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Welcome to Filmboards. The short bus of movie chat forums.

True. It's all guess work on our part.

I guess we'll never truly know, but it makes for interesting 'maybe's

Lisa Marie was very young at that time though and Elvis said '3 women' to 2 different people. Though I do agree with your guess: Gladys and AM, could the third have been Anita?
Later in 1970-ish when Anita had 3 kids, she visited him and they talked. He expressed regret that they had broken up. He seemed like he wanted to get back with her.

His Mother. Ann-Margret, and Lisa Marie?

Yes Linda seemed to have gone well beyond for him but unfortunately, Elvis let her go. Honestly, idk how he can keep up one woman after another. He needed to seriously dedicate himself to 1, if he wanted to fill that longing he had. He said he only ever loved 3 women in his life but no one could guess who they were.

I know Elvis was very interested in doing decent movies and not the pap he ended up with. I think he wanted to play the aging singer in A Star Is Born, but Parker wouldn't let him.
Elvis was lucky to have Linda Thompson. She seems to have been nothing but good for him.

I think it was easier for him to break free whenever he had a strong support system. You'll notice, aside from Priscilla, all his other girlfriends were strong willed women and all of them, the Colonel hated, especially the ones before Priscilla. He made sure to alienate all of them so they could not influence Elvis away from him. Same with the MM, the Colonel got rid of every friendship he had that might influence Elvis into leaving him or gaining confidence in himself. When Elvis had Gladys, he defied the Colonel more, when she died, the Colonel took over as that mentor figure. Elvis always listened to his mother but with her gone, there was no opposing voice to the Colonel anymore.
When he was doing the 68 Special, he had a good connection with Binder, and found the strength to oppose the Colonel because Binder was there. But soon after, although Elvis gave Binder his number for future collaborations, the entourage (maybe Joe Esposito, he was closest to the Colonel) blocked Binder from contacting Elvis. Elvis on his end, thought Binder wasn't interested in working with him anymore. Towards the end, it has been said my Larry and others that Elvis planned on firing the Colonel (not sure if it was Jerry Weintraub he wanted to replace as his new manager) and to tour internationally. That's why he bought a plane so he could tour abroad and even discussed the ticket prices. The international tour promoters wanted to hike up the price to cover the cost while Elvis wanted to keep it low so everyone could attend.

Do you think Elvis always followed Parker's advice?

If you rewatch the film, both Japan and Germany offered Elvis 1M dollars to play a night in their country, that's 1 year's earnings. Half of that went to the Colonel btw and more than 30% to his band, so Elvis barely got anything slaving away relying on drugs to keep going.