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Looking for Colonel Parker

Short documentary, 1999, 50 min.

Portrait of the Brabant fairground showman Dries van Kuijk who turned his back on life in The Netherlands in 1929 and built up a controversial career in America, under the name Colonel Thomas A. Parker, as the manager of Elvis Presley. Parker is seen as a con-man and huckster and by some even as the man responsible for Elvis's premature death at the age of 42. But was Parker really such an ugly customer?
Constant Meijers went in search of Parker's life and came across an enterprising soul who worked in America as soldier, showman and dog catcher, owned a pets' cemetery, booked Country and Western artists and finally in 1956 met Presley. In the documentary we hear from people who worked with Parker in America, his widow says that her husband always missed his homeland and his sister looks back on the time when her brother Dries still lived at home and that he was already unlike the others.

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