From seducing Priscilla at 14 to giving her drugs for school… why Elvis’s daughter Lisa Marie opposed new biopic
IF you heard that a rock star begged a 14-year-old girl to go to his bedroom shortly after they met, you would rightly be shocked.
But that is how Elvis Presley enticed his wife Priscilla in the summer of 1959.
And it gets worse for the man known as the king of rock ’n’ roll, in a new movie by Lost In Translation director Sofia Coppola.
In the film, titled Priscilla, we see the late singer, whose death at the age of 42 in 1977 was attributed to drug abuse, give the schoolgirl “upper” and “downer” pills to regulate her mood.
Elvis is portrayed by Australian actor Jacob Elordi as a controlling figure who determines what Priscilla wears, where she lives and who she meets. But placing the legendary entertainer in such a negative light caused a rift within the Presley clan.
Priscilla, 78, is a co-producer on the movie and thinks Coppola did an “amazing job”.
But the film was slated by the Elvis estate and opposed by the singer’s daughter Lisa Marie Presley prior to her death in January.
Elvis Presley Enterprises did not give permission for the King’s hits, such as Blue Suede Shoes or Love Me Tender, to be used in the controversial production which opens in cinemas here on New Year’s Day.
Perhaps they were worried the story of Elvis pursuing a schoolgirl might put a dent in his annual £30million earnings.
Priscilla has always maintained that they never had underage sex even when she went to live at Elvis’s Graceland mansion and insists she always loved him.
It was this unconventional relationship that made Coppola want to make the film.
The director, whose father Francis Ford Coppola made The Godfather, says: “I was just surprised by her story.
“I didn’t know that she was going to high school when she lived at Graceland. I was like, ‘I can’t imagine what that was like’.”
It was Priscilla’s US air force officer step-dad being transferred to Wiesbaden in Germany that brought her into Elvis’s sphere.
The then 24-year-old musician had been called up for military service despite being a national heart-throb, topping the charts with hits such as Jailhouse Rock and All Shook Up.
One of his Army pals, Currie Grant, asked Priscilla if she wanted to meet Elvis at his home.
Two weeks later, having got permission from her parents, Paul and Ann Beaulieu, she visited his house in Bad Nauheim.
When she told him she’d only just turned 14, Elvis replied, “Why, you’re just a baby”.
Despite that, the next time she popped by he told her, “I want to be alone with you, Priscilla” and insisted she come up to his room.
In her memoirs Elvis And Me, on which the movie is based, Priscilla told how they would share “long, deep passionate kisses” and get naked in his bed, without going all the way.
And the then shy youngster does not appear to have been alone.
Earlier this year an Amazon documentary, titled Elvis’ Women, revealed how several schoolgirls had sexual experiences with the rock star.
Frances Forbes, who also started seeing him aged 14, claimed: “He was attracted to younger girls and 14 was the magic age.”
And like Priscilla the encounters often did not result in full intercourse.
Priscilla was aware that the star was most likely seeing other women, but whenever she brought up the subject of his infidelity, he would get annoyed.
Director Sofia says: “She was seeing him with other girls and stuff. It’s such a different time.
“And there weren’t like so many celebrities like there are now. He was really a bigger deal.”
It’s almost impossible to understate what a huge star Elvis was, his gyrating hip action on stage being seen as a threat to the American way of life and he sold around half a billion records.
But the price of fame was an addiction to prescription drugs, ones he often shared with his lovers.
He gave Priscilla pills to keep her awake at school and others to bring her down from her highs.
The movie also shows the couple taking hallucinogenic LSD together.
In March 1963, Priscilla’s parents agreed to let their daughter move into Elvis’s palatial mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, on the promise that she would still attend school and would marry him once she was old enough.
At Graceland she was surrounded by his family and separated from her own. Bit by bit Elvis changed the way she looked, getting her to use make-up, wear grown-up dresses and change her hairstyle.
He would criticise the way she walked or tell her to change her “dull” clothes. In her biography, Priscilla writes: “When I did something that wasn’t to his liking, I was corrected. It is extremely difficult to relax under such scrutiny.”
They were together for seven years before getting married in Las Vegas in May 1967, shortly before Priscilla’s 22nd birthday.
‘Tumultuous relationship’
Their only child, Lisa Marie, was born nine months after the wedding, having apparently been conceived the first time Elvis and Priscilla made love.
Neither marriage nor fatherhood stopped the rock star seeing other women.
What changed was that Priscilla also found herself falling for other men, including her karate instructor Mike Stone.
Early in 1972, she told Elvis that she was leaving him and the couple divorced in October 1973.
Sofia, 52, says: “I’m always inspired by other women’s stories. And I thought it must have taken a lot of strength for her to leave.
“At that time, she didn’t have her own career or money or anything.”
Following the break-up, Elvis’s drug addiction spiralled out of control, with him being treated in hospital due to opioid abuse.
In August 1977 he was found dead in his Graceland home after taking a cocktail of drugs.
Despite all those traumas, it was the good times that Priscilla wants to remember.
She told Cailee Spaeny, 25, who plays her in the film, to express the love she had for Elvis.
The young actress, best known for starring alongside Kate Winslet in the TV drama Mare Of Easttown, recalls: “The one thing she said to me is, ‘Make sure that the love is there between them,’ because obviously it’s a very strange and tumultuous relationship.
“But the love was there and I think she thinks fondly when she looks back at these times.
“To show the lows but also show the highs, I think that was important to us.”
While Priscilla was happy when Sofia suggested turning her memoirs into a film, others were not.
It has been reported that Lisa Marie sent an email to Sofia expressing her fears about the script four months before her death.
She wrote, “My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative,” and “I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don’t understand why?”
The director is said to have altered the script after the exchange.
Tragically, Lisa Marie died from a heart attack due to what the coroner believed were complications following weight loss surgery.
We will never know what she’d think of the final cut.
While the critics have been divided about the movie, most agree that Cailee is brilliant in her portrayal of Priscilla.
She has been mentioned as a potential contender for a Best Actress Oscar nomination.
That is something Elvis’s ex-wife agrees with.
Cailee, who sat next to Priscilla during the movie’s premiere in Venice this year, concludes: “She turned to me and said, ‘I watched my life through you and through this movie.’
“And the weight off my shoulders when she said that is massive. I broke down into tears.”
- Priscilla is in cinemas on January 1.