Priscilla Presley

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Priscilla Presley

Priscilla Presley, September 2003
Born Priscilla Ann Wagner
May 24, 1945 (1945-05-24) (age 63)
Brooklyn, New York, US
Spouse(s) Elvis Presley (1967-1973; div.)
Official website

Priscilla Ann Beaulieu Presley[1] (born May 24, 1945) is an American model, actress and author. She is the ex-wife of singer and musician Elvis Presley, with whom she had a daughter, Lisa Marie Presley.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Priscilla was born Priscilla Ann Wagner in Brooklyn, NY, the daughter of Anna Lillian (née Iversen) and James (Jimmy) Frederick Wagner. Her biological father, a US Navy pilot, was killed in a plane crash when Priscilla was six months old. In 1948 her mother met Paul Beaulieu also a United States Air Force officer, and the couple were married within a year. Beaulieu took over the raising of Priscilla and was the only father Priscilla would ever know. Over the next few years, Priscilla grew up quickly, helping to care for the growing family as her fathers Air Force career moved them from Connecticut to New Mexico then to Maine. Priscilla later recalled that she felt uncomfortable moving so often because she never knew if she could make friends for life, or even if she would fit in with the new people she met on each move.

In 1956, the Beaulieu's moved to and settled in Austin, Texas. It was here, whilst babysitting, that Priscilla made a shocking discovery about her past. Whilst looking through old family memorabilia she found photographs of her as a baby with her mother, and a man that she didn't recognise. She could find no photographs of her father Paul with her mother, and after turning over one of the photographs she noticed it said on the back "Priscilla, Anna and Jim". She also found a telegram from 1945 that was sent to her mother informing her of her husbands death. Confused by what she had found, Priscilla phoned her mother at work, who raced home to be with Priscilla and explain about her real father. Priscilla later described the event as a "huge shock" in her life, and despite her mothers attempts to comfort her, she was almost inconsolable at the time. Anna had intended to tell Priscilla beforehand, but as each year went by it got "harder to do", and with the birth of other children she felt it was best to not mention it at all.

In August 1959, as Priscilla was about to start High School, she got more "distressing news". Her father was being transferred from Texas to Germany, and Priscilla would later say she found it a hard age to have to leave, because she was leaving behind her life during her teenage years. It was a move that was to have a huge effect on her life in more ways than one.

The Beaulieus were stationed in West Germany at the same time as Elvis during his stint in the United States Army. Priscilla was 14 years old when she met Elvis in Wiesbaden. Elvis would spend as much time as possible with her, as he found her fascinating and they grew very close quickly. Elvis told her that he would love for her to come to America with him when he returned and Priscilla loved the idea, but persuading her parents was not so easily done (due in no small part to the fact Elvis was ten years older). Elvis returned to the US in 1960 following his discharge from the army, and he kept in touch with Priscilla through letters and long distance phone calls. He would send her records of his favourite artists and songs. Priscilla would stay up into the early hours of the morning on the phone to Elvis, primarily due to the time difference between Germany and the USA. Elvis and Priscilla would talk on the phone two to three times a week over the next two years.

Elvis cherished her friendship and lent on her for emotional support. Eventually the letters and intimate phone calls were no longer enough, and in the summer of 1962 Elvis invited Priscilla to Los Angeles. Priscilla persuaded her parents to let her go on the condition that she would be staying with Elvis' neighbours, but as soon as she arrived in the US, Elvis whisked her off to Las Vegas for a tour of casino night life with Elvis and his entourage. Elvis led a far more exciting life than Priscilla was used to back home, and she had to grow up fast to keep up.

Priscilla returned to Germany a short while later, but kept the details of her time with Elvis in Las Vegas a secret from her parents. Elvis immediately made plans for another visit, and Priscilla was given permission to spend Christmas with him at Graceland. When it was time for Priscilla to return home, Elvis begged her to return to Graceland for good the next time she visited, and Priscialla went home to talk with her mother about the plans. Priscilla's mother noticed that Priscilla was finding it hard to concentrate at school, and would do hardly anything except talk with Elvis on the phone and think about him whilst playing her records.

Elvis managed to talk the extremely reluctant Beaulieus into allowing Priscilla to live with his father (Vernon Presley) and stepmother, Dee Presley, at a home Elvis purchased on Hermitage Drive in Memphis located at the back of Graceland. The seventeen-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu "worked" on her mother to get her support but before finally agreeing, her still reluctant and protective father flew with her to Los Angeles where Presley was filming Fun in Acapulco. She and her father flew to Memphis where they met with Vernon Presley, made arrangements for Priscilla's enrollment in the Immaculate Conception school and her father confirmed her living arrangements at Vernon Presley's house.

