Colonel Tom Parker

He worked Elvis to an early grave to be able to afford his gambling addiction. And he continued to gamble until he finally kicked the bucket at an old age. It's just so unfair. More on reddit.com

Two things: Elvis was enormously respectful of the Colonel and gave him a lot of credit for his success. Elvis was very unsophisticated and preferred to navigate the world of celebrity with the people who helped get him there. He probably got pitched more than a few times by other agents but his stock response was "Colonel Parker got me where I am today, I'd be nowhere without him". More on reddit.com

LAS VEGAS — I was just finishing my bowl of mashed potatoes in Elvis` dining room when the phone rang. ''The Colonel is down in the coffee shop,'' the voice said, and hung up. This was too good to be true. Not only was I spending the week in Elvis Presley`s old suite on top of the Las Vegas Hilton-sleeping in his bedroom, brushing my teeth in his bathroom, gobbling down burnt bacon and gravy in his dining room-but now here was the signal I had been waiting for: Colonel Parker was on the property. I hurried to the elevator. Colonel Tom Parker-the mysterious manager who engineered Presley`s amazing career-has long been known as unapproachable. He found Elvis in the mid-`50s and managed him until Presley`s death in August of 1977. Many Presley fans hate the Colonel; he charged Elvis an astonishing commission of 50 percent and kept Elvis totally isolated from the world. In the final years of Presley`s life, when he was so ill, the Colonel kept him on the road, displaying him almost like a circus animal in small cities that even no middle-level rock band would play. In March and April of 1977, Elvis had to cancel concerts in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Florida; the Colonel insisted that he make them up, and before he died, he did. After Presley`s death, Parker allegedly said: ''Nothing has changed. This won`t change anything.'' He seemed to understand that Elvis was perhaps more monetarily valuable dead than alive. Colonel Parker does not give interviews. In the coffee shop, if I hadn`t known he was there, I might have walked right by him. He is no longer the fearsome-looking, cigar chomping ex-carny barker of the 1956 photographs. Tom Parker just turned 80 years old. He sat with a white yachting cap pulled down over the top of his head and a cane in the next chair. I introduced myself. He began autographing a photo of himself. ''I was just offered $50,000 to make a speech,'' he said. ''I said no.'' Then he said: ''I should have told the agent who offered me the speech, `Okay, $50,000 is your cut. How much for me?` '' I knew that during the eight years when Elvis was regularly living in the suite where I was now staying, the Colonel had stayed on another floor, even though there were three guest bedrooms in Elvis` suite. Why? ''I didn`t want to be there,'' he said. ''That was for him and his friends. Elvis wanted to have fun up there. For me to stay up there would be like having your father around. I had to be at work early the next morning.'' The hotel`s public address system was playing old Elvis songs, and ''Teddy Bear'' sounded in the room as the Colonel said: ''I tried to stay in the background.'' It was an absurd statement. Colonel Parker was probably the best-known show business manager in the world. How many other managers have you heard of? ''The background?'' Even Elvis` Christmas cards were signed, ''From Elvis and the Colonel.'' ''Yes,'' Parker said, ''I always insisted that Elvis` name come first and my name come second. I tried to stay in the background.'' He said entertainers still ask him to manage them. ''I could do it again,'' he said. ''But what do I have to prove to myself?'' I almost asked if he would consider managing my career, but then I thought: Nah. He might be able to turn me into a living legend, but then I`d just have to go into the Army and after that make a bunch of dumb movies. I didn`t try that joke on him, of course. The standard line on the Colonel is that he ruined Elvis` career by the way he let Elvis become a bland shadow of himself during the `60s. You can argue with that, though. If Colonel Parker ruined Elvis` career, then how big a star would Elvis have become if Parker had run the show some other way? Elvis Presley was the biggest star in the world. The point is: What Parker did worked to perfection. The down years-''down years'' in which Elvis was the highest-paid star in Hollywood-only made the comeback years more spectacularly dramatic. You can`t argue with the results-at least the business results. The human results, of course, are another story. I told the Colonel that I had to ask him a stupid question. ''If it`s stupid, don`t embarrass yourself,'' he said. ''Don`t ask it.'' ''Do you miss him?'' I said. ''Every day,'' Colonel Parker said. ''I miss him every day. There`s not a day when I don`t think about him. A lot of days I cry.'' I couldn`t read the eyes. He gave me the picture he had been autographing. Several hours later, I walked through the casino. There, sitting totally unrecognized at a $25-per-pull slot machine, was Colonel Parker. With his cane beside him, he pulled the handle with his good arm. He would put in a $25 token every two or three seconds. A hundred bucks into the machine every ten seconds. He didn`t even seem particularly interested, but he didn`t leave. I don`t know why, but I felt a little like I was looking behind the curtain at the Wizard of Oz. Chicago Tribune Aug 14, 1989 Source: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1989-08-14-8901040538-story.html More on reddit.com

He did indeed get married but he had no children whatsoever, he continued his gambling addiction with the money he had after Elvis's death, he continued to live and worked in Las Vegas until he died in 1997 from a stroke at age 87. He continued to get and make money from Elvis's estate, he received $2 million dollars for all of the Elvis audio recordings and images he owns. So sadly he continued to use and use Elvis' money as gambling money even after Elvis' death, and Elvis never got to know who Tom parker really is even before dying or anytime in his life. More on reddit.com