Priscilla Presley
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Priscilla Presley, ca. 1985 |
Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, neé
Priscilla Ann Wagner (born
May 24,
1945) is an
American model,
author and
actress and the only wife of
rock 'n' roll singer
Elvis Presley.
Her biological father, James Wagner, was a
pilot who was killed in a
plane crash when Priscilla was just an infant. Her mother,
Norwegian-American Anna Lillian Iversen, then married Paul Beaulieu, a
United States Air Force officer. Beaulieu took over the raising of Priscilla and is known as her father. The Beaulieus were stationed in
West Germany at the same time as Elvis during his stint in the
United States Army. Priscilla was 14 years old when she met Elvis in
Wiesbaden.
Elvis managed to talk the extremely reluctant Beaulieus into allowing Priscilla to live with his father (Vernon Presley) and stepmother, Dee Presley, at a home Elvis purchased on Heritage Drive in
Memphis. The seventeen-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu "worked" on her mother to get her support but before finally agreeing, her still reluctant and protective father flew with her to
Los Angeles where Presley was filming
Fun in Acapulco. After discussing the "rules," she and her father flew to Memphis where they met with Vernon Presley, made arrangements for Priscilla's enrollment in the Immaculate Conception school and her father confirmed her living arrangements at Vernon Presley's house.
Once living in Memphis in 1962, Priscilla Beaulieu says she moved into
Graceland bit by bit, at first spending occasional nights with Presley, later moving in and sleeping together every night. In her 1985 autobiography, the bestseller
Elvis and Me, which was later adapted to a television
miniseries, Priscilla describes Presley as a very passionate man who was not overtly sexual towards her. Although he would spend hours alone with her in her bedroom, Priscilla wrote that Elvis never made any advances towards her. According to her account (p130), Elvis told her that they had to wait until they were married before having intercourse. He said, "I'm not saying we can't do other things. It's just the actual encounter. I want to save it." Priscilla adds, "Fearful of not pleasing him - of destroying my image as his little girl - I resigned myself to the long wait. Instead of consummating our love in the usual way, he began teaching me other means of pleasing him. We had a strong connection, much of it sexual. The two of us created some exciting and wild times."
A completely different view of Priscilla's life, painting her in a rather negative light and describing her as a "wild child" and "sexpot", can be found in
Suzanne Finstad's book,
Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley (1997), which is based on accounts of several people who knew Elvis and Priscilla well, among them many friends from Priscilla's childhood and adolescence, Elvis's stepbrother Rick Stanley, Priscilla's boyfriend Mike Edwards, Elvis's ex-girlfriends and the wives of the
Memphis Mafia men. The author writes that Priscilla promised sexual favors in exchange for meeting Elvis to Currie Grant, a married, 27-year-old man who knew the singer, that she and Elvis slept together on their second date and that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night. The book also claims that her marriage was part of a mastermind for fame hatched by Priscilla and her mother and that she never loved Elvis. Finstad takes many quotes that Priscilla has made and calls them a web of lies that she has spun. Priscilla launched a lawsuit against Currie Grant for his claims in the book and won.
In
Elvis and Me, Beaulieu recounted how Elvis would stay up all night and sleep most of the day. If he wanted to go out, he would rent out the venue and invite friends, family and fans, or arrange with store owners to shop after hours when the store was closed. She also talked about the prescription sleeping pills that were present from the very first night she spent with him and how their usage and variety escalated dramatically during the years they were together.
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Priscilla, Lisa Marie, & Elvis Presley |
She and Presley were married on
May 1,
1967 in
Las Vegas, Nevada at the
Aladdin Hotel, and daughter
Lisa Marie was born nine months later on
February 1,
1968. They separated in February of 1972 and were divorced in October of 1973. Their divorce provided for mutual custody of Lisa Marie, who lived with Priscilla in
Los Angeles, California and with her father at Graceland.