[edit] Life with Elvis

Once living in Memphis in 1963, Priscilla Beaulieu says she moved into Graceland bit by bit, at first spending occasional nights with Presley, later moving in and sleeping together every night. In her 1985 autobiography, the bestseller Elvis and Me, which was later adapted to a television miniseries, Priscilla describes Presley as a very passionate man who was not overtly sexual towards her. Although he would spend hours alone with her in his bedroom, Priscilla wrote that Elvis never made any advances towards her. According to her account (p130), Elvis told her that they had to wait until they were married before having intercourse. He said, "I'm not saying we can't do other things. It's just the actual encounter. I want to save it." Priscilla adds, "Fearful of not pleasing him—of destroying my image as his little girl—I resigned myself to the long wait. Instead of consummating our love in the usual way, he began teaching me other means of pleasing him. We had a strong connection, much of it sexual. The two of us created a lot of exciting and wild times."

In Elvis and Me, Beaulieu recounted how Elvis would stay up all night and sleep most of the day. If he wanted to go out, he would rent out the venue and invite friends, family and fans, or arrange with store owners to shop after hours when the store was closed. She also talked about the prescription sleeping pills that were present from the very first night she spent with him and how their usage and variety escalated dramatically during the years they were together.

A completely different view of Priscilla's life, painting her in a rather negative light and describing her as a "wild child" and "sexpot", can be found in Suzanne Finstad's book, Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley (1997), which is based on accounts of several people who knew Elvis and Priscilla well, among them many friends from Priscilla's childhood and adolescence, Elvis's stepbrother Rick Stanley, Priscilla's boyfriend Mike Edwards, Elvis's ex-girlfriends and the wives of the Memphis Mafia men. The author writes that Priscilla promised sexual favors in exchange for meeting Elvis to Currie Grant, a married, 27-year-old man who knew the singer, that she and Elvis slept together on their second date and that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night. The book also claims that her marriage was part of a plot to achieve fame hatched by Priscilla and her mother and that she never loved Elvis. Finstad takes many quotes that Priscilla has made and calls them a web of lies that she has spun. Priscilla launched a lawsuit against Currie Grant for his claims in the book and won.[citation needed]

[edit] Marriage and divorce

Priscilla and Elvis were married on May 1, 1967, in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the Aladdin Hotel. Their only child, daughter Lisa Marie, was born exactly nine months later on February 1, 1968. For the first few years they were very happy together, but with Elvis working away so much and continuing to have romantic affairs with other women, Priscilla found it very hard to keep their marriage together.

During the late sixties, Elvis' career took off again, and he was constantly touring and playing in Las Vegas. Priscilla was left at home for the majority of the time to bring up Lisa Marie. By the age of 26, Priscilla was no longer the shy teenager she had once been, and with her husband away for up to six months of the year Priscilla found it easier to take care of herself without his guidance.

Due to Elvis being away so often and his ever-growing drug dependence, their relationship soured both mentally and physically. Priscilla found herself a practical lone parent, and could eventually see no future with Elvis.

Elvis was a keen karate student, and persuaded Priscilla to take it up. Priscilla thought it was a good idea as it would pass the lonesome months if she had a hobby to concentrate on, and so she arranged to be taught by Mike Stone. She would attend lessons a few times a week and enjoyed it immensely. Following a few heated rows with Elvis about his adultery, Priscilla found it easy to talk to Mike about her feelings. Eventually, the two became very close and started an affair of their own. Priscilla felt terrible about what she was doing, and took the decision to leave Elvis for Mike. She later described Mike as "a way out" of her life with Elvis.

Elvis and Priscilla separated on February 23, 1972, agreeing to share custody of their daughter, this eventually ending in divorce on October 9, 1973. Elvis and Priscilla continued to remain good friends until the day of Elvis' death on August 16, 1977.

[edit] Post-Elvis career and personal life

After their divorce, Priscilla bought into a boutique and ran it for a few years before getting into acting. After signing with the William Morris Agency, she made guest appearances on Melrose Place, Touched by an Angel and Spin City. She may be best known as an actress for playing the character Jenna Wade on the television series Dallas for five years, and she also starred in the Naked Gun films. The television version of Elvis and Me was produced by her production company, Navarone Productions. As late as 2003, she planned to develop a Broadway musical about her life. It was revealed in February 2008 that she would appear on season six of ABC's Dancing with the Stars (U.S. TV series)[2]. She first danced on the live telecast on March 18, 2008.

