PRIS-1998MEMPHISmagazine

"Memphis" Magazine
An Exclusive Interview: Priscilla Presley Keeper of the King's Flame

It is graduation day at Rhodes Colleges, 1998, and various milestones are being observed. Some 312 students are getting
their degrees. Dr. James Daughdrill, the college's president for the last quarter-century, is preparing for his last year at the
Midtown institution, and several distinguished guests are presented with honorary degrees: Claudia Kennedy, a Rhodes
graduate and the Army's first female three-star general; the Rev. Alvin O.Jackson, who has gone from the most prestigious
black pulpit in Memphis. (There are more paragraphs making references to other honorees). I'll just get to the honoree...
The honoree's transformation of Graceland into "a major enterprise," her launching of the Elvis Presley's Memphis restaurant
on Beale Street, her line of fragrances, her career as an actor in such vehicles as the Naked Gun movies and the TV serial
Dallas, and her authorship of a book, Elvis and Me, which became "a bestseller...first time out."

Though some point of the citation clearly bear on the fact, it is at no point mentioned that she had been the one and only
wife of Memphis' most famous citizen, the late Elvis Presley, whom - in what she has described as a desperate resolve to
establish a life of her own - she left and divorced at the height of the music icon's career. It is an obvious irony that her
ex-husband's name weighs so heavy in these rites that certify her coming to renown in her own right. But irony and paradox
and ambiguity are, it seems, part of the birthright of this woman.
When the ceremony ends and a benediction is pronounced, Priscilla Presley - looking short-haired and prim in her academic
robe and cap - makes the sign of the cross. it is a curious gesture. Not since childhood has she been an observing
Catholic; she is known to the world, in fact, as a practitioner of Scientology, by its own lights a most calculating and secular
modern faith ("common sense," as Presley describes it).
Not that her act was necessarily inauthentic. It is consistent with the extreme complexity of this unusual honoree, whose
personas, the ceremonial citation might have gone on to say, seems to range all the way from Madonna to the Church Lady.

It was not always my desire to be an actress or model. I had intended to be a wife and mother. That was really
where my roots are. I loved being a wife and mother. But when you're divorced, you need to get out and do
something for your own self-worth. And that was my mission, to at least fulfill the yearnings I had inside....Doors
opened up for me because I had the name Presley. But they also closed....There's still a lot of fear, even today.
A lot of fear, a lot of challenges out there. It's sink or swim.

It was an unseasonably cool day, and Presley wore a black sweater outfit, a leopard-pattern scarf made of rayon or silk, and
a beret. Seated beside her was a visitor from Memphis, listening as she discoursed on the local geography - starting with the
range of mountains just south of L.A. that were even now, in mid-May, covered with snow and suitable for skiing.

She then directed her high-end RV, as well as her passenger's attention, onto a residential street nestled among sprawling
Beverly Hills. Instantly the visitor is overwhelmed with two facts of the landscape: the sheer lushness of the often rococo
residences along the way and the fact that, on the street-frontage side anyhow, these mansions seemed surprisingly close
together - close enough so the casually dressed man seen emerging from a side door of one of them would not have had to
go far to ask for a cup of sugar from the house next door.
"Except that people don't really know each other," commented Presley, who once told an interviewer that she had never felt
truly accepted by the Hollywood community. She pointed out houses. "This belongs to James Stewart". And tat one to
Lucille Ball and the one over there to Jack Benny. Or the bandleader Xavier Cugat. Or Sammy Davis Jr. and that great big
one, called "Pickfair", was once shared by the early screen icons and lovers Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.

And then comes one slung so low, where the first thing to be seen is the cast-iron gate on which are engraved the letters
"Villa Nostra", Italian for "Our House". Presley pushes an unseen button, and the gate swings open to reveal an elaborate
Mediterranean-style villa of several tiers - the ground level of which includes a paneled door for the garage. Presumably it is
for cars, but Presley parks the Range Rover outdoors, in a line that includes another Range Rover, a Jeep Wrangler, and a
plain Hyundai sedan. "That's my help's care", she points out quickly.
Bamboo trees, fig trees, and lattices for grapes are all hard by the driveway, and a fat black Labrador retriever Presley calls
"Buddy" lumbers slowly up to be petted. Presley shares this property with her consort of 12 years, Marco Garibaldi, the
father of Presley's second child, her 11-year-old son Navarone (named, believe it or not, for the Gregory Peck action flick,
The Guns of Navarone).

