PRIS-1987McCalls

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McCalls
1987
Her Life Since Elvis
By Bill Davidson

At least once a year two huddled female figures approach the large white door of Graceland. Now a museum and shrine for
the millions of fans who still revere the memory of The King, this vast Memphis mansion was once the home of Elvis Presley.
The two visitors are Priscilla Presley, The King's only wife, and 19-year-old Lisa Marie, the only child. Graceland closes to
the public in the evening , so Priscilla and Lisa invariably arrive then. They surreptitiously slip inside the white door and go
upstairs to the living quarters -- always closed to the public.
"Lisa and I stay upstairs at Graceland for several days." says Priscilla, now one of the stars of Dallas, "and it's a nice, quiet
family time. Elvis' aunt still lives there, and many of the maids we had still come in. We never go to Graceland when the big
crowds are around, and certainly not on August sixteenth, the anniversary of Elvis' death." On that day, every year, "a
mob-scene candlelight procession" take place at Graceland.
Priscilla pauses, a shadow passes over her huge blue-gray eyes. "When Lisa and I make those trips," she adds. "we only
talk about the good things in our long-ago life at Graceland. But I can't stop thinking about what a child I was then and about
how much I could have helped Elvis with all the things I've learned since his death in 1977." It is her own later struggles,
Priscilla says, that gave her the maturity that might have helped Elvis through 'his fears and insecurities, his drug addiction,
and also might have helped him handle the conditions he lived in and the people he surrounded himself with."
Plainly, as these pilgrimages indicate, Priscilla and Lisa still live under the looming shadow of Elvis Presley. The result has
been an unusually close mother-daughter bond. Lisa has become Priscilla's strong ally. For despite the status Priscilla has
attained in her own career, hosts of Elvis fans have never forgiven her. She was the wife who had left their idol, perhaps
when he needed her most. By the same token, Priscilla has supported Lisa and protected her from the temptations and
annoyances that accrue from the simple fact that she happens to be the idol's offspring. They function as a team.
Priscilla becomes soft and mellow when she speaks about her feelings toward her child. "When Elvis died, " she says, "I had
only one thought in my mind. I had to get Lisa away from the mess I knew was going to explode in the national press, and,
worse, in the scandal tabloids. She was only nine years old then. I knew it would be tough for her to hear and read about
Elvis' drug addiction, the deathbed scene and all the other ghastly, gory stuff.
"So I took her to Europe with me for three months, and we went from country to country, touring museums and absorbing
culture. I wanted her to remember her father in a good way. I've always wanted her to remember her father in a good way --
and I think I've succeeded.
Later Priscilla put Lisa in an exclusive private school in Los Angeles. She chose it because the children of celebrities are not
uncommon there, and, as a rule, they are left alone. Priscilla guarded Lisa's privacy like a lioness protecting her cub. No
photographs, no interviews. Lisa, a day student, lived at home with her mother, as she still does.
There have been rumors that she ran away to become involved in a religious cult, that she has rebelled against Prisiclla's
overprotectiveness, that she unwisely splurged the money left to her in Elvis will. There is no evidence of either the rebel or
the runaway: and Lisa has had no money to splurge, since she doesn't come into her inheritance from her father until her
25th birthday. Both Priscilla and Lisa have vociferously denied all the rumors. Priscilla does not pretend, however, that it all
has been perfect. She told me,. "My daughter is a normal as any high-school teenager can be these days, what with drug
experimentation and sometimes choosing the wrong boys to date. But Lisa always has confided in me, and she came out
clean."
Priscilla recalls one potential crisis of another kind that her maternal caring managed to avert. "There was another flood of
candid, graphic reminiscences about Elvis. In 1981, and I worried again about how they would affect Lisa, So I sat her down
and told her the entire story. She was only fourteen, but we talked adult to adult. She knew more than I thought she did.
After all, she had lived in the same house with Elvis and had seen him swallowing all the pills. She came through it like a
trooper. It didn't sway her from how she felt about her father."

