PRIS-VANITYFAIR-INTERVW-PG1

"Vanity Fair" Magazine
July 1991
Photographs by Firooz Zahedi

VIVA PRISCILLA!
Not only did Priscilla Presley, the original rock 'n' roll Lolita, survive a dozen wacko years with Elvis, she became
a sort of benign Colonel Tom Parker, building the King's legend-and the tawdry roadside shrine that was
Graceland-into a $50 million empire. Now she's starring in a new comedy flick, Naked Gun s 1/2.
KEVIN SESSUMS reports from Beverly Hills

A statute of a naked young girl lolls in the fountain on the grounds of Priscilla Presley's precisely landscaped Bel-Air home.
"Is that you?" I ask as the late-afternoon light finds the down that softens Priscilla's face. "I wish it were," she says. Though
forty-six and already a grandmother, she momentarily takes on an adolescent's dewy glow-which has always been her
charm. "I am a child-woman," she tell me when we settle onto the overstuffed couches in her twenty-three-year-old daughter
Lisa's old bedroom. (Amid the frills and stuffed animals, Priscilla wears a black Matsuda dress.) "When people meet me,
they don't know what to say to me. They really don't know how to approach me," she says. "I'm always trying to find that
place to fit in."

Yet she obviously feels comfortable playing the role of the outsider. In Hollywood she is making a name for herself as a
non-comedian in comedic films. At Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc., which was set up to handle Elvis's estate and which she
runs, she is the lone female in a boardroom of businessmen. A military brat, Priscilla was always the new girl at each school,
and during the years she spent with Elvis in the Deep South she never cultivated the requisite deep-fried accent. Above all,
Priscilla was always treated by Elvis as the innocent child who had to be protected from an adult's dangerous world.
David Zucker, who directed her in The Naked Gun and it's sequel, The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear, which opens
this month, says Priscilla is nothing like the Bride of Elvistein he was expecting. "Being from the Midwest myself," he says,
"she reminds me of one of those sweet girls who is left back home."
"Inside the elegant presentation," observes Leslie Nielsen, her co-star in both Naked Gun films, "is really a child lurking
inside who want to come out and play. Priscilla is like Eloise. And her life is the Plaza."
"Growing up was a difficult process-for both of us," Lisa tells me later.
Priscilla: "I am a misfit."
Priscilla Presley will always be our Rock'n'Roll Widow. The term Rock'n'Roll Survivor seems better suited too Yoko Ono, and
the only thing one can imagine Jerry Hall ever mourning would be her placement at the wrong table at a dinner party. It is
Priscilla-sweet, sensual, goody-no-shoes Priscilla-with whom we'll always have a neo-Nabokovian fascination. Though she
was divorced from Elvis in 1973, nearly four years before he died, people connect to him through Priscilla, as if she were still
his Kmart Lolita. "Back then I always thought that I would be in Elvis's world. It was fast and incredibly intense," she tells me
when I meet her in her trailer on the Paramount lot the last day of shooting Naked Gun 21/2. "I always felt worn out because
there were such emotional highs and lows. There was never really any time that I let my guard down and relaxed. After I
was divorced ti was the first time I could shake my head, and go, Who is this person sitting here? What have I contributed?"
Priscilla's life was almost completely controlled by Elvis when she was with him. They had met in 1959, when she was
fourteen years old and he was stationed as a soldier in Germany, where her father was also stationed. Two years later her
parents allowed her to move with Elvis to Memphis, where she attended a Catholic girls' school. In her book, Elvis and Me,
Priscilla writes, "While my classmates were deciding which colleges to apply to, I was deciding which gun to wear with what
sequined dress."
It is said that southern men want their women to be ladies in the parlor and whores in the bedroom, but Priscilla was a child in
both. In fact, her sex life with Elvis consisted of years of foreplay, since he refused to consummate their relationship until
their wedding night. Was he insecure sexually? "I always heard Marilyn Monroe was insecure because of the image. Look
at people who are in that position-look at the expectations. If a woman was with Elvis, she might say, 'I was with him and it
was nothing.' He was great at teasing. Maybe he didn't want to disappoint me."
The two finally married at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas in 1967, them borrowed Frank
Sinatra's private plane and flew to Palm Springs for their honeymoon. Elvis took Priscilla,
a complete innocent, and transformed her into his own frightening vision of femininity-the
infamous architectural wonder of a hairdo, the abundant black eyeliner, the flamboyant
dresses. When Priscilla finally began to assert herself and appear as the beauty she is
today, Elvis himself started to dress more flamboyantly with his own pile of raven hair,
stage makeup, and bejeweled capes. Elvis Presley became his own warped image of the
Priscilla he had created and loved.
"You noticed that, huh," she says when I test the theory on her. "It's true. It was a
flamboyance that he didn't have to do. It was a cry, I think...From that point on he began
to self-destruct."
Self-destruction is something Priscilla will never have to worry about. "I'm not tough," she
admits. "But I can act tough." She had to in order to survive the increasingly bizarre years
she spent with Elvis: the pharmaceutically induced fights, the days spent sleeping in rooms
with blackened windows and the nights spent carousing with his entourage of good-ol'-boy
disciples, the visits to gaze at bodies at the Memphis morgue, the spiritual experiments, the
