Did colonel parker steal from elvis

The Dutch-born carny-turned-manager plucked Elvis Presley from obscurity and turned him into one of the biggest stars in history. But the two had an often-thorny relationship, and Parker's business practices have been widely scrutinized and criticized over the years.

In the s, Parker tricked Presley into signing a five-year Las Vegas casino residency contract even though Presley vociferously expressed his desire to perform internationally. As portrayed in the movie, Parker, a compulsive gambler, raked up huge gambling debts and the casino executives called in these debts to pressure Parker to get Presley into an exclusive residency deal. Parker did get Presley a lucrative contract, but the performance schedule was so demanding that it left Presley mentally and physically exhausted. To keep Presley on stage, Parker enlisted the services of an ethically questionable doctor who prescribed Presley prescription drugs, to which Presley eventually became addicted. Unbeknownst to Presley, Parker negotiated a side agreement with the casino where his gambling debts were forgiven, and Parker got unlimited credit as long as Presley continued performing at the casino.

Did colonel parker steal from elvis

Potomac, was going to be salvaged. He saw the Potomac as just another snow job, as he called his art of the con. He would donate the rusting hulk to charity and put a P. With them was actor Danny Thomas, there on behalf of St. Jude, the Memphis research hospital Thomas had founded to help find cures for catastrophic childhood diseases. As the press cameras clicked away, and the freshly painted Potomac gleamed in the background, the Colonel chuckled to himself. The other remained in its dilapidated state. Why bother to paint both sides? Just present the side you want to show. In his frenetic, dazzling, exhilarating mess of a movie, Elvis, Baz Luhrmann has done much the same when it comes to Colonel Parker, showing us only one side of a highly complex and intensely fascinating and mysterious character. And the bombastic director, as vulgar in his own way as Parker was in his, pays him little respect for his significant business acumen. Tom Hanks plays this villainy broadly with cartoonish gusto, veering somewhere between Snidely Whiplash and Sydney Greenstreet. Hanks, on the other hand, never disappears into the role of Parker. By David Canfield. By Kara Warner.

Moreover, many gaming patrons walk out of casinos as jackpot winners. Opportunity is the availability of a means and method to commit fraud. But given the nature of compulsive gambling, casinos cannot presume the rationalization triangle side does not exist when confronted with higher risks for pressure and opportunity.

Sign up to our free newsletter and be the first to know about the latest fashion, travel and lifestyle happenings, as well as exclusive reader events and offers. With an elephant-head cane resting by his side, a cigar clamped into his mouth and a cheap baseball cap sat awkwardly on his huge bald dome, this man was, with a grim determination, seemingly going out of his way to lose incredibly large sums of money. There were more than a few men who would have roughly fitted this description in Nevada half a century ago. But this gambler was far from a day-tripper to the casino. His actual office was located on the fourth floor of the same building. Paper hats, glossy posters, souvenir programmes and gaudy key rings covered the room from top to bottom.

Elvis Presley is a true rags-to-riches story. He went from humble beginnings in Tupelo, Mississippi, to being "the King of rock 'n roll," with a slew of music smash hits, Hollywood flicks, and a glitzy long-running Las Vegas residency. Much of the credit for Elvis' meteoric rise to fame is given to his longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker, but the two had a rocky relationship in the run-up to Elvis' untimely death in And although Parker remained his manager until the end, things were decidedly frosty between them. Things were so contentious between Elvis and Parker that the manager doesn't even warrant a mention in the singer's official Graceland biography. Still, there's no disputing the fact that Parker was a driving force behind the star's 33 movies, multiple TV specials, sell-out tours, 14 Grammy nominations and 3 wins, a Lifetime Achievement Award, one billion record sales, and countless gold and silver records. Parker's relationship with Elvis was cemented in when he scored his client a record deal with RCA Records.

Did colonel parker steal from elvis

Though the two were close for years, Parker is a hotly debated figure in the Presley story. Fans and observers also suspect Presley did not tour internationally due to the fact that Parker, an illegal immigrant to the United States from the Netherlands, lacked a passport and never became a naturalized U. Parker originally claimed to have been born in Huntington, West Virginia, but his true origins were revealed when family members in the Netherlands saw a news photo of him with Presley. A clever child and a gifted storyteller, he sought out odd jobs including with a local circus, where he assisted in training horses. As a teenager, he told his family he got a job as a sailor on the Holland America Line. Whether true or not, he left Breda and managed to reach the United States by way of Canada, he once told a friend.

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Sign up to our free newsletter and be the first to know about the latest fashion, travel and lifestyle happenings, as well as exclusive reader events and offers. By Arimeta Diop. Consider if a similar incident happened today with a highly popular and beloved performer. An ominous diss by Jack Nicholson, an Academy allergic to fantasy, and a defiant sweep that made history 20 years ago. As late as May , he saw the singer barely conscious backstage before a gig in Louisville, Ky. He argued that fans who lived off the beaten path deserved to see the King as well. Save this story Save. However, if the patron appears to have the means to reasonably fund their gaming, then there is a low risk of the Fraud Triangle materializing. So it would appear that some discreet behind-the-scenes negotiations could have resolved the problem without too much fuss. But the Colonel trusted no one. Parker routinely did this during his days with the carnivals. Opportunity is the availability of a means and method to commit fraud. The Colonel encouraged anything that grabbed headlines and created controversy for his boy.

He was best known as the manager of Elvis Presley.

Nobody got more money in the history of Las Vegas! By Jordan Hoffman. A popular but completely unsubstantiated theory suggests Parker fled Breda after killing the wife of a greengrocer. The government has acknowledged these programs were deployed without all the necessary controls because the priority was to get the funds out as soon as possible. This includes responsibilities of collecting revenue or donations, disbursing funds and transferring assets. Parker didn't care; he saw that he could extract maximum profits out of Presley by keeping him on a rigorous film schedule and using the accompanying soundtracks to fulfill his contractual obligations to RCA. Elvis would sleep for the day in his penthouse suite, while down on the gaming floor the Colonel would be steadily increasing his losses at the craps table and the roulette wheel. From silent-film classics to modern rom-com hits, the best feel-good movies have a timeless power to bring out smiles—and sometimes a few tears too. Instead, Parker found a lucrative stateside option for his cash cow. The last time I saw the Colonel, who peppered his office with stuffed animals—prizes from the carnival—we were back in the Buick, and he and his wife, Loanne, were driving me to my hotel after lunch. Other opportunities may have also arisen during the COVID pandemic, with businesses short of staffing and not being able to deploy adequate safeguards to detect fraud. Whatever it was that forced Andreas Cornelis Dries van Kuijk to flee the Netherlands, never making contact with his mother and father again, it was something that he did not want to talk about. By , Presley's musical career was in dire straits, but he reversed his fortunes with an eponymous comeback special , a televised performance that aired on Dec.