I met with Prisicilla last November on what was a very harrowing day for her. It was the morning after the startling news had
broken that she was pregnant --- in fact, already in her sixth month. Priscilla had made no bones about the fact that her
baby's father was Marco Garibladi, a young Brazilian writer-director with whom she has been living since 1983 (side note from
webmiss it was 1985 when they met on the Dallas set). "The phone has been ringing all day," said Priscilla, "but, after going
back and forth on this for a long time, I'm glad the truth's finally out."
Priscilla and I have known each other for a long time (I had written about her, and she had been a friend of my late wife's), so
she seemed happy and relaxed about discussing the matter with me. Her daughter, she said, was delighted to welcome a
new member into the family.
"Lisa knew I wanted another child ever since I divorced Elvis in 1973. I let her in on the news of my pregnancy from the very
beginning, when not even my best friends knew. At first, she said, 'Oh, my gosh!' because she had wished for a brother or
sister much sooner so that she could grow up with the new child. But now Lisa is just as excited about the baby as I am. She
takes care of me. When we go shopping, she makes me sit down. She's very concerned about how I'm doing --- getting
overheated, walking too much, it's wonderful to know that she cares."
Priscilla needed all the support she could get in those days. She had a long way to go to establish her own identity. After all,
she had met the great Elvis when she was a 14-year-old high-school girl in Germany, where her father was an Air Force
captain. Elvis had been based near Bad Nauheim -- A GI caught up in the 1957 U.S. Army draft. Then, as a 21-year-old with
a ludicrous foot-high beehive hairdo, she married King Elvis in 1967. He ensconced her in Graceland as his do-nothing
consort Queen.
Priscilla deserves a lot of credit for the way she engineered what she still calls "my struggle." In those first years after Elvis'
death from an overdose of barbiturates and opiates. Never relinquishing her primary role of mother to Lisa, Priscilla set
about trying to find some sort of worthwhile career for herself. It was tough going because she had never worked before.
Why, with the two million dollars she received in the divorce settlement, plus her share of Presley's estate, did she even
embark on the struggle? "I had to go to work for my own sense of self-esteem," she says. "I had to shake the image of just
being Elvis Presley's widow and get people to accept me as me, a person with my own talent."
It took her a long time to develop usable skills ---- three years of acting classes, dabbling in fashion design, opening her
boutique. She finally decided to concentrate on acting and literally walked the streets of New York and Los Angeles, seeking
roles at casting offices. But she was considered by most just another ex-wife, a wealthy dilettante who really didn't have to
work at all. One casting director told her, "If you're looking for a hobby, try needlepoint."
Eventually Priscilla was cast in a hair-product commercial, which in turn led to a short-lived TV series, Those Amazing
Animals, in 1979. She wanted to use her maiden name, Priscilla Beaulieu, but the producers insisted on adding Presley.
"People still looked on me as a curiosity, as Elvis' ex-wife." says Priscilla. "The doors opened for me, but than they kept
closing again.: Her television popularity ratings were as low as Howard Cosell's, but Lisa told her, "Don't worry mama, I know
your breakthrough will come very soon. When you take me to acting class, I can see how good you're getting to be.
Lisa was right. In two rather minor roles -- in the TV movie, Comeback with Michael Landon, and in a Fall Guy episode with
Stewart Granger -- Dallas' executive producer Phil Capice saw something unique in Priscilla's looks and acting. He
envisioned her in the role of Jenna Wade, an early sweetheart of Bobby Ewing's who comes back to complicate his life.
(Jenna had twice previously been played by other actreesses, one of whom was Morgan Fairchild) Priscilla got the job, and
Lisa, now a high-school freshman, was ecstatic.
Priscilla has been on Dallas for four years now. Strangely it was the recent cast convolutions Dallas that caused the advent
of the new man in Priscilla's life -- and Lisa's: Marco Garibladi. Patrick Duffy left Dallas at the end of the season before last,
when his character, Bobby Ewing, was killed off. With Bobby gone from the series, Priscilla figured that pretty soon there
might not be Jenna either and began to cast about for a backup position. "I had confidence. I believed I had advanced
enough in my acting abilities to try doing a movie," she says. "So I started looking for film properties. Well-written ones are
hard to find. Then a friend of mine, a Brazilian, said to me 'Gee I know this guy who's a great writer. He's my best friend.'
Ordinarily I'm cautious and leery of people I've never met. Fate took over, and I said, "Ok, I'll meet him. It's not going to hurt."
Enter Marco Garibaldi: tall, slender, as handsome as the young Marcello Mastroianni, and at 31, eleven years younger than
Priscilla. The scion of a good Italian family who had emigrated to Brazil, Marco had been in the United States for eight years
when he met Priscilla. He spoke fluent English, as well as Portuguese, Italian and Spanish. Priscilla, the all-American girl,
was overwhelmed. Marco was then employed in the television industry as a writer and director, mostly doing commercials
and rock videos.
"It was a strictly business situation for the first two months," says Priscilla. "Marco came up with a terrific movie idea for me
and sat down to write it. But after those first two months Marco became more of a priority to me than the project. We fell in
love."
The project was put aside for other reasons as well. Says Priscilla: "It soon became obvious that, even without Bobby Ewing,
my character, Jenna, was going to remain on Dallas. In fact, the part got even better because Jenna became more involved
in J.R. Ewing's intrigues. When Patrick Duffy as Bobby was brought back this season with the crazy explanation that all of
last year's Dallas episodes were merely dream sequences, Jenna immediately took up with Bobby again. Marco and I knew
that I was in the show to stay. So his movie got put aside again."
Then Priscilla discovered last summer that she was pregnant with Marco's child. When the news leaked out in November, the
scandal tabloids had another field day. They pointed out that Marco was about the same age as Elvis at the height of his
romance with Priscilla and that Marco somewhat resembled the early Elvis with his dark good looks. Letters-to-the-editor
from Elvis fans, many of them fundamentalists in religious beliefs, expressed outrage at what they considered the latest sin
by the "wicked woman" who had first committed the sin of leaving their idol in the midst of his drug crisis.
None of this seemed to be bothering Priscilla when I saw her. She was very happy. Because of the amniocentesis procedure
recommended by her doctor because of her age, she already knew that the fetus, at six months, was apparently healthy, and
that the baby was going to be a boy. She already had a name picked out for him -- Navar (short for Navarone) Beaulieu
Garibaldi. Both Priscilla and Marco wanted the child but have put aside marriage for the time being. Priscilla still seems wary
of "signing a piece of paper and being owned by someone, like I was with Elvis." She has finally won her independence, and
she values it. But she also is a confirmed nest builder, so it would surprise no one who knows her if a wedding with Marco
pops up sometime soon.

