PRIS-1987US

US Magazine
1987

And Baby Makes Four

PRISCILLA PRESLEY has a new man, and a great mother's helper in Lisa Marie

LOS ANGELES Life after Elvis used to be hound-dog rotten for Priscilla Presley. No career. No nice questions from
inquiring minds. No lasting love. But over the past two years she's rocketed to stardom on Dallas and seen her book, Elvis
and Me, hit the best-seller lists. More recently, Priscilla gave birth to a son, Navarone Anthony Garibaldi. And at forty-two,
she's tackling motherhood a little bit differently from the way she did two decades ago, when she bore Elvis' daughter, Lisa
Marie. "When you're young you don't think about diet and exercise," says Priscilla. "We were staying up late all the time. It
wasn't hard living, but it was fast living."
Not that life today is exactly slow. Shortly after Navarone was born last March, Priscilla went back to work on Dallas.
Moreover, although no date is set, she has plans to marry the lad's dad, thirty-two-year-old Marco Garibaldi, a Brazilian film
writer and director.
These days, everything to do with Priscilla has the standard show-biz ring of storybook perfection. "I loved being pregnant,"
she says. "I felt good, my best." Her labor only lasted about an hour, eve then she received treatment worthy of the King's
former queen: "Both my daughter and Marco were with me. Lisa Marie was very supportive. She's an adoring second
mother, always with him, warning me to be careful of this and that. She can't keep her eyes off him."
During her pregnancy, Priscilla stuck to a diet of fruit and vegetables and "just stayed away from hot foods" --- including her
favorite, Thai. She even gave up weight lifting. "It's a great responsibility having a child at my age," she says. "When I
became pregnant I continued [exercising] till the fourth month, and then I became concerned. I didn't want to do anything
that would hurt me or the baby. All of a sudden my body wasn't that important to me."
What remained important was acting. Three weeks after Navarone's birth, she returned to Dallas. "I was worried about
giving up life again, nineteen years after having my first child." explains Priscilla. "But if you have the right frame of mind,
anything can be done." She breast-fed her son on the set until switching to the bottle. "It was hard for me to give up
nursing," she adds. "Very traumatic."
If not for Patrick Duffy, however, she wouldn't have nursed at all. When he left the show in 1986, his character was killed off;
Priscilla thought hers would meet the same fate. She needed a follow-up project. "I started looking for film properties." says
Priscilla. "A friend of mine, a Brazilian, said, 'I know this guy who's a great writer.' Ordinarily I'm cautious and a little leery of
people I've never met. Fate took over." For the first two months, her relationship with Garibaldi was "strictly business." But
then, says Priscilla, "Marco became more of a priority to me than the project. We fell in love."
In the meantime, Duffy rejoined Dallas, preserving Priscilla's own presence. The movie idea wilted, but her affair with
Garibaldi blossomed. He wanted children as much as she did. That was my stumbling block in my relationships in the past."
says Priscilla. "I couldn't be involved with a a man who doesn't feel the same way I do about family. I knew I wanted a child
and that Marco would be a great father. I didn't want to deprive him of having a child."
Priscilla's private triumphs have only been matched by her professional ones, but until 1980, the roles she wanted she
couldn't get. The problem; her famous last name. Hollywood honchos accused her of trying to cash in on its cachet. Not
so, says Priscilla: "I wanted to work." And eventually she did, first on TV's Those Amazing Animals, next in the 1983
Michael Landon movie Love Is Forever. Then, of course, came Dallas and her book on Elvis.
"I suppose I could have lived a life of leisure," says Priscilla, "but that's not for me. I'm a doer. I don't put stops on my own
life. If you are going to keep putting things off, they will never happen." US