Elvis Presley entertained millions throughout his brief but iconic career as the King of Rock
and Roll. Throughout his music career, however, Elvis' shady and distrustful manager "Colonel"
Tom Parker was secretly calling the shots. Here's the truth about Elvis Presley's manager.
One of the most surprising things about Colonel Tom Parker is that he wasn't an American,
and that his real name wasn't Tom Parker. Parker was actually born in the city of Breda in the
Netherlands, making him Dutch. His real name was Andreas van Kuijk. When he was still in his teens,
Andreas fled the Netherlands by ship, arriving in Canada and making his way to Hoboken, New Jersey.
He worked with traveling carnivals and eventually got into music promotion,
changing his name to Tom Parker, and erasing any mention of his true origins.
Parker entered the country illegally and never took any steps to correct his status, despite
the fact that it would have been relatively easy to do so. As Smithsonian Magazine points out,
the Alien Registration Act of 1940 basically offered amnesty to all illegal aliens,
so becoming a naturalized citizen would have been pretty easy.
And even if there were difficulties, by the 1960s, Parker was rich and famous
and probably had the connections to get any problems smoothed out. Yet
he never bothered and, thus, remained an illegal immigrant his entire life.
Colonel Tom Parker put a lot of effort into hiding his true identity and his
past. As Smithsonian Magazine reports, he even went so far as to create an elaborate
fake past for himself. He claimed to have been born in Huntington, West Virginia.
"I was born in West Virginia in the U.S. of A."
He maintained that his name was Thomas Andrew Parker and was happy to imply that
his apparent rank of colonel stemmed from his service in the Army before World War
II. None of this was true. Parker did serve in the Army but only attained the rank of
private. His rank of colonel was ceremonial, bestowed on him by the governor of Louisiana
in 1948 as a reward for his efforts on the governor's election campaign.
What's truly remarkable about Colonel Parker's deception is how long it lasted.
Parker became one of the most famous people in the world, amassed a fortune,
and negotiated huge deals on Presley's behalf — often making business enemies as he went due to
his hard-nosed style. Yet no one ever thought to investigate the Colonel's past. The truth
of his life didn't come out until Parker was in his seventies and Presley was long dead.
After immigrating illegally to the United States from the Netherlands in the 1920s,
Colonel Tom Parker eventually joined the U.S. Army in 1929. He served two years
without incident and then re-enlisted in 1931. His second stint in the Army didn't go so well:
Parker walked off his post and was officially declared "absent without leave," or AWOL,
in 1932. He was quickly arrested and spent a few months in military prison.
Parker's stay in prison was harsh, and he was kept in solitary confinement for months. This took a
mental toll on him. As The New York Times notes, Parker was eventually discharged from the Army —
but only after suffering some sort of "breakdown." The Washington Post reports that he spent several
months recuperating at Walter Reed Army Hospital and was officially diagnosed as being in a, quote,
"Constitutional Psychopathic State." Parker was released from the armed forces that year.
When World War II erupted, plunging the whole world into bloody conflict, the U.S. Army needed
a lot of men in a very short time, and most people were more than willing to step up and answer the
draft. Plenty of men of all ages chose not to wait for the draft and volunteered for service.
As a veteran, Parker would have been an ideal choice for the draft. But Parker's
first experience with the Army had ended with desertion, which left him with little apparent
desire to repeat the experience, especially if it involved leaving the country and being
shot at. Parker had apparently had all he could take of Army life and took steps to
avoid serving his adopted country. Those steps mostly involved eating.
Even in wartime, the Army has some strict standards about the physical condition of
its soldiers, so Parker's brilliant plan to avoid the draft involved gaining weight.
The plan was a resounding success for Parker. He soon weighed around 300 pounds,
more than enough to be classified morbidly obese and unfit for service.
Colonel Tom Parker had swagger. As the manager of the biggest musical star in the world,
he could afford to bluster, often bragging about being in charge of Presley's career,
while earning the lion's share of the income. But Parker was also a
very scared man who sacrificed millions in potential earnings because he didn't
have a passport and was afraid to let Presley tour overseas without him.
Despite being a superstar, Elvis Presley only toured outside the U.S. three times — all in 1957,
and all in Canada. And, notably, Parker did not accompany Presley on the trip, because he feared
that he'd be exposed as an illegal immigrant with an assumed name. After that, Parker consistently
turned down offers for Presley to tour in Europe and Japan, deals often worth millions of dollars.
As The Washington Post notes, British music promoter Harvey Goldsmith said
flat out that when he tried to sign Presley to a performance in England,
Parker told him privately it would never happen because he was afraid to leave the U.S.
The Washington Post also reminds us that this cost Presley — whose estate was worth
just $7 million when he died — a great deal of money. If Parker hadn't been so paranoid about
Presley being outside of his direct control, The King would have earned millions more.
One of the biggest mysteries surrounding Colonel Tom Parker is his extreme paranoia and secrecy.
It's true he was an illegal immigrant living under an assumed name and therefore
had a legitimate reason to worry about any involvement with law enforcement. However,
as Smithsonian Magazine points out, he could have cleared up his immigration status fairly easily.
