Elvis and Me

Product Information

It would be 7 years before the pair wed in 1967, finally consummating their love. The built up passion led to their only child, Lisa Marie, born one year later. But their relationship wasn’t the stuff of fairy tales. As Priscilla matured, she began to realize she’d been moulded by Elvis to be his “ideal wife”, denying the true woman within. “He taught me everything, how to dress, how to walk, how to apply makeup and wear my hair, how to behave, how to return love – his way. I was Elvis’ doll, his own living doll, to be fashioned as he pleased.” Throughout Coppola’s movie, Priscilla wants to believe Elvis when he tells her the rumors of his affairs with countless Hollywood starlets, including Nancy Sinatra, are not true. But when she sees a magazine photo spread of Elvis and his Viva Las Vegas co-star Ann-Marget looking rather cozy, she can no longer ignore the gossip. I posted some pics along with my review on IG if you’re so inclined 😃 - I just love the old pictures. They go hand in hand with my general nosiness. That’s where it became apparent that there was not enough money to keep things running,” Marchese says.

For much of his career, Elvis took sleeping pills and diet pills, but Priscilla writes that his addiction worsened in the years before his death when he started taking more “powerful, unnecessary prescribed drugs to raise his spirits and ward off boredom.” But there was also a period in his life with Priscilla when he was “seeking a higher state of consciousness,” dabbling in psychedelics. In Elvis and Me, she describes a LSD trip in which she “found [herself] in Elvis’s huge walk-in closet, purring like a kitten.” This freak-out inspires one of the funniest moments in Priscilla — and is by far the trippiest scene in any Sofia Coppola film. Did Elvis take up with a spiritual guru? While they planned on having children, Elvis and Priscilla had hoped to wait awhile, and Priscilla was not prepared for her pregnancy. She considered an abortion, in part because Elvis had made derogatory comments in the past about "women using pregnancy as an excuse to let themselves go." Feeling insecure, she dieted to the point that by the time she gave birth, she then weighed less than she had before becoming pregnant. During Priscilla's pregnancy, she and Elvis made love passionately until she began hearing rumors about Elvis and Nancy Sinatra, his co-star in the film Speedway. When Priscilla confronted Elvis about the stories, he dismissed them out of hand, telling her she was being overly sensitive due to her "condition" (pregnancy). However, six months into her pregnancy, Nancy Sinatra telephoned Priscilla and said she wanted to give her a baby shower. Priscilla was apprehensive about such a request coming from a woman she hardly knew, but Elvis convinced her to accept the offer. Priscilla went along with it and she and Sinatra got along well together. Everything seemed fine until a week or so later, when Elvis informed Priscilla that he needed time to think and wanted a trial separation. Devastated, she told him: "You've got it. Just tell me when to leave." She lived in agony for days, and Elvis silently changed his mind about the separation proposal. Two months later, their daughter Lisa Marie was born in Memphis on February 1, 1968. In a televised interview on January 14, 2005, with Larry King on CNN's Larry King Live, Anita Wood said that following media reports of a girlfriend in Germany, Elvis "had me believing that she (Priscilla) was just a friend, that daddy was in the Army with him, and there was nothing to it, whatsoever." Priscilla Presley had the GREATEST RESPONSIBILITY cast upon her when Vernon Presley died thereby leaving the entire Estate to Lisa Marie (who Priscilla had to care for and make business decisions accordingly).

Success!

While she considered confiding in one of the nuns at her Catholic school about how much she was drowning under the weight of the pressure to get good grades andbe there for Elvis, she ultimately chose not to. While still a teenager, and with no sign of the long-distance romance dwindling, Priscilla’s parents agreed on her returning to the US to take up residence in Memphis in early 1963, under the conditions she finish her education at a local all-girls Catholic school, that she resided in a nearby residence to Graceland chaperoned by Presley’s father, Verne, and his second wife, and that a contract of eventual marriage be honoured.

As an Elvis Presley Expert, and Collector with OVER 100,000 photos/items since the late 1960's, I know all of the "resentment" about Priscilla (and the Estate). Priscilla describes how her father reluctantly allowed her to live in Memphis, Tennessee to be near Elvis. The initial arrangement was that Priscilla would live with Vernon and Dee, while attending a Memphis Catholic school. Contrary to this arrangement, however, Priscilla gradually moved in with Elvis. The iconic couple of Priscilla and Elvis are played by Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, respectively.The tuxedo, along with Priscilla’s heavily beaded but modest gown, are part of the Bendigo exhibition, along with her veil and tiara. It was very difficult for my parents to understand that Elvis would be so interested in me and why. I really do think it was because I was more of a listener,” she said. “Elvis would pour his heart out to me in every way in Germany: his fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother, which he never ever got over. And I was the person who really sat there to listen and to comfort him. That was really our connection.”

In the memoir’s most harrowing moment, Priscilla describes being summoned to Elvis’s Las Vegas hotel room. She was “filled with curiosity” as to why he wanted to see her since, by this point in 1972, they were living separate lives and had been for months. She wondered if he wanted to have a real discussion about their marriage. But when she arrived, she found an intoxicated Elvis lying in bed. “He grabbed me and forcefully made love to me,” Priscilla writes. “It was uncomfortable and unlike any other time he’d ever made love to me before, and he explained, ‘This is how a real man makes love to his woman.’” Priscilla wrote that Elvis did not approve of his father’s relationship with divorcee Dee Stanley and did not attend their wedding. After the marriage, Elvis bought a home on Dolan Drive in Memphis, Tennessee, where his father, Vernon, and his new wife resided. On the rare occasions that Dee Stanley-Presley came to Graceland, Elvis did his best to be civil towards his stepmother.

And Elvis charmed her parents to go along with visits. Oh do I have things to say about her parents. WHO ALLOWS THEIR TEENAGE DAUGHTER TO VISIT A MAN IN THE STATES AND THEN CHANGE SCHOOLS TO GO LIVE WITH HIM? WHO DOES THAT!? The only other actor that A24 lists right now is Dagmara Dominczyk, who most recently starred in Succession season 4 and Hello Tomorrow!, but whose career has included roles in The Lost Daughter, The Assistant and The Count of Monte Cristo. Priscilla trailer When it comes to reading a biography… I feel a little unfair when I rate the book anything under 5 stars unless I hate it. This is the persons own words, on their own experience - their life. Reading older biographies is sometimes complicated, and it sure was in this case. I read through contemporary eyes; things that shouldn’t have been ok then… shouldn’t have been tolerated were. “It WaS a DiFfErEnT tImE” - yeah, idgaf. A lot on this book was hard to wrap my brain around (I’ve compiled a short —- ehhh… short-ISH list below of those points). Elvis and Me was published in 1986, and written about a time in the 60s and 70s. The societal shift on what’s acceptable and what isn’t is showcased in this book.