing her into his spiritual world, reading to her from one of his favorite books, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. He loved The Prophet so much that he had memorized whole sections of it. “When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings unfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him”

Ginger loved to hear Elvis read from Gibran’s writings, but he knew in his heart that her interest would never go as deep as his.

They were worlds apart in so many ways and the routine on the road was not easy for a young girl. Toward the end, as their relationship dwindled, he became reconciled to the potential for yet another loss.

He quoted emotionally from the “Love” chapter of The Prophet, “For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.” He continued, “I needed to love somebody so desperately that I read something into the relationship that just wasn’t there.” He never blamed Ginger.”

•excerpt from leaves of elvis’ garden by larry geller