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The Colonel's Trivia

By New Your Post.com, May 07, 2000 | Other
In addition to our series of Elvis Trivia we like to present you with this "Gossip" we found in the internet version of the New York Post. It's a kind of trivia onThe Colonel, Elvis' manager.

Soon To Be Revealed: Secrets Of Elvis' Mentor

Some people won't lie down - Marilyn, Princess Di, the Kennedys, Elvis.

Elvis is about to live yet again in the oft-retitled, now-called "Secrets and Shadows: Col. Tom Parker and the Hidden Shaping of Elvis." Just finished, now shopping a publisher, the book's by Alana Nash, who wrote that newsgal Jessica Savitch "Up Close and Personal" best seller.

This murder mystery story took three years to gather. Triple sourced, it includes 300 interviews, investigator's reports, declassified government documents, never-before-revealed information from family members. It tells things about the late Col. Tom Parker, the Svengali who created and perpetuated Elvis, like:

He was actually an illegal alien.

Born in Holland, his real name was Andreas Cornelis Van Kuijk.

He made millions in the U.S., lived in the U.S., knew everyone in the U.S., considered Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, Estes Kefauver friends, yet never became a U.S. citizen.

In fact, never never ever made any attempt to become a U.S. citizen.

He saw to it that his past was completely buried.

There exists no FBI file on this man, yet Elvis' file is 662 pages.

Fled Holland in the middle of the night.

Actually abandoned clothes, money, family, including mother and sisters, in his haste to disappear under the cloak of darkness.

Troubled by the specter of death, terrified his past would be uncovered, he suffered nightmares.

His life traces back to a 70-year-old unsolved murder.

In a development-hell horror story, the book, which had been optioned, became an orphan project when HarperCollins' hierarchy changed.

Alana Nash claims to be the first journalist to see Elvis' body after he died. A Louisville, Ky., newspaper reporter, she was queuing to view the body when someone - who turned out to be Parker - inadvertently grabbed her and said: "Here's the line."

She "went around twice." Describes the body as "waxy, bloated, hair white at the roots." Says she's responsible for the now famous chant, "Elvis lives ... Elvis lives" because she commented: "It doesn't look like Elvis. This might be Col. Tom Parker's best trick of all."

Her book reports that whereas everyone else at the funeral was suicidally bereft, Parker was there in baseball cap and Hawaiian shirt and "wouldn't go near the body."

Sam Hughes, of the Dickens Group Literary Agency in Louisville, says this final Elvis story explains what happened to Elvis:

"It's why he stayed off the international concert stage and never took Europe's $1 million-a-night offers, although at the end he needed money. Why he wasn't allowed to reach his potential. Why he died in frustration because his career could not blossom.

"Why? All because Tom Parker had a terrifying secret. And this book has the answer to it."

Me, I don't personally care, I'm just letting you know.