Baby, Let's Play House Part 22

Priscilla grew up always wanting to please him, both to earn his praise and to mute her own fear, for Paul Beaulieu was said to be a heavy drinker, a fact he struggled to conceal from the world. Colonel Desaulniers questions that, too, saying his friend was "a very good social drinker, but I wouldn't ever characterize him as a hard drinker. In those days, we were all cla.s.sified as hard drinkers." But when he did drink, the captain's attention sometimes made Priscilla uncomfortable, she told Elvis. "He said Priscilla said her father gave her the creeps staring at her," Marty Lacker remembers.

That would be enough of a psychological trauma for any young girl, but at age thirteen, Priscilla stumbled upon a family secret, which she discussed with Finstad in Child Bride Child Bride. She was babysitting one night for her siblings while her parents were at a party. Once the children were asleep, she got bored and began snooping around, rummaging through things. In the back of her parents' closet, she found an old trunk and felt compelled to explore it.

As she opened it, Priscilla told Finstad, "I had this unbelievable feeling." The first thing she saw was an American flag, folded in the shape to present to widows of servicemen. It was a sacred thing, almost, not to be disturbed, like a grave, and Priscilla kept thinking, "I shouldn't be doing this." She knew the trunk was private, that she shouldn't go any farther. But she did, of course, and under the flag she found a cache of yellowed love letters. She quickly flipped through them, fearing her parents would burst through the door any minute and catch her, and saw that they were between Rooney, her mother's nickname in her youth, and a boy named Jimmy.

Her pulse raced, and as she dug inside the trunk for more, she found a stash of photographs of herself as an infant. She'd never seen them before. In some, she was alone. In others, she was with her mother. But in the most puzzling ones of all, her mother, holding baby Priscilla in her arms, stood next to a handsome, dark-haired stranger. Who was this man? The teenager turned the photo over, and there she read the words that nearly stopped her heart: "Mommy, Daddy, Priscilla."

Suddenly, as Finstad wrote, her whole life, a different different life, one she had not known about, lay before her in the trunk: a birth certificate, baptism records, all with the last name of Wagner. It weighed on her so much that she called her mother at the party, and Ann Beaulieu rushed home to find her daughter hysterical, angry, and confused. life, one she had not known about, lay before her in the trunk: a birth certificate, baptism records, all with the last name of Wagner. It weighed on her so much that she called her mother at the party, and Ann Beaulieu rushed home to find her daughter hysterical, angry, and confused.

Yes, she told her. She had been married to a navy pilot named James Wagner. He was handsome and kind and loved Priscilla like nothing in this world, but he was killed in a crash when Priscilla was six months old. Several years later, Ann met and married Paul Beaulieu, and now he he was Priscilla's father, having adopted her. was Priscilla's father, having adopted her.

Her mother hadn't told her before, she continued to Finstad, because Paul didn't want anyone to think Priscilla wasn't his natural daughter. He, himself, had almost come to believe that she was, so the lie had to be perpetuated. In fact, Finstad learned, the Beaulieus had cut Priscilla's paternal grandparents out of their life. It was as if Jimmy Wagner had never existed.

Priscilla would remember it as a terrible moment, a life-changing moment, a.s.serts Finstad, that completely unsettled Priscilla in every way. Her only anchors-the things she took for granted as her sense of constancy and ident.i.ty-were suddenly demolished. She wasn't who she thought she was. "That's an incredible kind of displacement," says biographer Finstad.

Psychologists say that concealing information about a child's biological parents is one of the most damaging family secrets, rating just below incest. Priscilla, predictably, was highly upset to learn that her mother, the person she trusted most in the world to protect her, had lied to her. And now she was being asked to be a coconspirator in that lie, protecting her stepfather and shutting herself off from a set of loving, grieving grandparents who wanted nothing so much as to know the child who so resembled their son.

At first she told no one about the secret, but it was too much of a responsibility for a girl of her age, no matter how mature. Her only way to deal with it at the time, coming only months before the family's move to Europe, was to shut down emotionally, even as she was filled with rage and the need for attention.

However, that did not mean that Priscilla did not act out. Her friends told Finstad they noticed a personality shift, mainly in her attraction to older boys, especially the hoody kids, the tough promiscuous crowd, boys who already had cars and drank beer and spit in the face of authority. By eighth grade, she had a reputation for hanging with the wrong crowd.

Once she got to Germany, she repeated her pattern, flirting with the black-leather-jacket boys and making poor grades. But more than before, as Finstad relates, Priscilla demonstrated two personalities, the good Priscilla and the naughty Priscilla; the latter was confident and a.s.sertive, especially where s.e.x and seduction were concerned.

In Currie's telling in Child Bride Child Bride, when Priscilla approached him and told him she wanted to meet Elvis, she agreed to a Faustian pact. Currie had once taken another girl to Elvis's house, and she wanted nothing else to do with him once Elvis invited her to his bedroom. Currie was not about to have that happen again. And so the twenty-seven-year-old married man wanted to make sure he was alone with Priscilla before he would take her to meet Elvis.

According to Currie, at first, it was just kissing. He took her up into the hills around Weisbaden-she concocted a story about going to the movies-and it was obvious she didn't want to do it. "It was like kissing a table," Currie said in the Finstad book, and all she wanted to do was talk about Elvis. But eventually he wore her down and she got into it a bit, and then he took her home.

By their second visit to the hills that late August or early September 1959, she was more eager with him, though they held their activities to kissing and a little touching. On the third trip, she was more effusive. But on the fourth rendezvous, Priscilla succ.u.mbed to the married airman.

"It actually started getting better on the third," he said in Child Bride, Child Bride, "but she did everything humanly possible to please me on that fourth time." It was then that Currie agreed to take her to meet Elvis, and by that time, he contends, "she became a little aggressive herself." On the way back to her parents' house, Currie wanted her again and pulled his car over to a dark area near the Wiesbaden Museum. Her skirt was up and her blouse was open when a German police car pulled in behind them. Currie told Finstad he feared he'd go to prison-she was a minor, and her father was an officer in the air force. But the German cop let him off with an admonishment: "You'd better be careful, and take her on home when you get ready." Priscilla denies Currie's account, in a cla.s.sic case of he said, she said. "but she did everything humanly possible to please me on that fourth time." It was then that Currie agreed to take her to meet Elvis, and by that time, he contends, "she became a little aggressive herself." On the way back to her parents' house, Currie wanted her again and pulled his car over to a dark area near the Wiesbaden Museum. Her skirt was up and her blouse was open when a German police car pulled in behind them. Currie told Finstad he feared he'd go to prison-she was a minor, and her father was an officer in the air force. But the German cop let him off with an admonishment: "You'd better be careful, and take her on home when you get ready." Priscilla denies Currie's account, in a cla.s.sic case of he said, she said.

Currie would say later that Priscilla had not bled when he penetrated her, leading him to believe that she had already had intercourse, perhaps with one of the older "bad boys" she ran around with in eighth grade. Later he decided that probably wasn't right-she seemed so inexperienced at lovemaking.

The bottom line, if Currie's account is to be believed, and from what Priscilla's schoolmate Tom Stewart told her biographer, Suzanne Finstad, about his own s.e.xual relationship with Priscilla in 1959, is that in 1967, when Elvis and Priscilla married, she was not the virgin bride that Elvis always said he wanted. She was not even a virgin on the night he first met her.

When writing her biography of Priscilla, Finstad interviewed both Currie and Priscilla and found their versions of the story at great variance. Hoping to reconcile their accounts, Finstad arranged to interview the two of them together. Presented with Currie's story, Priscilla became hysterical. "May G.o.d strike me dead if that ever happened to me," Finstad quotes her as saying. "I am telling you on the life of my son and my daughter, that never happened. That man is a liar!"

But by Priscilla's later account to her then-boyfriend, Mike Edwards, related in Child Bride, Child Bride, she she did did have some kind of episode with Currie in the German hills that led to her meeting Elvis. have some kind of episode with Currie in the German hills that led to her meeting Elvis.

In 1998, Priscilla sued Currie for defamation, arguing in her legal action that his statements were fabrications. She and her attorney sought $10 million in damages. In August of that year, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Daniel Curry entered a default judgment against Currie for libel and ordered him to pay $75,000, far less than the $10 million Priscilla sought. Neither Finstad nor her publisher, Harmony Books/Crown, were ever sued.

Priscilla used the default judgment to make it appear that the information that Currie provided was tainted. While there is a default judgment against Currie on file, there is also a confidential settlement agreement, a secret arrangement dated August 11, 1998, between Currie and Priscilla that underlies and supercedes the default judgment.

In the private side letter agreement, apparently prepared by Priscilla's attorneys, Currie is not not required to pay Priscilla a dime as long as he does not repeat his accusations or disclose the existence of the secret settlement. According to the settlement, he and Priscilla agree not to discuss each other in public, other than a statement from Priscilla in which she says she "feels vindicated." In exchange, Priscilla does not enforce the default judgment against Currie and pays required to pay Priscilla a dime as long as he does not repeat his accusations or disclose the existence of the secret settlement. According to the settlement, he and Priscilla agree not to discuss each other in public, other than a statement from Priscilla in which she says she "feels vindicated." In exchange, Priscilla does not enforce the default judgment against Currie and pays him him $15,000 for pictures he took of her in Germany. $15,000 for pictures he took of her in Germany.