"Elvis came here once," Presley says, leading her visitor down some steep brick steps onto a terraced area that includes a
pool, as well as vegetable and flower gardens. Though she does not proceed any further, the steps continue on their
downward descent so steeply that it becomes obvious that the house (which has layers that climb down, too) nestles along a
precipitous slope of some magnitude. Down there in the afternoon shadows is a tennis court, bare, deserted,
unused-looking. This court is an echo of one Presley had pointed out earlier in the drive. It had been barely visible behind a
tangle of lush, Southern California vegetation in a section of town called Holmby Hills. It was one of several residences
Priscilla once shared with Elvis during a marriage that, for all the weight it occupies in renditions of the iconic legend, lasted
all of four years - a short tenure even by today's standards.

The house in Holmby Hills, Priscilla Presley had explained, was the only one of several the couple had inhabited in L.A. that
had dimensions like those of Graceland - the first home she'd ever had away from the Beaulieus, the family which she'd been
raised, the military family she was living with way off in Bad Nauheim, Germany, when she was first introduced to Pvt. Elvis
Presley some 40 years ago.
"There were lemon and orange groves there. Now they're gone", she had said, gesturing to an expansive area in front of the
Holmby Hills house, where, behind the remaining cover of tropical spring foliage could be seen the lined geometric
parameters and tightly strung net of a tennis court. It was, her visitor thought later, as if she'd been lamenting the loss of
something essential (perhaps innocence or maybe its opposite) - a loss felt by the same woman who at Villa Nostra would
ask playfully, "Did you ever eat a fig right off a tree?"

When I walked into the room and he was sitting there, there was definitely this electricity. BOOM! And you were
drawn to it. I was very young at the time. I had just turned 14. I met him at a very vulnerable time, just after the
death of his mother. So I met a different Elvis, an Elvis who was grieving, very lonely. I didn't get the sense of
him being a movie star per se. You did but you didn't. He was very insecure. He didn't know where his career
was going after he got out of the Army.

It is a saga virtually everyone in America knows by now - that of the child bride-to-be, the young girl who would be wed to that
prophet who had electrified America and the world with the new creed of rock-and-roll. The story continues with the
not-so-typical military brat (a near double, despite her years, for Elvis' first movie co-star, Debra Paget) following the idol
back to America. After a discreet interval, that is, and with the express approval of her parents, Colonel and Mrs. Paul
Beaulieu.

Heavily massacred, with the exaggerated beehive hairdo that Elvis then fancied (I was the girl who wasn't in Hollywood. I was
the girl he could shape and mold.") Priscilla would finish up her senior year of high school at Memphis 'Immaculate
Conception' while living at the singer's Graceland mansion in Whitehaven. And she would spend another several years as a
member of his entourage, more or less, before marrying him in a secular Las Vegas ceremony in 1967, when she was all of
22.

There is more to it than that, claims Suzanne Finstad,the author of Child Bride, a 1997 book that purports to reveal ""the
untold story of Priscilla B. Presley" and that alleges that both Priscilla and her family played highly active roles in the pursuit
of Elvis. That's the bottom line, although there are some seamy - and disputed - allegations involving Priscilla's relationship
with Currie Grant, the young soldier who did the introducing, and more information than anybody had ever asked for
concerning other relationships young Priscilla might have entertained during the year or two before she rejoined Elvis in
America.

Talk about the 15 minutes! There are people in that book I don't even know, that all of a sudden say they have a
relationship with me...This "other life" in Germany! It was just my life. I went to the teen club and dated. She
made it like I was a prostitute. She made it like I was having sex with every guy that was coming about.

Priscilla would bear her husband a daughter, Lisa Marie, exactly nine months after their wedding day - "If he didnt' call, I'd get
insecure. His life was totally my life. When my daughter came, it eased things". But not too long after the resumption of
Elvis' career as a live performer in the early 1970's, the young mother would become disaffected and leave, taking up with
Mike Stone, her karate instructor. There would be a number of other men in her life over the years, and apparent flings with
the likes of Richard Gere and Julio Iglesias.