Presley developed four perfume lines in the 1990s. Two, Moments and Experiences, were very successful in Europe, and a third, Indian Summer, hit American shelves in 1996, followed by Roses and More. She has also successfully sold her line of products live on the Home Shopping Network and was coached by veteran HSN host Bob Circosta. In 2006, Presley flew to Australia for the debut of her worldwide line of bed linens, called the Priscilla Presley Collection. She partnered with Australian designer Bruno Schiavi for the line. Priscilla has also been awarded an honorary degree from Rhodes College.

Romantically, Presley has had a number of serious relationships since her divorce from Elvis in 1973. Immediately afterwards, she lived with karate instructor Mike Stone. She then had a seven-year live-in relationship with bisexual model Mike Edwards, until he began developing feelings for the teenage Lisa Marie. Edwards recounts the tale of their relationship in his book Priscilla, Elvis, and Me.

Priscilla's longest relationship has been with Italian screenwriter-director Marco Garibaldi, with whom she lived for 22 years. Their son, Navarone, was born on March 1, 1987. The two separated in April 2006. She is now rumored to be dating British TV executive Nigel Lythgoe.

[edit] Business in Graceland

Main article: Graceland

After the death of Elvis' father Vernon in 1979, Presley served as co-executor of his estate. Graceland itself cost $500,000 a year in upkeep, and expenses had dwindled Lisa Marie's inheritance to $5 million. Priscilla examined other famous house-museums, and hired a CEO to turn Graceland into a moneymaker. She became the chairwoman and president of Elvis Presley Enterprises. It cost $536,000 to open Graceland, a massive gamble at the time and one which was certainly not guaranteed to pay off, but that money was earned back in the first 38 days that it was open to the public thanks to each days tour selling out one after another. After Graceland opened to the public in 1982, the enterprise's fortunes soared and eventually the trust grew to be worth over $100 million.

In addition, in 2000, Presley was elected to the board of directors of MGM, with the prime vote coming from Kirk Kerkorian, who dated Priscilla in the 1970s.

[edit] Lisa Marie Presley

Presley and her daughter had a tempestuous relationship when Lisa was a teenager, which led to Priscilla throwing Lisa Marie out of their home after one heated argument. Lisa Marie recalled in her Biography Channel interview that her mother "dropped me at a church, and I stayed there for a short time in Hollywood. It was good because it gave me independence". Their relationship has since matured into a smoother, more understanding mother-daughter relationship. Lisa Marie even imitated Presley by marrying not the King of Rock 'n' Roll but the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Lisa Marie herself now has a daughter, Riley Keough, who models for John Galliano, and a son, Benjamin Keough. Lisa Marie announced in early 2008 she is pregnant with twins.

Presley and Lisa Marie are both Scientologists, introduced to the religion in 1979 by John Travolta. Scientologists had also attempted to recruit Elvis at one point, but he suspected the group of wanting only his money and name.[3]

[edit] Dancing with the Stars

Presley was a contestant on Season 6 of Dancing with the Stars. She was partnered with Louis van Amstel.

She referred, on air, to Dancing with the Stars as "the hardest thing she's ever had to do." She scored 24 out of 30 on the foxtrot on March 18, 2008, the second-highest score of the evening. The following week she scored 21 for her first latin dance, Mambo. The third week she danced the Tango and was highly praised by the judges coming second on the leaderboard with a score of 26. The fourth week she danced the Waltz and scored only 22. The judges lowered her score due to a lift in the routine. In the results show the following night, Priscilla found herself in the bottom two, but just managed to stay in the competition. The fifth week, Priscilla danced the Rumba and scored 21, leaving her at the bottom of the leadboard. Priscilla found herself in the bottom two once again and this time she was voted off with the least amount of votes. The fifth week, she was eliminated.

At the age of 62, she was the oldest female contestant to compete in the show.

[edit] Performances

Week # Dance/Song Judges' score Result
Inaba Goodman Tonioli
1 Foxtrot/ "Feeling Good" 8 8 8 N/A
2 Mambo/ "Bossa Nova Hand Dance (Deixa Isso Pra La)" 7 7 7 Safe
3 Tango/ "El Choclo" 8 9 9 Safe
4 Viennese Waltz/ "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" 7 7 8 Bottom Two
5 Rumba/ "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" 7 7 7 Eliminated


[edit] Bibliography

[edit] References

  1. ^ Priscilla Presley Biography (1945-)
  2. ^ Dancing’s New Celebrity Lineup Announced - Fall TV Watch
  3. ^ "Lisa Marie's Deadly Obsession", The Star, 1997-06-24. 

[edit] External links

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v • d • e
The Naked Gun series
TV series
Films
Cast
Crew
Characters
Persondata
NAME Presley, Priscilla
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wagner, Priscilla Ann
SHORT DESCRIPTION model, author and actress
DATE OF BIRTH 1945-5-24
PLACE OF BIRTH Jersey City,New Jersey, US
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH