In 1962, after months of transatlantic phone calls, Elvis persuaded Captain and Mrs. Joseph Beaulieu to allow Priscilla to visit him in California for a two-week vacation that summer. For two years, Priscilla had been writing to Elvis on special pink stationery—per Elvis’s instruction—so Joe could pick her letters out of the mountains of fan mail. She was now sixteen years old.
BILLY SMITH: When Priscilla flew into L.A., Elvis sent Joe to the airport to get her and bring her back to Bellagio Road. He threw a party so he could show her off, although I’m not sure she knew it was for her. She seemed so young in comparison to everybody else. I don’t know that I have too many impressions of Priscilla when she first come over. I didn’t spend that much time around her. She didn’t stay at the house—Elvis thought it would look better if she slept at George and Shirley Barris’s. George is the car customizer who did Elvis’s Solid Gold Cadillac that’s in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Alan took her shopping one day and bought her all these sexy, sophisticated clothes that made her look a whole lot older than she was. And then Elvis took her someplace and had her hair darkened and fixed the way he liked it—which was piled high. And he had her makeup done so she looked kind of painted, you know. He thought it made her look more womanly, I guess you’d say.
Actually, Alan said all the changes made her look like a Vegas hooker. We were going to Vegas while she was there, so maybe Elvis wanted her to have the right look.
LAMAR FIKE: I talked to Alan after Priscilla’s visit. I said, “What did you think of her?” Alan said, “Well, she’s a nice girl. A little young maybe.” I laughed. He said he told Elvis there were a lot of pretty girls who were legal age but that Elvis said, “Alan, a sixteen-year-old girl is a lot more advanced than a sixteen-year-old boy in every way.” And Alan told him, “Yeah, but they’re still jailbait.”
BILLY SMITH: I thought Priscilla was beautiful and that she had a fairly good personality, although to a certain extent she was false. I’m about three years older than she is, so I would have been closer to her in age than any of the other guys. But there wasn’t any special feeling between us because you never got real close to any of the girls that Elvis was with, out of fear of how he might take it. So I just treated her with as much respect as I could.
After that first visit, she went back to Germany. She really didn’t want to go, but Elvis didn’t want any problems with her parents. I’ve wondered what they thought when they saw her get off the plane with her new look.
Apparently, they weren’t upset about it because after we got back to Memphis, Elvis got on the phone and called her daddy and talked him into letting her come for Christmas. She flew to New York, and Vernon and Dee met her at the plane and brought her back to Memphis.
MARTY LACKER: That early winter of ’62, I was still at WHBQ Radio, and I went over to Graceland one afternoon. Elvis was up kind of early, which was unusual. When I got there, he was sitting out on the front steps, which was also unusual for him. We sat and talked for about an hour, and then I said, “Well, I’ll see you later. I’ve got to go.” And Elvis said, “No, no, wait a minute. I want to show you something.” We talked on a while, and then all of a sudden, the front door opened, and out came this girl, all primped up. She had her hair dyed black and in a beehive, and she was made-up like a painted doll, with all this mascara and bright eye shadow. She was pretty for 1962, but even then, just way overdone.
Elvis said, “This is Priscilla, from Germany.” I looked at him, and smiled, and gave him a nod, like “Yeah, she’s really pretty.” He showed her off like he was showing off a new car. She was his trophy, his new toy.
BILLY SMITH: When Elvis first met Priscilla over in Germany, he give her some Dexedrine to help her stay awake for those late-night parties. And when she come over for Christmas, he give her something else. She was so excited about coming to the States that she hadn’t slept in a couple of days, and then Elvis kept her up until about four A.M., and she was wore out.
They were getting ready to go to bed, and Elvis told her he was going to give her something to help her sleep, even though she said she didn’t need it. He popped out two five-hundred-milligram Placidyls. She took them, and she didn’t wake up for two days. It scared the hell out of Vernon and Grandma, I remember. They wanted to get a doctor in there. Elvis said no, he’d just walk her around. But that didn’t do any good, either. She finally woke up on her own. You’d think Elvis would have learned his lesson with Gene in the motor home, but I guess he didn’t.
