Elvis Presley was one of America’s most important and iconic singers and songwriters, becoming a legend that has transcended over the years. Last year we got to see the singer’s biopic starring Austin Butler and directed by Baz Luhrmann, but it didn’t show anything we didn’t know. Now, it’s Priscilla Presley‘s turn to shine with Sophia Coppla’s upcoming film.
It is a fact that Elvis Presley was a star who shone with his own light, there is not the slightest doubt about that. Not for nothing he earned the nickname “The King of Rock and Roll;” however, behind that unmistakable voice, tight suits, and iconic hairstyle hid a man with many issues.
Behind the scenes, Elvis Presley was a “normal” man who acted according to the stereotypes established by society in the 50’s. Just when he met Priscilla, his great love, but also the woman whose life he somehow destroyed.
Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s Turbulent Love Story
Elvis and Priscilla met in the summer of 1959, in Germany, when he was one year into his military service. According to her, the crush was almost immediate; however, the first stage of their relationship was handled discreetly because her parents disagreed due to the age difference. She was only a 14-year-old girl!
“My parents didn’t want me to go out with Elvis; they said I was too young, which was true,” Priscilla Presley told Ladies Home Journal in 1973. While he was 24, she was only 14, which, to this day, would be considered a controversial relationship. A few months after their first date, Elvis returned to the United States to continue with his musical career; however, he continued to have contact with his young girlfriend, whom he affectionately called “Cilla,” mainly through phone calls.
It wasn’t until 1962, when she was 17 and he was 27, that Priscilla decided to move to “The King’s” big house in Graceland, with the authorization of her parents, who put two important rules to the singer. The first one indicated that she had to finish her secondary studies in a Catholic school in Memphis, and the second one was that they could not live under the same roof until she finished school, which they did not comply with. From that moment on, the life of Priscilla Ann Beaulieu Wagner, better known as Priscilla Presley, would change forever.
Elvis Presley’s Life of Excess That Destroyed Priscilla
With Priscilla already installed in Graceland, it wasn’t long before Elvis Presley’s excessive parties began involving alcohol and the singer’s first approaches with harmful substances and drugs. In various interviews, she confessed that she was a student by day and a femme fatale by night.
In 2016, in the program Loose Women, on the British channel ITV she confessed: “When I moved to Graceland, he already had his inner circle. Of course I was taken in, but I never realized that that was it. We didn’t go out. He didn’t like to eat in restaurants because people would take pictures of him, and he didn’t want to be photographed sticking a fork in his mouth. We lived in a bubble.”
“My adolescence was not that of a normal girl. I had to adapt. I just followed what Elvis did. I lived his life. I watched the movies he wanted to watch, listened to the music he wanted to listen to, went to the places he went,” she assumed in that interview.
“He taught me everything. How to dress, how to walk, how to do my makeup and hair, how to behave, how to return the love in his way. Over the years, he became my father, husband, and almost God,” she stated in her memoirs and confirmed in an interview for People in the late 1970s. “My life was his life. He had to be happy. We never bothered him. My problems were secondary.”
Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s Destructive Marriage
In December 1966, Elvis Presley proposed to Priscilla, this time she was already 21, and he was 31. The wedding took place in true “The King” style: The civil ceremony lasted only eight minutes on May 1, 1967, in a private suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas with only 14 guests. After the “I dos,” the couple gave a press conference and breakfast with 100 guests, including Marty Lacker and Joe Esposito, two members of the Memphis Mafia, who were also witnesses to the groom.
In an interview Priscilla had with Closer Weekly, she noted, “My wedding was very unusual. They were the people closest to us, that’s how we wanted it. We didn’t want a fan club. We didn’t want a circus,” it was all organized by the singer’s manager, Tom Parker, who believed the marriage was damaging Elvis’ fame.
Elvis’ Phase as a Father
Eight months after the controversial marriage, “Cilla” became pregnant, which became one of her worst worries because of the change she would experience in her body. At the same time, this was the worst news for Elvis, because: “He was worried about what his fans would think of him being a father and how that would affect his status as a symbol,” Priscilla confessed to The Guardian newspaper in 2012.
On February 1, 1968, Lisa Marie Presley was born, the only child of “The King” and the first-born daughter of Priscilla, who in several interviews confessed: “Elvis was a loving father, but it was hard for him to watch the babies eat because they drooled. And he didn’t change diapers. Not a single one. Not one. That wasn’t a man’s job.”
According to Priscilla, Elvis compensated for the care with expensive gifts for her daughter, which she did not agree to, so she asked him to return them, but the singer never allowed himself to be “dominated” or “tamed.”
Priscilla was submissive to Elvis, in several interviews she confessed that she did everything for him to be well: “I loved to take care of him. I loved to feed him. We talked like babies because you have to have your own language when there are so many people around. It was a good life,” she confessed to People magazine in 2020.
The End of Elvis and Priscilla
However, Elvis’ multiple infidelities and addictions, ended the marriage and, at the same time, the love Priscilla always had for him: “Women gravitated towards him, so I would get nervous when he had to go places alone. I would even accompany him to get his teeth cleaned. I kept an eye out for him because everyone was chasing him.”
In one of the unauthorized biographies, Elvis Presley: A Southern Life by Joel Williamson, it is said that the singer had a “voracious appetite” for drugs, luxury, and sex (mainly with young “virgins”), which destroyed his marriage. In one of the stories of this biography, it is said that after the birth of Lisa Marie, there was almost no intimacy between Elvis and Priscilla; however, it is mentioned that: “The love story of Elvis and Priscilla ended in a humiliating way with a marital abuse.”
Elvis and Priscilla’s story, which lasted 10 years exactly, ended in a divorce in the summer of 1972. Lisa Marie stayed with her mother, which was also an important factor in the singer’s decline. Despite going their separate ways, they had an indestructible friendship for the sake of their daughter, until the passing of “The King” on August 16, 1977.
This story was originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva
