Chapter Seven - Priscilla
From 1977 book My Life with Elvis
By Becky Yancey

Becky Yancey was the private secretary of Elvis for nearly thirteen years and a friend of Priscilla for many years. Her firsthand account of events stands out as an interesting and credible source. In this excerpt we get to know the real Priscilla before she's famous.

Major Joseph P. Beaulieu stood militarily erect and seemed to tower over the five-feet-two girl beside him.

Dwarfed by the officer's size, she shyly smiled acknowledgment as Mr. Presley announced, to the secretaries "This is Major Beaulieu and his daughter, Priscilla. She'll be staying here as our house guest."

It was the end of summer and I had been working at Graceland for about six months when I first met the pretty teen-ager who five years later was to become Elvis's wife.

She was carefully dressed in a neat white suit with black shoes and wore her dark hair in the short bouffant that was so popular in those days.

She got over her shyness about as soon as her father left Graceland for his new assignment at Travis Air Force base near San Francisco.

Although I'm five years older than Priscilla, Patsy Presley Gambill and I were closest to her in age of the women at the mansion. The only others were the maids and Grandma Presley. Elvis's Aunt Delta didn't move in until a few years later.

Her second day there, Priscilla popped into the office and stayed a couple of hours chattering about Graceland, Memphis, what it was like to be an Army brat--and Elvis. Her visits became a nearly everyday occurrence that both Patsy and I looked forward to.

She would wander into the office wearing slacks, blouse, and ballerina shoes, often rubbing her blue-green eyes or stifling a yawn. She regularly attended late-night movie parties with Elvis, and sat up into the wee hours of the morning at informal gatherings of his court at Graceland.

As she became more comfortable, she began to confide in us.

I mentioned one day that I thought her father must be very impressive and handsome in his uniform. "I guess you must be proud of him," I said.

"Oh, sure," Priscilla replied. "But you know, he's not my real father. Just a minute and I'll show you what my real father looks like," She jumped up and ran into the house.

She took a faded picture of a man in a uniform from her billfold and held it up, making a half-frame with her thumb and forefinger. "That's my real father," she said. "He died when I was four years old."

Priscilla told us that she was still a small child when her mother married Lieutenant Beaulieu. Her mother's new husband adopted her. Priscilla did not talk publicly about the adoption, and it has not been generally known to Elvis's fans.

"Mom and Dad raised me on military bases with my sister and brothers," she said.

Major Beaulieu brought her to Graceland when he was transferred to Travis from his previous duty station in Wiesbaden, Germany.

It was in Germany that Priscilla first met Elvis. It was almost their last meeting, Priscilla said.

"One of the airmen, Curry Grant, knew Elvis and he would introduce us," Priscilla recalled.

Grant picked up the then-captain's fourteen-year-old daughter and, after promising to have her home before midnight, drove to the near-by army base at Bad Nauheim to introduce her to the twenty-five-year-old jeep driver and internationally known performer.

"Elvis was just wonderful," Priscilla remembered. "He sang and played the piano, He was very charming. Would you believe it, he got up and shook my hand when I walked in and said, 'Hi. I'm Elvis Presley.'"

Elvis was charmed by the impish beauty of the petite girl in the crisp little sailor dress. He kept the party going until after midnight, despite Grant's nervous pleas that he had to get the captain's daughter home.

"They were waiting up for us when Curry got me home, and Dad was mad," Priscilla said. "I told him there was nothing wrong, that three or four of Elvis's friends were there with their dates and a couple of other girls. It was all so very informal and natural."

Grant also assured the Beaulieus that the party was properly chaperoned, and they were somewhat mollified.

"But Mom and Dad said I was too young to date Elvis," she said. "Well, I didn't think it made much difference anyway because I figured that I would never see him again. Then he called, and I couldn't h been more surprised."

Captain Beaulieu said there would be no date. "But Mom talked him into letting me go." Priscilla smiled. "She said I might never get a chance like this again."

Priscilla was permitted to see Elvis again, but only after her acceptance of strict ground rules established by her parents. She was to observe rigidly the midnight curfew, and she was to get another escort instead of the young airman who had brought her home late from the first party.

The Beaulieus were a military family with strict codes of behavior for their children, and they insisted on chaperones who met their exciting standards.

Elvis's daddy and his fiancee, Dee, stepped in and offered personally to escort Priscilla to and from the parties. Several meetings followed between Mr. Presley and Dee, and the Beaulieus and they soon became close friends.

So when Elvis invited her to spend Christmas vacation at Graceland after he was discharged, the Beaulieus consented.

Shortly after that, they agreed Priscilla could stay and finish high school in Memphis. Raised as a Catholic, although as an adult she has turned to Protestant denominations, she finished her last year-and-a-half at Immaculate Conception High School, graduating in 1963.

Nothing could have been more proper than the circumstances under which Priscilla and Elvis were seeing each other in Germany. But the relationship between Elvis and the sixteen-year-old beauty was more relaxed at Graceland. Considerably more.

The arrangements called for Priscilla to move in with Vernon and Dee, who were married by that time, and with Dee's three small sons in the Presleys' house at the rear of Graceland.

Priscilla had been at Graceland only a couple of days when I met her one midmorning coming down the stairway from the second floor. I was going into the den for coffee. There was no school and Priscilla had slept late. She was still wearing a pink shortie nightdress, with a light robe thrown over it. Elvis didn't come down until a couple of hours later.

Privacy was not one of the benefits of living at Graceland. Even though Elvis's privacy and that of others living at the mansion was respected in their own rooms, little could be kept secret.

And Elvis was surrounded by relatives. Not only his father and stepmother, but his grandmother, aunts, and uncles were all over. It was obvious to everyone that Priscilla was not sleeping at the Vernon Presleys.

A few months after Priscilla moved in she said that there had been some gossip and she was going to have to start parking her car in front of the Vernon Presleys' house on the nights Elvis was home.

As far as the outside world was concerned, Priscilla spent her nights at the Vernon Presleys'. Anything even hinting at a less chaste arrangement would have been bad for Elvis's image with his fans.

But when Elvis was home Priscilla slept upstairs. She moved into Grandma Presley's room and slept with the old lady when Elvis was traveling or in Hollywood. Only occasionally did she stay at the Vernon Presleys' or visit with her parents in California.

It was not until after the divorce that Priscilla made even the most oblique public reference to her relationship with Elvis having been less than pristine during their courtship.

Discussing Elvis's proposal of marriage in a Ladies' Home Journal interview, she remarked that even though they were content the way they were, at that time it wasn't considered nice for unmarried people to live together.

When Priscilla first arrived she occupied herself with her school work and with exploring Graceland, getting to know all the people who were there constantly. And, of course, there were the parties with Elvis at the mansion, the amusement park, and the movies.

Elvis's strange lifestyle didn't change when Priscilla moved in. The parties went on. It was understood that she was Elvis's girl, and no one else among the people hanging around courted trouble by making passes at her.

Elvis could be jealous. If he thought that some guy was paying too much attention to Priscilla, his blue eyes would turn cold and he would stare at them. The guy would always remember someone else he had to talk to and move away from her.

Priscilla said she always felt perfectly protected by Elvis and would have felt that way even if he hadn't been a celebrity. Elvis, she said, was a natural leader. "I like a strong man who will take charge," she once said. "I couldn't respect a weakling who let a woman boss him around. Elvis is strong and forceful. But he's also gentle and considerate."

I'd gotten married not long before Priscilla arrived, so we didn't go out together nights. But we had lunch together and rode around Memphis during the day when she was out of school.

Priscilla liked to go to lunch with Patsy and me, especially in the early years. We usually went to inexpensive restaurants.

Priscilla wasn't a spendthrift, although if she wanted money while Elvis was away, all she had to do was ask Mr. Presley for it.

He always gave her as much as she needed, and he was nice about it. But she was embarrassed to ask for money because she knew how people used Elvis's generosity. So she would often wait until she was broke or almost broke before approaching Mr. Presley.

For some reason Patsy stayed at the mansion one day while Priscilla and I went to lunch with Mrs. Luke Kingsley, Sr., the mother of Jimmy Kingsley, one of Elvis's guys, and with her daughter-in-law, Lilly, the wife of Jimmy's twin brother, John.

Mrs. Kingsley had invited us to the Beef and Liberty Restaurant, but Priscilla and I were worried. We weren't positive that Mrs. Kingsley had meant we were to be her guests, and we were worried about who was going to pay the check. Priscilla and I were both broke. She had told me the day before that she was out of money and was going to have to ask Mr. Presley for some. But I knew she hadn't gotten around to asking yet; and it was the day before payday, so I didn't have any money.

Mrs. Kingsley, of course, picked up the check. But Priscilla and I laughed about it later. Here we were, the girlfriend and secretary of the most famous entertainer in the world and one of the richest men in Memphis and we didn't even have enough money between us to tip the waitress after having lunch with a couple of friends.

When anyone but Elvis had lunch with Priscilla, there was always a good chance that she would order tuna salad. She was crazy about it, but she never ordered it when she was with him. "He doesn't like any kind of fish," she told me. "He doesn't even like it on somebody's breath. So I only eat fish when he's gone."

Priscilla ate tuna almost every day that Elvis was away. When he was in California or on a tour she would fix a big tuna salad with soda crackers and hot tea for lunch. When Patsy and I ate with her at the mansion, we ate tuna.

In the last few weeks before my son was born, I stayed in the house much of the time with Priscilla and Grandma Presley. I filled up on tuna salad then.

But I was standing on a chair washing the office windows one day when Grandma walked in. She threw up her hands: "Lordy child, what are you doing up there?" she yelled, rushing to the chair and grabbing me around the legs.

"Just washing windows, Grandma," I said.

"Well now you just get down off there and come in and lie down on my bed," she demanded, Pulling me off the chair and pushing me into the house ahead of her. "You do that kind of work while you're pregnant, girt, and you're gonna' hurt that baby."

I lay down. People didn't argue with Grandma Presley. After that she saw that I took a nice long nap every day. And I didn't do any more house cleaning until after Jerry, Jr., arrived. Grandma said not to worry about Mr. Presley. "That's my boy, and I'll take care of him," she assured me.

Mr. Presley never said anything to me about the naps, and I worked right through Friday, the day before I went to the hospital. My son was born Sunday afternoon, May 31, 1964.

Elvis had kidded me a couple of times about being so big, and he sent flowers when I was in the maternity ward. One of the boys was always assigned to keep track of births, deaths, marriages, and other special events involving people in the Graceland family and to see that flowers were provided in Elvis's name. Priscilla later took some of the responsibility for sending flowers and cards on special occasions. She was careful and, to my knowledge, never forgot anyone.

Priscilla said before she was married that she didn't want any babies because she was afraid it would mess up her figure. But after she had Lisa there was no noticeable change in her shape. The wife of one of Elvis's guys said that Priscilla had plastic surgery on her ears in Los Angeles to make them lie flatter. It could be true. Priscilla is very concerned about her appearance.

She never seemed to have trouble keeping her weight down, but then she didn't eat as much as Elvis did. And there's no question that her devotion to dance classes, and later to karate, helped keep her slim.

We were in the office one day answering fan mail when the door flew open and Priscilla bounded inside, leaping and pirouetting gracefully around the desks. We stopped work as she continued gamboling around the room. Finally she shifted one leg, swept one arm behind her, and ended the impromptu performance with a bow.

"Ballet!" she explained. "These are some of the steps I've been learning."

Priscilla stopped by the office nearly every day after that to demonstrate dance steps for us. She studied with the Jo Haynes School of Dancing. After her marriage Priscilla was in two or three dance recitals. But she used an assumed name and hardly anyone there knew that she was Priscilla Presley.

She also managed to model incognito at fashion shows in Memphis. She attended the Patricia Stevens Finishing School and modeled for a while at the Piccadilly Restaurant not far from the mansion, and at a local store. All most diners were aware of when she glided out to show an outfit was that she was a lovely, dark-haired model. Patsy and I went to the Piccadilly to eat several times so we could watch her.

An older model about thirty once advised her, "Your tummy is showing, Honey. You need a girdle."

"There's no way that I'll ever wear one of those things!" Priscilla fumed when she told Patsy and me about it.

Elvis was away so much that Priscilla looked for all kinds of self-improvement courses to keep herself busy. She's bright and talented, and she learned quickly. She attended one drama class. That was all it took to start stories in the gossip magazines about her desire to be an actress.

It wasn't true. Priscilla had movie offers, and Elvis said she could take them if she wanted to. But she knew that he didn't like the idea, and she was more interested in her husband and her home than in acting, so she turned the offers down. She made the decision.

Lisa was just a baby then, and that was also a factor.

Priscilla's ability to create imaginative fashions is well known, and she was quite successful after her divorce as a co-owner with Olivia Bis of a Beverly Hills boutique called Bis and Beau.

Olivia, a professional designer, had made Priscilla many of the outfits that Priscilla rough-sketched for herself. It was an easy and natural partnership when Priscilla decided that she wanted to go into business. They established their shop at 9650 Santa Monica Boulevard. Priscilla cilia had started concocting many of her own creations before she was married, and a woman in Whitehaven sewed them for her. She even designed a few of Elvis's outfits.

The clothes Priscilla had designed for herself were original and strikingly inspiring. They had to be, to compete with Elvis's costumes.

One of the few "iffy" Priscilla Presley creations was a dress she wore to the wedding of one of Elvis's guys, Sonny West, to Judy Jordan. It was a long lavender dress with a hood. "It looks like something a monk would wear," Priscilla fretted when she tried it on. "It's ugly." But she wore it anyway. She looked lovely in it. Priscilla is so poised and beautiful that she could wear anything and look good.

Elvis dressed in black, wore shades, and carried a police-type flashlight.

Priscilla didn't design all her own clothes, of course, and most were bought on shopping trips. Elvis would have one of the boys call a store in Memphis and say that they would be in after hours. He took her shopping at LaClede's, an exclusive ladies' wear shop where some blouses sell for $150 each. One of the guys would drive Elvis and Priscilla to the shop. Someone was always waiting at the door to let them in and to assist them as Priscilla picked out a new wardrobe.

Elvis gave her everything she wanted. I made out checks for a black El Dorado, a blue Impala, and a Toronado in addition to the Corvair that he gave her during their courtship.

He once bought her a little pink motorcycle. A few times my husband and I were driving home when Elvis would roar around us on his big Harley Davidson, laughing and waving. A few seconds later Priscilla would go putt-putting by on her pink motorcycle.

After they were married, Elvis bought matching motorcycles for them to ride in California.

Priscilla was still in high school when she walked into the den one day as I was drinking coffee. She fixed herself a cup of tea and sat down beside me.

"Becky," she said, "would you do me a favor? "If I can," I said.

Priscilla dug into a pile of papers she was carrying and finally pulled out a magazine with an ad from Frederick's of Hollywood. "I'd like to get this catalogue," she whispered, leaning over the desk and pointing to the ad as she looked over her shoulder at the doorway. "I don't want anyone else to know I ordered it. Especially Elvis and Mr. Presley. I want to use your name."

"Well, sure, Priscilla," I said, trying not to sound puzzled. You know it's okay with me. But it's okay to use your own name. You don't have to be twenty-one to send for a catalogue."

But Priscilla insisted she preferred to order the catalogue in my name. Frederick's specializes in the nation's most provocative, come-hither styles for women. Priscilla felt that she was too young to be ordering from Frederick's and didn't want anyone else at Graceland to know. I let her use my name.

Priscilla never demanded things of me or other employees at Graceland, but always asked if we would do her "a favor" when she needed something. She didn't throw her weight around or take the attitude that she was the mistress of the mansion and everyone had better jump when she called. Priscilla wasn't like that.

Elvis liked Priscilla to stay at the mansion and wouldn't allow her to attend most of his concerts. He would go on the road and she would stay in Memphis. It was that way the first two or three years. Later, he began allowing her to travel with him.

