Priscilla Presley: Her Struggle to Raise Elvis'
Daughter
Ladies' Home Journal, Feb. 1984
By Phyllis
Battelle
WHILE PRISCILLA'S STILL TRYING TO EMERGE FROM ELVIS' SHADOW,
LISA'S VERY MUCH HER MOTHER'S GIRL
On a warm, breezy afternoon in
Southern Cal., a tiny, animatedly prissy 15-year-old was strolling in a Los
Angeles park with her 20-year-old boyfriend. It was a rare time alone for the
couple. Usually the girl's fiercely protective mother or his concerned parents
chaperoned their dates. They were obviously in love, but they weren't an
ordinary couple. They understood the need for strict rules.
As they
settled under a sprawling tree, a man suddenly appeared and began snapping
pictures. Shocked and frustrated, the couple hurried to the young man's car. A
tabloid photographer who'd tracked down one of America's most carefully guarded
secrets--the identity of Lisa Marie Presley, only child of the late superstar
Elvis Presley, and sole heir to his fortune had stolen their brief moment of
freedom.
Lisa came home absolutely heartbroken," remembers her mother,
Priscilla Presley. "Right. now, her boyfriend, Scott, is the biggest thing in
her life. They were both devastated. The greatest fear is that they could no
longer be openly affectionate."
Priscilla herself was both outraged and
deeply concerned. "When Lisa goes thru pain, I go through it, too," she says
quietly. But it's more than just a mother's sensitivity to her daughter's
distress. In the 6-1/2 years since Elvis' sudden, sensationalized death,
Priscilla's never permitted photographs of her daughter, not only because of
continual kidnap and death threats--"which absolutely petrified me"--but to
guarantee Lisa her much-needed anonymity. In fact, Priscilla so scrupulously
guards her private family that when she agreed to talk to the JOURNAL about the
challenge of being a single mother, she insisted that the interview is held in
an office rather than in her Beverly Hills home.
At age 38, Priscilla's
an exquisite woman. Her high-cheekbone, patrician face under sunstreaked hair
shows no effects of an emotional roller coaster she's ridden since she fell in
love with Elvis Presley at age 14, married him at 21, and give birth to Lisa
exactly 9 months later.
"I knew Lisa could never lead a truly normal
life, but I hoped she could get her values straight," says Priscilla. It was an
awesome challenge, trying to keep Lisa free of psychological scars. "I couldn't
even take her to a supermarket because Elvis's picture might be on those cruel
papers and magazines," she recalls.
But Priscilla couldn't protect Lisa
from the cruelty of her peers. "One day, when she was just into puberty, an
article appeared that depicted her father as a sexual deviate. Lisa came home
from school crying, 'One of the kids told me about my dad. Mom, is it true? I
would just HATE him if he was that way!'" Priscilla tried to assure her that the
stories were "blown way out of proportion," and were written by "sick people who
didn't know your father." Lisa ultimately came to terms, in her own mind, with
scandal stories. "But it really had a big impact on her at the time, and she
went thru a period of being angry and disgusted and disliking him. I was very
disturbed about it." Lately Lisa has begun playing Elvis's records. "and now I
think she's pretty proud of her dad."
And Priscilla's proud of her
daughter. This month, Feb. 1, Lisa Marie turns 16--a 5'1" sprite that her mother
describes as "a very special young lady. She's very reserved, quiet and
cautious, like me. But after you get to know her, she's neat." Priscilla smiles.
9 years from now, when Lisa reaches 25, she'll inherit an estate
estimated at $7 mil. But for now, she receives a $10 per week allowance. "I'm
very strong with Lisa," Priscilla says. "I want her to have career goals, be
enthusiastic about earning her own money. I think kids need to build
self-esteem. Right now, she's saved 20 dollars, and that's not bad."
Priscilla keeps close watch on her daughter's friendships. "There's so
much pretension and phoniness here," she says. "Kids used to come to the house
with Gucci bags and diamond earrings. I told Lisa to cool it with them because
they're living in a bubble. When she was little, only 4 or 5, Elvis tried to
give her fur coats and jewels. I said, 'Absolutely not!' and made him return
them."
Ironically, Priscilla says, many of Lisa's peers assume she's
spoiled, "because of who she is. Well, I'm not raising a spoiled child! One of
her girlfriend's got a Mercedes-Benz for her 16th birthday, and I sat Lisa right
down and said, 'Listen, kid, come with me to NY. We'll rent bikes and see what
the world is really like.'" Priscilla's motto is: "You've got to put the ethics
in right away."
As she talks about her daughter and the awesome
responsibility of guiding her, Priscilla's face is a kaleidoscope of emotions.
It's with a tender look that she says, "Last Monday Lisa and I went to lunch
together, and I said to her, 'You know, I've always loved you because you're my
daughter, but right now I really LIKE you.' She said, 'Well, you don't always.'
So I had to admit there'd been times when she'd upset me, and I didn't like what
she DID. After all, we've been through a lot, and we're still going through a
lot. But as I looked at her, almost 16," Priscilla smiles, "I thought to myself,
'Thank God, she's going to be okay!'"
Obviously, Priscilla has had to be
far more protective than most mothers. For years she taped all phone
conversations of the recurring threats against her and Lisa--and they haven't
stopped. "Just recently, a man followed Lisa to school and home for a week.
Finally he stopped her and asked, 'Are you Lisa?' She answered, 'No, I'm not,'
but he said, 'I know who you are!' and shoved a card into her hand ordering,
'Have your mother call me.'" Police tracked him down and found out he was one of
many misguided people who feel Priscilla caused the rock star's death by
divorcing him in 1973. Priscilla has become accustomed to the label "the dark
lady of rock," but can't forgive the harassment of her daughter. (Because of
these constant threats, Priscilla understandably wouldn't allow Lisa to be
photographed for the JOURNAL. and the magazine has honored her wish for privacy
by not reprinting the tabloid photographs of Lisa and Scott.)
Lisa's
young romance has helped her to cope with the threats. Priscilla approves of the
relationship, which began in 1982, while she was making a movie in the Bahamas.
Scott, a film student, visited the set at the same time Lisa flew down to see
her mother. "I introduced them and it was love at first site for Lisa,"
Priscilla remembers. "Scott's bright and adorable-looking. and after all, the
Bahamas--perfect setting for a romance, right?"
Priscilla assumed the
attraction would cool after they returned to LA. "But suddenly my child just
went berserk dieting. She lost so much weight she was skin, bones and hollow
cheeks, and I it scared me. I thought, 'I've got anorexia nervosa here,' and
consulted a doctor about her." It wasn't anorexia; it was love. "I'm still
concerned about her," Priscilla says. "She's so tiny. But if she gains a pound
she's a nervous wreck. I tell her she looks great, and she says, 'You just want
me to look FAT.'"
Priscilla began to suspect the romance was serious
when Lisa refused to accompany her on their traditional Christmas shopping visit
to NY in autumn of 1982. "I phoned home to see how she was doing and found out
from her teachers at school that Lisa had skipped a few classes." Priscilla,
very upset, flew back to Cal., "and sat her down for a real hard talk between
mother and daughter. She admitted she'd been skipping school to see her
boyfriend, and he didn't even know it--he had thought she had a vacation. Well,
I respected her for being honest with me, but I had to do something." Lisa was
grounded. "I wouldn't let her see him for 3 weeks." Rules were laid down: dates
were only on weekends, and with Priscilla or Scott's parents as chaperones. It
still baffles Priscilla how the photographer who sold his pictures to the
NATIONEL ENQUIRER found the couple. "They had just wandered away from his
parent's BBQ," she says. and how did the cameraman know who she was? "The press
always say she's an Elvis look-alike. But unless you know her name, I don't
think you see the resemblance."
Last summer, Priscilla insisted that her
daughter go on a trip to Spain with students her own age--using an assumed name. "I want her to discover the value of traveling, discovering different cultures.
It was a fight. She didn't want to go because of her boyfriend, afraid that
she'd lose him," Priscilla recalls. "I said, 'You're not going to like me for
this right now, but at least try it. He'll still be here when you come back, and
if he's not, what do you want with him, anyway?' Well, she went. About the
fourth day she called and wanted to come home. I insisted that she stay, because
I think it's important for kids to learn they must complete what they start.
When she returned, she admitted I was right. and she'd experienced a new feeling
of freedom because nobody knew who she was. 'I was ME,' she said. 'I wasn't Lisa
Presley.'"
It was a first step toward overcoming what Priscilla calls "a
major crisis" for her daughter. "I feel so sorry for her. The first thing people
ask when they know she's Elvis's daughter is 'Well, do you sing? Do you play a
guitar?'" For now, the answer's no. "Lisa loves music, but she doesn't play or
sing," her mother says. "She has a wonderful talent for writing, and I'm trying
to bring that out in her so she'll have a career of her own."
Lisa's
identity even prevents her from getting a job. "Last year she saw an ad for a
counter girl at a delicatessen, and she's dying to earn extra money, so she
applied and got the job. She came home all excited. I had to tell her, 'God,
Lisa, what if a reporter sees you? It'll be all over the front pages.'"
Priscilla said sadly, "That's the terrible price she pays for being who she is.
I tried getting her a job baby-sitting, just for friends, you know, who wouldn't
call the newspapers. They were all afraid that some harm might come to Lisa and
involve their children. I keep telling her not to be afraid to be LISA--but when
she tries to be herself, there are always reminders that she's Elvis's
daughter."
Priscilla's reluctant to talk about the drugs that caused
Elvis's death, but she's concerned--as are all parents of teenagers these
days--about her daughter being exposed to drugs. "I'm worried because I know
drugs are everywhere--in the schools, in the streets, in the discos, in the
movies. Lisa's aware of the drug scene, but she also knows how I feel about
it--I'm so very against drugs. I've had my own experiences with them, and I'm
sure Lisa's tried them herself, but I can only point out and stress the dangers
to her...and hope for the best."
Priscilla's own family background's very
different from her daughter's. She was the oldest of 6 children of U.S. Air
Force Colonel Joseph Beaulieu, "a very strict father who would say no without
having to give you a reason." The family was stationed in Wiesbaden, West
Germany, when Presley came to entertain the troops. Priscilla was just 14 when
she met him. Elvis was 24. "We fell deeply in love right away," she recalls.
After Elvis returned to the U.S., he began a campaign to persuade Col.
Beaulieu to let Priscilla join him at his vast estate called Graceland in
Memphis. He promised that she would be chaperoned by his father, Vernon Presley,
and Vernon's wife. Priscilla would be sent to the best Roman Catholic school.
She would have her own luxurious quarters, with every amenity provided. "The
negotiations went on for many months," Priscilla remembers. "Elvis was a strong
personality, a man it was very hard to say no to. But Father kept saying no."
Priscilla's response was to "withdraw--from my family and everything
else. Elvis and I were both so emotional, and nothing meant anything to me but
being with him. I stayed in my room, not caring about schoolwork, completely
unresponsive." Ultimately her parents let her go. "They saw their daughter just
breaking apart. They couldn't handle a child who would hate them for the rest of
their lives. You just can't use logic when you're dealing with an emotion as
strong as mine." She was precisely the age Lisa is now--16--when she went to
live with the King of Rock 'n' Roll.
Because of her own experience,
Priscilla's constantly "looking for any sign of withdrawal in Lisa. I must keep
those lines of communication open. I'm not fighting her present romance. Because
I know if I fight it, I'll lose her. But they have to let me know what they're
doing, how they're feeling. I don't want Lisa sneaking away from me. I tell her,
'Please don't do anything that'll hurt me or shock me.'" Priscilla thinks she'll
respect that request. Suddenly grinning fiendishly she quips, "Besides--I'm
always close by with my binoculars!"
Asked how she handles her concerns
about sex, she shudders, "Delicately--very delicately." She admits to a conflict
with that. "I know some mothers arrange for their daughter's to get the Pill,
but to me that's like offering a free ticket to sex. It's like saying, 'Here
have fun and enjoy, now that you're safe.' I can't deal with that. But I've
talked to Lisa and Scott and told Lisa she has to be responsible or suffer the
consequences. She knows that if anything happens, I'm not going to make it easy
for her to have an abortion." Without hesitation, Priscilla replies, "I'd say,
'Okay, fine, if that's what you want to do--but there's an education that has to
be taken care of first.' I wouldn't give Lisa a definite no. I know my daughter,
and she's not a frivolous or rebellious girl. I think she'd work with me on
that."
But before Lisa marries, "I just want her to experience life. I'm
not gung ho on her going to college. If she wants to, fine. But I long to take
her away to Europe, to spend 2 years in Spain, to see other cultures and how
people live," Priscilla says. "To me it's the best education. And life goes by
so fast."
Travel has always been Priscilla's dream, and she's trying to
make up for lost time. "I had so many dreams with Elvis. We were going to travel
everywhere together, things we couldn't do before because we weren't married.
When I found out that I was pregnant, so quickly after the marriage, I had mixed
emotions. Of course, after Lisa was born, those things didn't matter so much."
Elvis' stardom meant a sheltered life for Priscilla--when the couple wanted to
see a movie, Elvis would rent the theater; when they wanted to visit a fair, it
would be closed to the public. After more than 10 years of that life, Priscilla
asked for a divorce. "It wasn't that I hadn't prepared him. I'd gone to him
often and said, 'I don't think we're going to make it. I can't survive like
this.' It wasn't that he didn't know."
Priscilla says that she and Elvis
were still affectionate after the divorce in 1973. She and Lisa visited him,
alone or together, and the parents pretended for their daughter's sake that
little had changed. "It was 'Daddy this' and 'Mommy that,'" Priscilla has said.
