“He was my mentor, my confidant. He was everything. […] “Oh my God” because I lived and breathed it. “These few words Priscilla Presleydelivered in 2017 inEntertainment tonightdraw boundaries intense and at times painful love story, all-encompassing and symbiotic to the limit. Partly it was the slow wear of amphetamines, which the king of rock learned about during his years in the army and which provoked many outbursts of anger to mark the relationship between Elvis Presley and his wife, who was molded and molded by the singer in his own image and likeness. But besides drugs, there were other aspects that made their marital cohabitation very difficult, and which director Baz Luhrmann only wanted to partially touch on in the new biopic. Elvis.
When the couple first saw each other in 1959 in the German city of Wiesbaden, Priscilla was only 14 years old, a “girl”, as he himself would say, and Elvis was 24.. And yet, that evening, the artist, already known throughout the world, was amazed by her and, sitting at the piano, tried his best to impress her. “I couldn’t believe Elvis Presley was trying to impress me,” she later admitted. Priscilla was invited to her home for another meeting. And another. The third time, he invited her to spend the evening at his house, assuring her: “I swear I will never hurt you. I will treat you just like a sister.” Although Priscilla never claimed to have been a victim of abuse, she admitted that their relationship, like many aspects of her legacy, was certainly difficult.
As expected, her parents were against their relationship. They softened their positions only when Elvis appeared in their house in military uniform.: the girl’s adoptive father, Paul Beaulieu, was actually an officer in the US Air Force and the fact that the singer served positively influenced the decision to agree to their visit. In 1963, her parents allowed her to move to Memphis so she could be closer to the rocker, who often picked her up from school in a limousine. Before graduating from high school, Priscilla moved into Elvis’ iconic home in Graceland with the promise that they would marry. So it was in 1967, when Priscilla was 21 years old. “That was the promise he made to my father,” she said. closer weekly in 2017. The king wanted his wife to be devoted to home and family, always available and, of course, a virgin.
In his 1985 autobiography, Elvis and mePriscilla describes Presley as a very passionate man who did not have an overtly sexual relationship with him. According to her, Elvis told her that they should wait until the wedding before having sex: “I’m not saying we can’t do other things. It’s just a real relationship. I want to spare them.” “Fearing that he didn’t like me, that he would destroy my image of his little girl, I resigned myself to a long wait. Instead of consuming our love in the usual way, he began to teach me other ways of seduction. relationship, mostly sexual. Together we created some exciting and wild moments.”
The eight years leading up to the wedding were a kind of training school to learn how to be a real rocker’s wife, the woman everyone expected Elvis to want to be around him.. It was he who imposed on Priscilla the manner of dressing, combing her hair and even making up. “She put on so much makeup that you couldn’t tell if my eyes were black or blue or black and blue,” she admitted. People in 1985. “That was what Elvis wanted.” “He wanted to shape me according to his opinions and preferences,” and she agreed implicitly, even dyeing her hair black to match hers. In her memoirs, Priscilla wrote that she became “a living Elvis doll, at will. She taught me everything. How to dress, how to walk, how to wear makeup and hair, how to behave, how to respond to love in your own way. … Over the years, he became my father, my husband and almost God.”
Nine months after the wedding, celebrated at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, in 1968, little Lisa Marie was born, to whom the singer remained very attached throughout his life. However, the union with Priscilla, sanctified by an 8-minute ceremony hosted by the singer’s manager Tom Parker in defiance of their love as he was convinced it would hurt Elvis’ career, was not as solid as one might expect. “Our divorce was not due to another man or another woman,” the singer once said, “but because of circumstances related to my career. I traveled too much, I traveled too much… I didn’t think it was right for her.” . In fact, Elvis “wasn’t faithful,” Priscilla told reporters.australia Sunday evening in 2017, when asked about the singer’s many alleged relationships during their wedding. “It’s not like he has anyone special, but when you’re in show business, there’s always that dynamic, and I tried a few times to let it overflow through me, but I didn’t want to share it with others.”
So Priscilla, in turn, began a relationship with her karate instructor Mike Stone in the early 1970s, but later stated that their marriage was dysfunctional from the start.. “With Elvis, my life was his life. He should have been happy. My concerns were secondary.” In her autobiography, Priscilla said her “feelings of abandonment and loneliness” motivated her to start a new relationship, adding that leaving Elvis led her to “find herself for the first time”. “It was the love of my life, but I had to discover the world.” So it was the couple separated in 1972, but divorced the following year, continuing to meet and see each other regularly for the sake of their only daughter.. “We never lost friendship and care for each other. He called me at night. I really appreciated his calls. I appreciated that he told me what was wrong.” These were the years of a psychophysical breakdown, now more and more obvious, of a singer who, already since 1962, had withdrawn from the public in order to focus on the most profitable television performances in what were for the most part considered mediocre b-movies. .
In the 70s, addiction to drugs, which he used to get rid of a deepening depressive state, finally undermined his health. He apparently also tried to introduce Priscilla to the use of “white pills” to help her stay awake at school. “Elvis sincerely thought he was doing me a favor by giving me the pills, and I’m sure the idea that they could harm him or me never crossed his mind,” she said. Increasingly withdrawn and suspicious, Elvis surrounded himself with the so-called “The Boys”, a circle of self-proclaimed friends and “da-men” opportunists who tried to fulfill his every desire to enter his favor. , and subsequently receive undoubted benefits. This circle of people, if, on the one hand, for many years protected him with all the means at his disposal from any influence that he considered undesirable, then, on the other hand, prevented him from maintaining a healthy and constructive relationship with the real outside world. . The only link was his ex-wife Priscilla, who until the last tried to be with him, although after their divorce, his decline became irreversible. “We had a connection: we became closer and had more understanding and patience with each other than in our married life.”
With health deteriorating, the star died in Memphis on June 27, 1977.. 45 years later, Priscilla continues to protect her ex-husband’s legacy and look after his $300 million estate in Graceland. “I take it as a big responsibility,” he said. Sydney Morning Herald Earlier this year. “I make dreams come true that Elvis Presley never could, and I correct people’s misconceptions about Elvis. It’s just about keeping his legacy true to who he was and I feel a lot of responsibility in that.” If Elvis could see her, he would certainly be proud of “his little girl.”
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Source: Elle