Famously tanned film star George Hamilton proved to be one of the highlights of the annual Elvis Week festivities in Memphis. Hamilton — who was under contract to MGM studios in the 1960s at the same time as Elvis Presley and became close friends with his manager Colonel Tom Parker — made several appearances in and around Graceland last week, including at the Conversations on Elvis panel on Aug. 15.
For Hamilton, the visit to the Bluff City was something of a homecoming. He opened his appearance at the Graceland Soundstage by noting he “was born in Memphis, Tennessee, so I have a right to be back,” he said. “My father was the orchestra leader at The Peabody Hotel in the Skyway, and when I was about 6 or 7, I used to watch those little ducks in the lobby.”
Later, Hamilton moved with his family to Blytheville, Arkansas, and attended military school in Gulfport, Mississippi. Still vibrant and stylish at 87, Hamilton joked that he forgot his Hollywood diet while visiting Memphis. “I thought I'm going to have some of these very healthy foods like I’m used to in California, and the next thing I know I'm having the best [BBQ] I've ever had.”
Hamilton spent much of the Conversations panel discussing the life of his rather colorful mother, the late Anne Stevens. The Kentucky-born Stevens, was once described by a friend as ”a cross between Auntie Mame and Scarlett O‘Hara.” In her 2004 obituary, it was noted that she took “few things seriously, least of all herself.” Once jokingly introduced as “Lady Hamilton,” a New Yorker asked what her full title might be: “Why, the Countess d ‘Arkansas,” she answered.
A 2009 film loosely based on Stevens' life, titled "My One and Only," starred Renée Zellweger and centered on her story. According to IMDB, the film’s plot was a kind of romantic road trip story: “Leaving her philandering husband, an elegant socialite takes her two sons on a road trip across America in search of a better life.”
As Hamilton noted at Graceland, part of this real-life adventure with his mother included stopping and visiting all her ex-husbands, boyfriends and former lovers along the way.
“The thing is, my mother was so beautiful that guys would just keep coming from everywhere to see my mother,” Hamilton said. “So my mother had all these boyfriends, and this one guy, [an Air Force pilot] was named Buddy Rogers, who was a silent film star, and he married Mary Pickford. But my mother was in love with him, and they were dating before Mary Pickford. He went off, said he'd be back in two weeks, and he ended up marrying Pickford. So that just broke her heart.”
In the wake of this, Stevens “went on the thing of going across the country to visit every boyfriend she'd ever had and every husband. Now, she'd gone through three husbands by then,” recalled Hamilton. “We'd wait in the car, and she'd say, ‘I'm going in just a few minutes, see what he's like, and I'll be right back.’ We'd sit there for an hour, and she'd come and say, ‘Oh, my God, he's let himself go.’ We were going from town to town doing this.”
Laughing, Hamilton noted that his mother, who was married four times, continued looking for love all her life. “She would say, ‘Oh, you're going to love the next one. Oh, he's divine,'” he recalled. “Now, my mother lived to 93, so we went through a lot of boyfriends.”
Bob Mehr is the music writer at The Commercial Appeal. Contact him at bob.mehr@commercialappeal.com.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: George Hamilton recalls late mother's movie-worthy adventures
