Elvis Wore Wigs As Disguises?

So says this Beverly Hills Hairdresser, Carrie White. She told the NYPost that the highlight of her career was styling the King. While doing Priscilla Presley’s hair, the King’s wife asked her the one question every hairdresser would love to hear: “Do you think you could cut my husband’s hair?”

White said yes, and went to Elvis’ house in Holmby Hills, styled his hair and even cut wigs for him as disguises. She dyed his hair black because he loved crooner Roy Orbison so much, she says.
“Could I wear my hair like Ricky Nelson?” the King asked, referring to the singer’s thick locks.
“Elvis, let’s not mess with your success,” White responded.
To thank her, Elvis told his assistant to “get her that Lady Derringer, the one that fits into an evening bag . . . and a box of bullets, too."
White got her start in the 1960s, styling hair for socialite Betsy Bloomingdale and actresses Jennifer Jones and Vanessa Redgrave.

She became the go-to person for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and other magazines, did Sharon Tate’s hair for her wedding to Roman Polanski and even designed the hairstyle for Nurse Ratched in the 1975 Oscar-winning film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
She was the technical advisor on the most famous movie about hair, “Shampoo,” starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn. Beatty often flirted with White, even while dating his co-star Christie. “When he sat in my chair and I cut his hair, he would tease me with sexy remarks, or slyly drop his arm and grab my leg to see me jump,” she writes.
White was no slouch (she was a Playboy Playmate of the Year in 1963 at age 20) and was often invited to many of the parties -- where she did more than just hair.
After the Tate and Polanski wedding in London, she went out with Michael Caine and had a “nightcap” with him at his home.
She dated Sonny Bono. “He gave me a gold watch with a solid-gold coin face that was worth more than my house,” she writes.
But only a few weeks later, “His assistant-driver-bodyguard came over and told me that Sonny and I were finito. And I shouldn’t call him.”

She also writes about a brief fling with the lead singer of the band Steppenwolf, John Kay, who was a “god with long blond wavy hair.”
He gave her a gold chain from around his neck and spent the weekend with her, but she eventually realized “he probably had a trunk-full of gold chains for tour time.”

She visited Brian Jones, original guitarist for the Rolling Stones, and was greeted at the door with “Would you like Guinness, Jack or LSD?”
She attended a party at John Lennon’s house and found Jimi Hendrix wearing a red velvet marching-band jacket, surrounded by women who were serving him tea. He showed her how to smoke hash.

She no longer needed instructions a few years later, as cocaine, alcohol and heroin became an everyday indulgence for her.

Her home with second husband and fellow hairdresser Richard Alcala became a party haven where almost every star would come do drugs and get a “kitchen haircut” from her.

Sometimes she even tripped on mescaline when she did hair. Everything was fine until she was doing a client’s makeup and her eyelashes turned into butterflies, White writes.

By the 1980s, her life had dissolved into drug addiction.

She lost her business and shacked up with unnamed “princess” who fed her drugs.

It wasn’t until 2005 that White got her life back and reopened her salon in Beverly Hills called Carrie White Hair, which she still owns.

Carrie White's new book is called, Upper Cut.