She went back to Germany again right after Christmas, and Elvis immediately started trying to persuade her parents to let her come there to live. Elvis had to do a lot of talking, boy. He said she’d get a better education here than in Germany, that he’d put her in Catholic school at Immaculate Conception. And he promised that she’d live with Vernon and Dee in their house, not in Graceland, so she’d be properly chaperoned.
I don’t know how he sold them that bill of goods, but he did. She came back over while we were making Fun in Acapulco, in either February or March ’63. Her dad come with her, first to California and then to Memphis. It’s always puzzled me just why they allowed that.
MARTY LACKER: Let’s get right to the meat of it. Say you’re the parent of a sixteen-year-old girl, and a grown man, a millionaire, came to you and said, “I really care about your daughter, and I want her to come live with me.” What would your answer be, unless you had an ulterior motive? I know what my answer would be: “Get the hell out of here!”
LAMAR FIKE: Well, that’s an absurd question. I mean, nobody in their right mind would let that happen. I’d have castrated him, buddy, I promise you that. It’s obvious that Elvis was very persuasive. But it might have been more than that.
MARTY LACKER: There are all kinds of theories about what made these parents turn a sixteen-year-old girl loose in another country with a twenty-eight-year-old bachelor who was doing everything there was to do in Hollywood and Vegas.
In 1976, Elvis dated a woman named Minde Miller. This was, I believe, a two-night romance. Minde did a TV interview a couple of years ago. She said that she and Elvis talked more than they did anything else, and she asked him about Priscilla and how he convinced her parents to let her come over here and live with him.
She says Elvis told Priscilla’s parents that he would marry her. And I’m sure that’s true. I can hear him say it: “I really love her and when she gets a little older, after she finishes school, I’m gonna marry her.” And he may have meant it at the time. But like a good liar and a good hustler, he would tell anybody anything to get what he wanted.
After he was with her a couple of years, though, the bloom went off the rose. As Minde puts it, he said, “Hey, I had her, so what was new anymore?” Some people wonder if Captain Beaulieu had a contract with Elvis or a written promise to marry Priscilla.
LAMAR FIKE: There’s been speculation that Elvis made a deal. “If you’ll bring her over here, I’ll marry her.”
BILLY SMITH: Sometimes Elvis seemed like he couldn’t give much to anybody, that he didn’t have much warmth. But he did. When he cared about somebody, he cared deeply. He just might not have shown it in the ways most people do.
When Priscilla first come over here, he liked to show off for her. One night, Elvis and Priscilla, and Richard Davis and his date, and my wife, Jo, and me went to the fairgrounds. We got on the roller coaster, and when we started up the first long hill, Elvis said to me and Richard, “Let’s get out on the top and wait for it to come back around.” He wanted to play a trick, see.
Well, we did it, and the girls finished the ride alone. They got back down to where the operator was, and he started stretching his neck, looking for Elvis. When he saw that Elvis wasn’t anywhere in those cars, he nearly had a heart attack. He got all agitated and called for the manager, whose name was Malcolm Adams. We called him “Wimpy.” But before Wimpy got there, Priscilla told the operator, “Go again!” And when they got back to the top, we all got back in. Elvis liked to run red lights and jump intersections—anything to give everybody a thrill.
I’d say Elvis was crazy about Priscilla, at least at first. He was always telling her how pretty she was. And when the guys were around, he’d say, “Here she comes. Isn’t she beautiful?” He tried to show that he cared for her. He just wanted total control of her. But he didn’t want to give up anything to keep her.
MARTY LACKER: When Elvis went out to California, he didn’t want Priscilla around because of all the women out there. We left Bellagio Road in late ’62 and moved back to the old house on Perugia Way. And Priscilla was hardly ever in that house. He insisted that she stay at home. He always said he wouldn’t have time to take her anyplace or do anything with her. He said, “You’ll have more fun staying in Memphis and going shopping.” But he called her every night.