The age disparity between Priscilla and Marco does not bother Priscilla in the slightest. She says that the key to her love for
Marco is that he admires and respects her for what she has accomplished and that she reciprocally admires and respects
him for his warmth and his talent. She makes the point, over and over again, that she never had that sort of mutual
admiration and respect with any other man -- including Elvis. In her 1985 book, Elvis and Me, she wrote that he treated her
more like a plaything than a lover.
Will the Marco-Priscilla relationship work out as well as she hopes? Most of her friends think so. One reason they cite is that
both Marco and Priscilla are intensely familial (she has five half brothers and sisters).
"I couldn't be involved with a man who doesn't feel the way I do about family," Priscilla told me. "That was one of the main
stumbling blocks in my relationships in the past. Marco is so different from the others. He adores Lisa and sits down to
discuss her problems with her, just as I do. He'll suddenly pick up the phone and invite my mother over to dinner. Or he'll
pop in and see my sister and her little two-year-old boy."
Concerning Marco's own considerable family in Brazil, Priscilla says, "I've been down there twice to see them, and I love them
all. Especially his mother, who tries to teach me how to cook their kinds of food. This is difficult because she speaks only
Italian and Portuguese. I'm trying very hard to learn both languages."

Priscilla's pregnancy did not seem to impede her work on Dallas. The producers had coincidentally developed a story line in
which Jenna, Priscilla's character, was pregnant (with Bobby Ewing's child.) At this writing, Dallas' writers reportedly intend to
coordinate the real-life birth of Priscilla's baby with the birth of Jenna's baby on the small screen. Soon afterward, Priscilla
and her real-life infant may be filmed together as Jenna and son.
As always, concern for Lisa is in the forefront of Priscilla's mind; she worries about the future of her daughter, who has just
graduated from high school. She fears that Lisa, who resembles Elvis, may be rushed into premature show-business
ventures by greedy promoters wishing to exploit her.
"Now that Lisa is eighteen and technically an adult, I don't want to push her out of anything or into anything," Priscilla
explains. "I know that doesn't work with kids today. She may go to college, or she may travel for a year or so to think about
it. Right now, she seems interested in fashion design, and that's okay with me. But it's her choice, not mine. If she goes into
show business, I would only hope that she has learned from her support of me in my bad days that you must study, learn
your craft and get the seasoning you need to be a real success."
And so Priscilla and Lisa will have a lot to think about and talk about when they make their next secret trip to Graceland ---
probably in November, when the crowds are small. Perhaps now they can enjoy in peace the privacy and quiet of their home
in Tennessee, once so raucous and tragedy-fraught. In the nine years since Elvis' death, both mother and daughter have
come a long, long way toward happiness.