So why was he so worried about his true identity coming out? Possibly because he was a murderer.
As writer Alanna Nash notes, a reporter in Parker's home country of the Netherlands
received an anonymous letter stating that Parker murdered the wife of a
greengrocer on the Boschstraat, a shopping and residential area in Breda. And, in fact,
there is an unsolved murder in Bochstraat that fits the timeline of Parker's movements.
In 1929, a woman named Anna van den Enden was beaten to death behind her husband's grocery
store. The crime scene showed evidence of a search for money and valuables,
and an effort had been made to obscure physical evidence. There's no way to
know if the man who would become Elvis' manager was Anna van den Enden's killer.
The police investigation uncovered no clues, and it's impossible to place
Parker in any specific place in 1929. But it certainly would explain Parker's hurried
exit from his home country and his fevered secrecy and worry over his true identity.
Promoting the world's biggest musical act isn't the most difficult job. Elvis Presley was one
of the most in-demand artists in the world, and the offers poured in to Colonel Tom Parker no
matter what he did. Yet Parker soaked Elvis for an enormous amount of money. As The Washington
Post notes, by 1966, Parker was earning 50 percent of Elvis' paychecks, and in 1973,
Parker sold the rights to Presley's recording catalog to RCA for a low-ball $5.4 million.
One reason Parker needed all that money was his gambling. Additionally,
as The Daily Express reports, Parker may have contributed to Presley's early
death by pushing the singer to perform two shows a night, seven days a week,
for his Las Vegas residencies in order to keep the cash flowing.
"So I did my part, Elvis did his show, and we were lucky.
Great talent. We had a great show, and a lot of fun."
With Elvis in Las Vegas, Parker ran up enormous debts with the casinos and
was focused on keeping Presley working constantly so he could cover his debts.
Elvis' decline during this period is obvious. The physical and mental strain of playing every
night drove Elvis to severely abuse several prescription medications.
He gained weight and looked awful, sweating through his rhinestone jumpsuits.
Elvis was known for many things: launching rock and roll into the mainstream, scandalizing
folks with his hip gyrations, rhinestone-studded jumpsuits, and some really, really awful movies.
Colonel Tom Parker signed Elvis to these terrible films for a simple reason: they made tons of money
— $2.2 billion in domestic gross alone. Add in the soundtrack royalties and the free publicity for
Elvis' records, and it's easy to see why Parker ignored his client's pleas for better scripts.
And those better scripts were out there, and were offered to Presley. However,
Parker turned down opportunities for Presley to star in several films that went on to be huge
hits and establish their actors as legitimate stars. Elvis could have played the lead in West
Side Story, for example, or the role that made Jon Voight a star in Midnight Cowboy.
He was also offered the Kris Kristofferson role in the 1976 version of A Star is Born.
Parker turned down all these roles because he preferred the safe money
or Elvis' recordings and live shows. He was also very protective of Presley's current
image. But trapping Presley in films of lesser and lesser quality not only
frustrated The King but also meant that while rock music was being revolutionized by
The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley was singing songs like "Yoga is as Yoga Does."
Elvis Presley was huge. It was estimated that the rock and roll icon earned as much
as a billion dollars over the course of his career. As The Los Angeles Times points out,
his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, knew that Elvis' brand was so powerful that he could
earn millions at any moment simply by booking a tour, recording an album,
or appearing in a film. And for every dollar Elvis earned, Tom Parker took a piece.
That's standard. Most managers earn between 10 and 15 percent of what their clients make. But
from the very beginning, Parker bilked his only client for more. Their original contract gave
Parker an unheard-of 25 percent of Presley's earnings — and he was eventually getting an
astounding 50 percent. The new contract also allowed Parker to charge additional fees
for services he provided, eating away at the money that should have gone to Elvis instead.
Eventually, this uneven arrangement led to a truly incredible scenario:
Elvis Presley's manager made more money than Elvis himself.
As The Washington Post notes, in 1973, Parker sold the rights to Presley's recording catalog
to RCA for a measly $5.4 million — and earned $1.5 million more than Presley in the deal.
Andreas van Kuijk kept up his false identity for decades, but eventually, at least part of the
truth caught up with him. In 1981 Albert Goldman published a biography of Elvis Presley that was
pretty scathing in its portrayal of Parker, while exposing his true identity to the world.
At the same time, Parker was being sued by Priscilla Presley, and his dubious financial
and ethical behavior toward one of the world's most beloved performers was being detailed.
Parker began to worry that he might be charged with crimes stemming from any number of these
misdeeds, and suddenly decided to flip the script on his illegal entry into the United
States in the 1920s. In order to slow down incoming criminal charges, Parker officially
claimed that he was a citizen of no nation, and thus not subject to any country's laws.
His reasoning was that he'd served in the U.S. military without permission from the
Dutch government and thus had forfeited his Dutch citizenship. Since he'd never been naturalized as
a U.S. citizen, either, he wasn't a subject of either country. The theory was never tested.
Parker lived in increasing illness and obscurity following Elvis' death in 1977,
mostly coasting on his affiliation with the late King. Parker died in 1997,
87 years old and having gambled away most of his money.
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