It's been very difficult with other relationships, because Elvis has always bee, I guess you'd say, the priority in
my life. And for other men to understand that is difficult...whether they were big fans themselves or not...I
couldn't be a babysitter to the people in my life, to hold hands and let them know they were important, too.

Her sensuality - by most accounts (including her own) more intense than Elvis' - has never been a secret; Elvis and Me goes
into some detail concerning her ftrustrations over her husband's sexual reticence, espescially after the birth of their child.
Today - due perhaps to her overriding concern with Elvis' image - she downplays all that.

I don't want to get into his sexual thing. I've come to a time in my life when I can put things in perspective, and
I'm not the same person I was 20 years ago. I have these great fond memories of him, and I don't even put him
in a category. The more people you talk to today, they all have little eccentricities, things they like and disllike. I
don't find him at this time in my life any more abnormal than...

Bill Clinton?, it is suggested.

(laughs) Yes. We all have our preferences, likes and dislikes. Elvis was no different. And the things that he
liked and enjoyed were harmless. That wasn't the problem in our relationship.

Presley has mused long and hard about relationships. She co-starred with O.J. Simpson in three Naked Gun spoofs, and
she knew the former pro-football star's since murdered wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, a frequent visitor to the sets.

I felt suspicious in a woman's sense, because you know O.J. is notorious for having affairs or being with other
women, so I could empathize with her...I sensed tension. There was insecurity on her part. As far as
understanding where she was coming from, absolutely I did. When you're married to someone who's so well
known and every woman in the world is after them, you do tend to be misread, especially as famous as they are.
You know the world goes toward them, and nobody really sees what the other side is like...It's very difficult to
live under those conditions. You know, you have children. You're trying to create a home life. You're trying to
be a mother. You're trying to create a life with your husband. And they have the world at their fingertips. The
can absolutely do no wrong.

Presley strikes a similar note when she describes her time with Elvis.

Your living somebody else's life. Everything is centered around them. You don't have a life. You are literally at
their beck and call...I didn't really have a sense of growing, of finding out: :Who was tis woman? Who was this
girl?

Presley was not the only woman harboring such questions in those years. Nor the only one to leave her husband in the
process. Various people have since wondered: Could it have been his young wife's self-awakening and departure - not
Elvis' drugs, not his well-documented nocturnal lifestyle, nor his weird personal habits - that contributed most directly to his
death in 1977 at the age of 42? Priscilla doesn't blink.

Knowing Elvis, yes. At the time, you don't do something knowing it will have such an impact. God, I mean it did
hit him very hard - more so than I ever anticipated. It's difficult for me to talk about it today, because God knows
ultimately that was never the purpose, to see a decline like that. There were telltale signs, absolutely. When
we would talk, he wasn't really happy. We talked about when we both were old, we'd get together and things
would be better, and in jest we'd say we'd sit out front on the front porch at Graceland and watch the cars go by.
I was concerned for him, and I could see the decline of his health...You look back and wonder: How could it
have been different? How could I have handled it different? How could we not have taken responsibility for
what it came to?

Their differing attitudes toward taking responsibility - a primary tenet of Scientology, Presley says - seems to have been a
key issue in their relationship, especially during a prolonged period in which Elvis pursued a regimen of spiritualist reading.

He was always searching, searching, searching. Maybe, he thought that was his calling, always searching,
always looking for answers. The books, I would read a few of them, were very deep, very hard to
understand...He had that ability to create his own world. We all lived in that world, and I think it was difficult for
all of us to step out or even to realize that there is a real world. And, boy, it is there!

But, present or absent, in sickness or in health, there was always a closeness between the two of them, Priscilla contends.

You know, I adored him. I worshiped him. When we divorced, we carried on like we weren't even divorced. We
had, I thought, a wonderful relationship, even a better relationship, after the effort was taken out of it. I don't
know of too many women who can keep a relationship like that.