It has been intimated that Elvis was forced into marriage with Priscilla. As part of the original deal made between Elvis and Paul Beaulieu, Elvis must marry Priscilla if she was to live with him. During 1967, Elvis was famously dating
Viva Las Vegas co-star
Ann-Margret. Mr. Beaulieu threatened Presley and his manager
Colonel Tom Parker to pull a Jerry Lee Lewis-type of scandal if Elvis did in fact not marry Priscilla, exposing the fact that he had a relationship with his daughter when she was only fourteen years of age. Needless to say, The Colonel arranged a whirlwind wedding at the Aladdin Hotel to ensure that negative press about "his boy" never surfaced.
Priscilla is not often credited for a profound business acumen. After Elvis' father's death in 1979, Priscilla served as co-executor of his estate. Graceland itself cost
$500,000 a year in upkeep, and expenses had dwindled Lisa Marie's inheritance to $5 million. Priscilla examined other famous house/museums, and hired a CEO to turn Graceland into a moneymaker. She became the chairwoman and president of
Elvis Presley Enterprises. After Graceland opened to the public in 1982, the enterprise's fortunes soared and eventually the trust grew to be worth over $100 million.
In addition, in 2000, Priscilla was elected to the
board of directors of
MGM, with the prime vote coming from
Kirk Kerkorian, who dated Priscilla in the 1970s and reportedly wanted to marry her.
After her divorce from Elvis, Priscilla began a boutique and ran it for five years before getting into modeling and acting. After signing with the
William Morris Agency, Priscilla made her television debut in
1980 as a co-host of the
ABC series
Those Amazing Animals with the legendary
Burgess Meredith. She went on to portray the lead role of Jenna Wade on the
soap opera Dallas from
1983 to
1988 and starred opposite
Leslie Nielsen in
The Naked Gun gag movie trilogy.
In addition, she starred in the feature film
Breakfast with Einstein, executive-produced the feature film
Finding Graceland and made guest appearances on
Melrose Place,
Touched by an Angel and
Spin City. The television version of
Elvis and Me was produced by her production company, Navarone Productions. As late as 2003, she planned to develop a
Broadway musical about her life.
Priscilla developed four perfumes in the 1990s. Two, Moments and Experiences, were very successful in Europe, and a third, Indian Summer, hit American shelves in 1996, followed by "Roses and More".
In 2006, Priscilla flew to
Australia for the debut of her worldwide line of bed linens, called the Priscilla Presley Collection. She partnered with Australian designer
Bruno Schiavi for the line.
Priscilla lived with
Brazilian screenwriter-director
Marco Garibaldi since 1984-- he wrote a script that she read, hoping to produce. Their son, Navarone, was born on
March 1,
1987. The two separated after 22 years in April 2006. She has lived in the same
Beverly Hills mansion since 1974.
Prior to that, Priscilla was involved with
Mike Edwards, a model, in the 1970s after her divorce from Elvis. Edwards recounts the tale of their relationship in his book
Priscilla, Elvis, and Me. They lived together for seven years.
Priscilla and her daughter had a tempestuous relationship when Lisa was a teenager and using drugs, but theirs has since matured into a smoother, more understanding mother-daughter relationship. Lisa Marie even imitated Priscilla by marrying not the
King of Rock 'n' Roll but the
King of Pop,
Michael Jackson. Lisa Marie herself now has a daughter,
Riley Keough, who models for
John Galliano.
Priscilla and Lisa Marie are both
Scientologists, introduced to the religion in 1979 by
John Travolta. Of the group, Priscilla said in 1996,
"You get answers, and that's very different from other religions. It's gotten me back to basics."Priscilla was awarded an honorary degree from
Rhodes College.
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Main title caption from Dallas. |
*Priscilla Presley,
Elvis and Me (1985), ISBN 0399129847
*Priscilla Presley,
Elvis by the Presleys with
Lisa Marie Presley (2005), ISBN 0307237419
*Suzanne Finstad,
Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley (1997).
*
Official Site Priscilla Presley