And it wasn't altogether a pretense. "I realize now more that I did then, when I
was still so young, that you may THINK you know what love is, but don't know
what it really is until you've accumulated all the experiences--all the fights,
the words said and unsaid, all the forgiving, all the crying, all the pain." She
looks back on the relationship now and thinks, "Oh, God, I wish I could live
that life over again. That's what people mean when they say, 'If I only knew
then what I know now.'" Pris realizes now that "Elvis carried a heavy burden,
tenfold that of any other celebrity. He didn't belong to me, he belonged to the
world." Does she still love him? "Absolutely," she says quietly.
There
were rumors that, after the divorce, Priscilla changed her mind and tried to go
back to Elvis. "I don't want to get involved with that," she says now, almost in
a whisper. But even if she had returned to the marriage, Priscilla insists, it
wouldn't have saved his life. "There are fans who write to me, 'You killed
him,'" she says in a hushed voice. "They don't know--my God, he and I were so
close, the best of friends, a very strong love between us. I desperately tried
to phone him 2 days before he died and couldn't reach him, because I felt I
should be there. I was always there for him. Yes, he was angry over the breakup,
but that was 4 years before he died. I blame Elvis for his own death. He was on
self-destruct."
Aug. 16, 1977, EP was found on the floor of his bathroom
at Graceland. Within an hour, an urgent phone call was placed to Priscilla in
L.A. Lisa was visiting her father at the time of his collapse. She was
9-years-old, Priscilla remembers, "a very young 9, still playing with dolls. She
saw her daddy being taken out to an ambulance. She didn't know he was dead."
When Priscilla arrived at Graceland, "Lisa and I hugged each other and
cried together." They went to Elvis' bedroom, "and Lisa cried with me because I
was so devastated. His death was the greatest loss I'd ever experienced."
Priscilla asked if Lisa wanted to take anything of her father's to keep. "She
picked out a golf cap, and his electric razor, because they were 'close to
Daddy.' I took his cane, because it was so much him. He never went anywhere
without and the scent of Elvis' hand, the cologne he wore, was on the handle."
Immediately afterward, Lisa went out to play on her father's golf cart. "A child
knows how to handle survival," Priscilla says. "I knew it wouldn't hit her until
later."
More than 100,000 mourners were swarming around Graceland.
Consumed with her own grief, "I wanted to get Lisa away from this atmosphere.
Right after the funeral I did something many parents might think insensitive. I
sent her to camp. She needed me, but she needed to get away from that atmosphere
even more." 2 weeks later, when Lisa returned to L.A., "she suddenly realized
the enormousness of her loss. When it hit her that she'd never see her daddy
again, that she couldn't even talk to him on the phone, she wept and said,
'Mommy, what's going to happen to us?'"
At that moment, Priscilla had no
idea. With all the confidence she could summon, she said, "Well, we're going to
live our lives, and help each other out. It's just you and me, kid..."
Money was no problem. Elvis had awarded Priscilla $1.7 mil in the
divorce settlement. But there were other problems that child psychology couldn't
answer. No Dr. Spock offered advice to a young, beautiful mother--who was only
recently discovering her own freedom and individuality--on how to handle a
sensitive, vulnerable, grief-stricken heiress.
"I made a lot of mistakes
because I was still young," Priscilla admits. With in months of Elvis' death she
formed a romantic relationship with Michael Edwards, an aspiring actor. "I was
out every night at the beginning because Michael eased the pain I was going
through. Lisa began saying, 'I thought you and I were going to be together,
Mom.' I suddenly woke up and realized there was this little person who needed my
full-time attention." Priscilla continues to be close to Edwards, "but now it's
the 3 of us," and she's not contemplating marriage. "Marriage means commitment," she says. At least for now, her commitment is to Lisa.
Priscilla has
also committed herself to an acting career, and returned to the public's
attention this winter, starring in the TV series DALLAS, but she sees no
contradiction. "I'd studied acting for for years, and Lisa said, 'What ever
makes you happy, Mom.' It doesn't take me away from her. I'm still wearing my
mother's hat."
Mother and daughter still haven't emerged completely from
the colossal shadow of Elvis Presley. On anniversaries of his death, they travel
to escape memories. "One thing we've learned is there's so much suffering you
can relive before it destroys you," Priscilla says. "We try to remember the good
times to stay on top of it."
After 6 years of single parenting,
Priscilla Presley watches her pretty daughter, whose head's full of many of the
same dreams and love Priscilla herself experienced at 16. She hopes her daughter
will find happiness--and freedom. "I totally sympathize with Lisa, and I can
only share with her so much of my own experience. Lisa will make mistakes of her
own, as I did, and I don't mind--as long as she learns from them. I guess I'll
not know how successful I am as a parent until Lisa's my age and can look back.
But right at this moment," Priscilla says fondly, "I'm just happy she's happy."