On the whole, Presley seems vaguely dissatisfied with the past commemorative projects that she and her helpers at Elvis
Presley Enterprises (EPE) have overseen. She liked Elvis and Me, the 1988 ABC-TV miniseries based on her memoir by the
that name, but thought the network exercised an unduly moderating influence. She appreciated the critical acclaim that
befell the later Young Elvis TV series and lamented its cancellation. But there were flaws, Presley says, and she saw them
more clearly than many of that series 'knee-jerk' admires:

I see now what we lacked. I see what could have been different. I lacked the energy. It lacked the essence of
really who he was. But how can you? You can't get someone to play Elvis. He was unique and different.

Presley's decision in 1982 to open up the doors of Graceland as a tourist attraction simultaneously gratified a longstanding
vicarious urge on the part of Elvis fans and turned a cash drain for the estate into a phenomenal money-maker. Though no
one knows for sure, it is generally supposed that Graceland, which saw nearly one million visitors in 1997, the 20th
anniversary of Elvis' death, ranks second only to the White House as the nation's most visited residence.

It was a big decision to open it up. I didn't want to. It was my home, too. I had lived there for many years. I had
a very emotional attachment and still to this day do. Bit it was the only way. It would not have existed as it does
today. I almost waited too late. Five years! (side note from webmiss, she wasn't @ EPE for 5 yrs. to make this
decision...Vernon was @ the helm from Elvis death to 1979 at his passing..so from 1979 to 1982 is 3 yrs. and she has said
that she didn't know even @ that time the state of the estates finances).

Priscilla came to exercise the ultimate authority over Elvis' estate when the late singer's father, Vernon, died in 1979. The
elder Presley literally willed his status as chief executor to Priscilla as the surviving parent of his only grandchild, on whom the
estate and its assets were scheduled to devolve when Lisa Marie turned 25 in 1993. Now, the estate is formally a trust,
co-administered by Priscilla and company called Comercia. But the big day for Lisa Marie to take control of the estate came
and went. Lisa Marie, though - who by now has wed twice, birthed twice, and divorced twice - chose to let things ride,
allowing free rein in business matters to her mother (who draws a salary both as a co-trustee and as president of EPE), and
various other advisers, notably Jack Soden, EPE's seasoned and capable CEO.

(Lisa Marie's) always had the estate. That's another (question) that keeps coming up. The estate is there for
her. It's never not been there for her. We manage and run the estate...My and Lisa's lives... are almost parallel.
She married Michael (Jackson) and went through various experiences that I had been through while married to
Elvis: the fame and the popularity! When you're with someone of this category you experience and you learn a
lot. And being a mom at an early age - she had her daughter at the same time I had her (another side note..Pris was
23 @ Lisa's birth Lisa was 21 when her daughter was born). And she decided that she wanted a career at the same
time I had my career. I can make suggestions to Lisa, but at this time she pretty well knows what she wants to
do. I think eventually she'll have a career of her own in music. (in fact, Lisa Marie did, early in June, sign a
recording contract with Java Records, a subsidiary of Capitol Records.)

Priscilla insists that she kept her distance from the short-lived union between her daughter and Jackson, the self-styled King
of Pop, neither approving nor disapproving nor judging it. And she is downright exasperated, even today, about some of the
public speculation that went down at the time of the 1994 wedding.

There were all kinds of stories in the tabloids, the threat of Michael taking over Graceland, and Michael secretly
buying this and buying that. It was ridiculous. But it was news and people read it, and they wanted to believe it,
well, what could I say? But it was never anything like that.

Priscilla says she has a "wonderful relationship" with her daughter and professes admiration, "especially for her relationship
with her children." Her concerns about marriage and family run to the generic.

Children are so confused today, as to who is who, who is their role model. They have no respect. How can you
admire your parents when they don't really give you in life what you think you have to have? It's such a betrayal
for your parents to split up. Never do you com into this world thinking that your parents won't be there fro the
rest of your life.

Priscilla B. Presley's own life continues to be full. She will appear this summer in a children's movie, Breakfast with Einstein,
and she has lately been promoting Roses and More, fourth in a linen of fragrances she has brought out.

