Personal Relationships of Elvis Presley - The Memphis Mafia and Other Male Friends

The Memphis Mafia and Other Male Friends

Apart from his relationships with women, Presley had many male friends. He reportedly spent day and night with friends and employees whom the news media affectionately dubbed the Memphis Mafia. Among them were Sonny West, Red West, Billy Smith, Marty Lacker and Lamar Fike. Gerald Marzorati says that Elvis "couldn't go anywhere else without a phalanx of boyhood friends." Even the girls he dated deplored, "Whenever you were with Elvis for the most part you were with his entourage. Those guys were always around..."

According to Peter Guralnick, for Elvis and the guys "Hollywood was just an open invitation to party all night long. Sometimes they would hang out with Sammy Davis, Jr., or check out Bobby Darin at the Cloister. Nick Adams and his gang came by the suite all the time, not to mention the eccentric actor Billy Murphy ..." When Buzz Cason asked Lamar Fike "how Elvis did it – this partying nearly every night," he "answered, 'A little somethin' to get down and a little something to get up.' Obviously, he was referring to the pills that started a trend that sadly in only a few years would lead to Elvis's untimely death."

Samuel Roy says that "Elvis' bodyguards, Red and Sonny West and Dave Hebler, apparently loved Elvis—especially Red ... ; these bodyguards showed loyalty to Elvis and demonstrated it in the ultimate test. When bullets were apparently fired at Elvis in Las Vegas, the bodyguards threw themselves in front of Elvis, forming a shield to protect him." The author adds that the people who surrounded Presley "lived, for the most part, in isolation from the rest of the world, losing touch with every reality except that of his 'cult' and his power."

According to Presley expert Elaine Dundy, "Of all Elvis' new friends, Ken Tisa, by background and temperament the most insecure, was also his closest." Guralnick says that the singer "was hanging out more and more with Ken and his friends" and that Elvis was glad Colonel Tom Parker "liked Ken." June Wilkinson also confirms that the singer "had an entourage who spoke with Southern accents. The only one I remember was Nick Adams, the actor." In her recent Elvis biography, Kathleen Tracy writes that Adams was Elvis's regular friend and often met the singer backstage or at Graceland. "He and Elvis would go motorcycle riding late at night and stay up until all hours talking about the pain of celebrity." Both men also enjoyed prescription drugs, and Elvis often asked Tisa "to stay over on nights." According to Alanna Nash's Baby, Let's Play House (2010), one of Presley's most bizarre relationships involved Adams and Natalie Wood. "When Nick took Elvis to a hotel in Malibu where Natalie was spending the weekend with her bisexual boyfriend, actor Scott Marlowe, Natalie got along well with Elvis - and Marlowe was soon out of the equation," says the source. "Nick, who was also rumored to be bisexual, Natalie and Elvis became a hot threesome, having a lot of fun together." Therefore, Tracy writes that "It has since been speculated in Hollywood gossip that Presley and Adams may have shared some sort of intimate encounter. But there's no definitive evidence one way or another," although, according to Hollywood celebrity biographer Darwin Porter and former New York Times reporter Danforth Prince, actor Sal Mineo had confirmed that Adams and Presley "were having oral sex and mutual masturbation" and William Dakota, who for some years worked as a fan mail secretary for Nick Adams, claims in his recent book, The Gossip Columnist (2010), that Elvis was bisexual and had a relationship with Adams. According to Billy Smith, George C. Nichopoulos, Elvis's personal physician for the last 10 years of his life, "hinted to an editor at one of the tabloids that Elvis was gay." However, Smith suggests that these claims were made because Nichopoulos thought it would "sell his story" and because he needed the money. It is important to note that in the book Revelations from the Memphis Mafia members of the Memphis Mafia, who were sometimes rumored to be gay themselves, more than once insisted that the "gay rumors" that "got going when Elvis started hanging out with Nick Adams" were false, suggesting that it was not uncommon for gay men to be attracted to Presley, but that he was "prejudiced about homosexuals."

In Albert Goldman's biography of Presley, a segment focuses on the feminine traits of the singer. It goes on to suggest that Presley may have been "a latent or active homosexual." "What Elvis projected through his epoch-making act," Professor Goldman says, "was not just the enormous sexual excitement of puberty but its androgynous quality. Much of Elvis' power over young girls came not just from the act that he embodied their erotic fantasies but that he likewise projected frankly feminine traits with which they could identify. ... When you dig down to the sexual roots of an Elvis Presley, you sense a profound sexual ambivalence." This opinion is supported by academic gender experts such as Marjorie Garber.

"Many teen idols were rumored to be gay, or 'funny,' as the slang of the day might term them. The teen magazines seemed to actively encourage such rumors, ... characterizing each teen idol ... as shy, quiet, sensitive, artistic – all code terms for gay. Elvis performed with swiveling hips and fluttering wrists, gestures so flamboyant that he had to be surrounded by a dozen girls at all times just to minimize suspicion."

All of the singer's friendships are documented by many photographs.

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