phobias.
When one opens her book about her life with Elvis it reads like a primer for life within a
cult. Indeed, one aspect of Priscilla's new life that she leaves out of the book is her
devotion to the teachings of Scientology, the philosophy founded by the late science-fiction
writer L. Ron Hubbard. Priscilla even removed Lisa from the elite Lycee Francais in Los
Angeles, and enrolled her in the Scientology-inspired Apple School. Later, during a rough
adolescent period, she placed Lisa in the church's main facility in L.A., the Celebrity
Centre International, a sort of detox center.
An important part of Scientology's doctrine-apart from its devout anti-drug stance-is a
system of counseling called "auditing." A member is hooked up to a lie-detector-like
machine which registers electrical changes in the body as he or she is asked questions.
The results are then analyzed to enable the member to cleanse the body and mind of
"engrams" which Scientologists equate with negative thoughts. It is an expensive
procedure. Because a follower must invest so much money to be able to practice the
philosophy, many people are skeptical of its religious aspects and accuse it of being a cult.
When I was with her, Priscilla talked openly about her involvement, admitting that there
were certain facets of its bureaucracy that troubled her, but called me several days later
worried about, "jeopardizing her position" with the group.
Lisa, on the other hand, is unapologetic about her involvement. "For me it has been a
great help," she says. "It gives me spiritual guidance...It's a self-help philosophy, yet it's
not evaluative. It doesn't tell you what your problems are-but helps you figure it out
yourself." A fear is that Scientology will somehow become the beneficiary of the money in
Elvis's estate, as Lisa will inherit most of it when she turns thirty. Priscilla laughs at the
charge. "I can assure you that Lisa's not going to be giving away her money."
Priscilla should know-it is money that she has worked hard to accumulate. An instinctive
businesswoman (she produced the critically acclaimed Elvis series on ABC last year, has
developed her own successful perfume, Moments, and most recently started a
children's-clothing design firm), she became executor of Elvis's estate upon the death of his
father, Vernon. When she took over, the bank account had dwindled to around
$500,000, she immediately opened Graceland to the paying public and formed Elvis
Presley Enterprises, Inc., so she could vigorously litigate to get al franchising and
merchandising rights to the Elvis Presley name. She bought the real estate along both
sides of Graceland on Elvis Presley Boulevard and opened stores and restaurants and a
theater over which she can exercise "quality control." She also has plans to open a hotel
for the fans to make the pilgrimage to Graceland, and recently purchased from Elvis's
manager, Colonel Tom Parker (now retired and living in Vegas), his vast collection of
memorabilia in order to open a museum in Memphis. Since she took control of the
operations, the estate has grown in value to more than $50 million, a 10,000 percent
increase.
"People always ask me how this gorgeous China doll ca be the hard-charging backbone
behind this business," says Jack Soden, the executive director of E.P.E., Inc. "Believe me,
she is. Priscilla has a remarkable interior gyroscope which keeps her on course. She's
really worked at it. She relies on me and several others to do the day-to-day work, but
we rely on her instincts once we lay out the pros and cons of a situation to her. She's
uncanny."
Originally the estate's executor ship was to be turned over to Lisa on her twenty-fifth
birthday, but she decided to extend her mother's duties for another five years. "As it has
grown, she has grown with it," says Lisa. "That's the interesting part to me. I expanded
her executor ship over the estate because there was a rumor that when I took it over I was
going to sell it off. I never intended to do that, but investors were getting nervous, so I
decided to signal them that I was satisfied by extending her duties to executor. I trust her
instinctively. I have never ever seen her betray anyone. She is very loyal. But if you
betray her, then watch out!"
The two men who entered Priscilla's life after Elvis did betray her. Mike Stone, the karate
instructor with whom she had an affair while still married to Elvis, sold his story to a
tabloid. Mike Edwards, the model with whom she lived for the next six years, wrote an
expose of their time together, Priscilla, Elvis, and Me.
Whatever pain she had over the failed affairs has been eased by the new man in her life,
thirty-six-year-old Marco Garibaldi, a Brazilian of Italian heritage whom she met through
a costumer on Dallas during her time on the prime-time soap. Marco and Priscilla have
lived together for the past five years and have a four-year-old son, Navarone.
Lisa is the proud mother of her own child, two-year-old Danielle, whose father-the young
Scientologist musician Danny Keough-Lisa married after she found out she was pregnant.
"Our children growing up together is the most touching experience either my daughter or I
have had. Both of us have been through quite a lot together, and this has even brought us
closer."
Photographs of Marco and Navarone and Lisa are everywhere in Priscilla's Bel-Air house,
yet there is not one photo or memento of her Elvis years. "I couldn't do that to Marco,"
she says. "Most men don't realize the bigness of it all until they're in it with me. Then
there's no relief. Marco is the first person who is his own man...He's not interested in my
past. He never brought Elvis up. But, you know, I don't want my son confused right now.
I don't think he can handle it. Lisa is the same way. She doesn't have constant reminders
of the past."