As Priscilla began to exercise more freedom, she took shopping trips to New York, always using assumed names for airlines and hotel reservations.

Styles in Memphis are always about six months to a year behind those in California. When Priscilla would return to Graceland wearing the latest fashions from California, Patsy and I and the wives and girlfriends of the guys would want to wear the same styles. Just as the guys let Elvis be the pacesetter in their clothing styles and in many of the things they did, the girls copied Priscilla.

I think Priscilla's hair is naturally brown. But she liked it dark, and although she once dyed it auburn she usually dyed it black. So the other girls and I dyed our hair black.

Priscilla like hairpieces. So we wore hairpieces.

Priscilla favored heavy eye shadow with upsweeping eyebrows, Cleopatra style; we, too, played Cleopatra.

An Avon Lady who lived in the Craceland subdivision stopped at the mansion every few weeks and Priscilla, Patsy, and I bought most of our cosmetics from her.

As a young girl Priscilla wore much heavier make-up than she does today. Elvis seemed to like it. He told her how he liked her to dress and to wear her hair.

Boots were just beginning to become stylish on the West Coast when Priscilla returned from Los Angeles wearing a pair. The rest of us had to have boots like Priscilla's. I made two or three long distance calls from our home telephone to order two pairs of boots, black and white.

Not long after they arrived I was all dressed up in my new ensemble and was browsing at a shopping center when I noticed two other women watching me. It was obviously the first time they had seen accoutrements like mine; the new styles hadn't yet reached Memphis from California. My hair was dyed black, my lashes and brows were drawn out in heavy, sweeping curves, my leather jacket fitted my sleekly, and my green corduroy pants were bloused into new black glove-leather boots mailed from the West Coast. It was a striking costume.

My bubble burst as I walked past them and heard one say to the other in a stage whisper, "My God, would you look at that poor girl."

Until the boots became popular in Memphis, people stared at Patsy an1d me as though we were streetwalkers whenever we wore them.

As a teen-ager, of course, Priscilla wasn't as sophisticated as she was to become. But even then she was poised. Priscilla has innate class, and I believe that, as much as her beauty, is what made her stand out, among so many other lovely girls, as special to Elvis.

Priscilla had had hardly any experience with boys or dating until she met Elvis. She was just starting high school then and he was an international celebrity, ten years older than she and the prince charming of thousands of girls all over the world.

Talking about it one day, she said that about the only date she'd had before meeting Elvis was when some boy took her to a school dance. She got all embarrassed because someone told her she had dirt on her face.

Priscilla said she had never written a love letter until she started writing to Elvis. While she was in the office helping to read fan mail one day, she discovered some of his old love letters in a file cabinet. Some that she had written to him from Germany were among them. But she was most excited about the letters from other girls.

Patsy and I started to read the letters with her, giggling at some and passing them around to each other. There was a lot of baby talk in some of them.

Priscilla set her own letters aside and didn't open them for Patsy and me.

"Oh my God," I suddenly remembered. "What if Mr. Presley came in here and caught us?"

"Somebody better watch for him," Priscilla said.

I walked to the door and opened it slightly so that I could see the driveway leading from the gate. Patsy took her turn at the door after a few minutes, and we continued to trade off until we had read most of the letters. Priscilla took her letters back to her room.

After Priscilla was married and started traveling with Elvis, she got in a line of girls waiting in front of the stage at the Showroom Internationale in Las Vegas one evening. Elvis kissed her and started toward the next girl in line. He stopped suddenly and turned back to Priscilla. "Don't I know you?" he asked.

She never appeared to be jealous of the beautiful women hanging around the gate or in the mansion at the constant parties. She understood that the adulation of Elvis's female fans was something she would have to put up with. It was the way it had to be.

Elvis never dated or dallied with any other girls at Graceland after Priscilla arrived. There were stories that he dated stars in Hollywood while he was making movies, but at least some of that was studio promotion for his films.

I first became aware of trouble between Elvis and Priscilla when I started getting bills for airline tickets, charged to Elvis, for other women. Then the rumors started about trouble between Elvis and Priscilla.

But it wasn't other women-or other men-who broke up the Presley marriage.