LAMAR FIKE: At one point, Elvis thought she was screwing around on him. Now, this was right after she got there and was going to Catholic school.
BILLY SMITH: It was always all right for Elvis to do pretty much what he wanted to do, but it was never all right for the woman. If Priscilla had slept with somebody else, that would have been it. She would have been gone. It’s the old double standard. Maybe that’s the way we were brought up. Elvis expected her to be totally loyal. He thought, “I’m in California, and I can fool around and it won’t mean anything because it’s going to be over and done with. But when I get back home, I know I’ll have somebody there because she’s loyal.” He had that old Southern belief—“A woman’s place is in the home.”
MARTY LACKER: At first, it was easy for him to keep Priscilla in Memphis because she was going to school. That next year, ’64, my family moved to Graceland and my wife and daughter sort of baby-sat her until late ’65, when we moved into our house. Because only Grandma was there with her all the time. I say “baby-sat,” but she was seventeen. So she and my wife were keeping each other company, although my wife didn’t put up with any of her nonsense. In a lot of ways, she was still a kid. And she was spiteful. She’d get in arguments with my daughter, Sheri, over her toys or what television show they were going to watch. It was kind of ridiculous. Sheri was four or five years old.
There really wasn’t a lot for her to do at Graceland but just sit around and talk to Grandma or Vernon and Dee when they came over. She also went out with the girls, mostly shopping, and to lunch. And sometimes they went to a movie at night. But Priscilla began to take advantage of that situation right away. At first, she and Elvis’s cousin, Patsy Presley, were just shopping buddies. Then they became pretty good friends—more like Patsy was following Priscilla, or working for her, really. And Priscilla was no better than Patsy. If Patsy had said no to Priscilla, Elvis wouldn’t have said anything. Because Elvis really cared a lot about Patsy.
BILLY SMITH: Priscilla liked the other wives to cater to her. Some did, but most of them didn’t. My wife was one of the worst. Priscilla would say, “Why don’t you get my coat?” My wife would say, “Why don’t you get it yourself?”
LAMAR FIKE: Priscilla brought out a litany of unfriendly feelings in a lot of people, and still does. But basically, Priscilla was not a cold person. There’s a difference between being cold and [being] defensive. Priscilla is extremely defensive. And she’s very, very greedy.
I’ll give you Elvis’s relationship with her in a nutshell: You create a statue. And then you get tired of looking at it.
MARTY LACKER: Elvis’s infatuation with Priscilla started wearing off early, right after she first came. But he put up with her because he didn’t want to hurt her and because she was convenient. His running time with women, if he got halfway serious, was about four or five years, if that long. So he put up with her. I think you have to look at what he wanted in Priscilla and what he didn’t. First of all, he didn’t look at her as an adult. So he didn’t think of her as a partner at all.
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis was rearing her. That was obvious. The only time he’d really talk to her was when he’d go on a sympathy trip. She’d soothe him with baby talk, and she’d pet him the way he loved to be petted. And they’d baby-talk back and forth. He called her “Nungen,” which was Elvis for “young one.” But he also started calling her “Satnin’” since Gladys was gone. Priscilla waited on him hand and foot. Every woman that ever went with him waited on him hand and foot. Other than that, he didn’t feel the need of talking to her. They’d have a conversation, but it would be so one-sided in his direction.
MARTY LACKER: Priscilla was his geisha girl. They’d sit on the couch, and she’d be patting his face, and his hair, and they’d talk that baby talk. That was his trip.
BILLY SMITH: Elvis wanted a woman who liked what he liked. But for her to give advice, well, it just didn’t happen. He was more likely to confide in Grandma.
MARTY LACKER: The fact that he played around on Priscilla in itself isn’t startling. But the fact that he started playing around on her four months after she got there is something altogether different.