And Presley has great hopes for two forthcoming Elvis-based projects for which she is executive producer: One is an as-yet
unscheduled piece of cartoon animation featuring the erstwhile King of Rock-and-Roll. (Elvis, as most students of the King
know, doted on Captain Marvel and derived from that comic book saga the T.C.B. - Taking Care of Business - Thunderbolt
jewelery that he gave to his intimates. Once caped crusader paying homeage to another.) Then there is a feature film,
slated for this summer, entitled Finding Graceland and starring the redoubtable Harvey Keitel as a middle-aged would-be
Elvis clone. "A sad, sensitive story", Priscilla promises.

Also scheduled for the summer are a few more rounds of Elvis: The Concert, the big-screen mix of Elvis performance videos
and live musicians that premiered in Memphis last year. The 1998 venues ranged from places called Antioch, Tennessee,
and Rosemont, Illinois, to Vegas and the Big Apple.

Meanwhile, EPE, as always stands guard over The Image and brooks no rivals, using the courts this spring, for example, to
block a Texas club's continued use of the name The Velvet Elvis.

I hate to use the word "control". People go around saying, "she's a control freak." I just ant the right project
and good results. I want it to be truthful, and I want it to be the way we're used to doing things. Every time I
give something to somebody else I end up disappointed, because I want it to be better, or it's wrong. There's
good control and bad control.

Jennifer Burgess, EPE's marketing director (sidenote, no longer w/EPE), oversees a new emphasis at the company on the
further development of "Elvis Presley" as a brand name. And, as Burgess puts it, Priscilla "has a direct way over everything
we do, especially licensing." Presley herself thought up the "Barbie Loves Elvis" dolls put out recently by Mattel, and she has
been hands-on in the approval of all the rest of what Burgess calls "quality collectibles" - the beer steins, the clocks, the lines
of housewares, the Elvis-embossed Russell Stover candy boxes brought out this year just in time for Mother's Day.

Presley and EPE even entered into the motor sports craze recently when the company launched a new National Hot Rod
Association sprint car driven by John Force. EPE did the same for a National Association of Stock Car Racing vehicle that
Rusty Wallace would drive to a nationally televised second-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600-mile race. Each car bears a
goodly mix of emblems, denoting Graceland, Elvis Presley's Memphis (the restaurant chain, anchored in Memphis and soon
to expand, Priscilla says, to Vegas, Florida, London, Asia), and the big Brand Name himself - the lean and mature Elvis of
what is to many fans his finest and most eternal incarnation, that of the '68 Comeback Special.

I'll always be seen in relation to him. Alway. Nobody wants to let that go.

Presley professes considerable regard for Memphis ("a great place to grow up") and laments the planned eradication of
familiar landmarks, such as the old Baptist Hospital building on Madison, site of Lisa Marie's birth.

Oh my god. Unbelievable that they're tearing down all these memories that we have. Elvis used to take us all
over the place and show us things and places. That was one of his favorite things to do.

Meanwhile, she endures, fulfilling a more complicated destiny than most observers realize, one that requires Priscilla Wagner
Beaulieu Presley (a Gemini by astrological calendar) to be two people at once - simultaneously a kind of eternal priestess to
her late ex-husband's memory and a person, even an eminence, in her own right.

At age 53, still aqua-eyed gorgeous, she remains highly versatile, her chameleon-like personae appearing in such diverse,
recent TV shows as Tales from the Crypt and Touched by an Angel. But it all comes back to the Big E.

I'm really concerned about our generation today, our lack of a role model. But if you don't have a parent or
anyone else, then you've got Elvis to look up to. Hopefully you encourage children to follow their dreams,
whatever they want to be, and I think Elvis was a good example of that. It's been fun, keeping his image alive
and giving it the quality he deserves, for the next generation.

And she has no doubt as to who will constitute the ultimate jury on her own life and times.

Even before I was married, I wasn't accepted by the fans. And that was difficult in itself, not even knowing why.
The fans claimed Elvis, and h was theirs...I was very young, and I didn't make all the right decisions, either. I
remember times they'd be hanging out at my gate. I just didnt' understand it, why they were camping out. I may
have said a couple of things. You know: "Why are you here?" - not understanding that bond they had with him.
Now, looking back, I understand it much more. I understand their love for him.
And now, by and large, they've been accepting of me, too. They've been so supportive in the things that we've
done, always balancing and considering, and trying to do the right thing. And, you know, I think we've come out
pretty good.