The confidential side letter states: The parties stipulate and agree that the parties can state to the Media that a judgment for defamation has been entered in favor of Presley against Grant. No mention will be made by Presley or her attorneys to the Media of the dollar amount of the judgment. Presley can state to the Media that she feels vindicated by this result. Grant will make no comment to the Media other than the fact that Grant is glad to move on.

Furthermore, The parties stipulate and agree that Grant will no longer state to the Media or any other individual that he had s.e.x with Presley and Presley will no longer state to the Media that Grant attempted to rape her.

Per the side letter, Currie must pay a minimum of $75,000 if he engages in any "prohibited communications" regarding Priscilla. Clearly Priscilla has taken extraordinary measures to silence Currie, presumably to protect the myth of how she met Elvis and whether she was a virgin at the time.

When Currie brought Priscilla back to Elvis's house a second time, he knew that Elvis would waste no time in taking her upstairs. A few days after Priscilla's first visit, Currie voyeuristically pressed her for details of what had happened that first night. Elvis was sweet and tender with her, she told Currie. They lay on the bed and he kissed her gently, and then things got a little hotter. "He just played with her," Currie told Finstad. "He was doing the hand thing: He was feeling her up, so to speak. He went under with his hand, very slowly, rubbing the skin, rubbing across her chest, stuff like that, and telling her to relax, that he wasn't going to hurt her, talking to her like she was a kid-which of course she was." Elvis would waste no time in taking her upstairs. A few days after Priscilla's first visit, Currie voyeuristically pressed her for details of what had happened that first night. Elvis was sweet and tender with her, she told Currie. They lay on the bed and he kissed her gently, and then things got a little hotter. "He just played with her," Currie told Finstad. "He was doing the hand thing: He was feeling her up, so to speak. He went under with his hand, very slowly, rubbing the skin, rubbing across her chest, stuff like that, and telling her to relax, that he wasn't going to hurt her, talking to her like she was a kid-which of course she was."

Priscilla was only too eager to please Elvis, and she complied. At first she just listened while he talked. To a background of sad music on the radio, Elvis shared his heart, telling her of his insecurities about keeping his fan base, talking again of his grief over losing his mother, and confessing how disappointed he was that his father was involved with another woman so soon after his mother's death. He seemed not only to trust Priscilla, but also to speak to her as if she were his age.

That night, they forged an integral psychological bond. If Priscilla became a projection of everything Elvis wanted and couldn't have, as Finstad wrote in her biography, he would become a stand-in for the lost and romanticized Jimmy Wagner. Elvis also offered her an escape from her complicated relationship with her stepfather, even as Elvis would quickly replicate the captain's control. Eventually she would tell Elvis the family secret.

"I felt more comfortable with him and had more trust in him," she would say about that second night. "I felt that he was a trustworthy person that I could depend on."

And perhaps that was part of the reason why Elvis was able to get as far as he did on Priscilla's second visit to his bedroom. Priscilla didn't want to tell Currie about it when he asked for a running report of their activities. But he controlled her fate with Elvis-she was dependent on him to take her back to the house. Plus, she needed someone to talk with about her situation-she was fourteen years old and playing adult games with an international film and music star. According to Currie, Finstad wrote, when he demanded the details ("Don't play coy with me!"), she told him everything-how Elvis had her blouse and bra off, how his hands were going everywhere, and how he started to get under her dress.

As her nights with Elvis continued, Currie would insist on hearing about the intimacies on the very night they occurred. But Priscilla would want to know what he he knew, too, particularly about the other girls. Not only would Elisabeth Stefaniak crawl into Elvis's bed after Priscilla left ("not necessarily for s.e.x," Joe Esposito offers), but sometimes fifteen-year-old Heli Priemel would be leaving Elvis's bedroom when Priscilla arrived. And one night, she had sneaked a peek at Anita Wood's letters and knew that Elvis was heavily invested at home. Her compet.i.tion was keen, and she needed Currie to both quell her anxiety and help her level the playing field. knew, too, particularly about the other girls. Not only would Elisabeth Stefaniak crawl into Elvis's bed after Priscilla left ("not necessarily for s.e.x," Joe Esposito offers), but sometimes fifteen-year-old Heli Priemel would be leaving Elvis's bedroom when Priscilla arrived. And one night, she had sneaked a peek at Anita Wood's letters and knew that Elvis was heavily invested at home. Her compet.i.tion was keen, and she needed Currie to both quell her anxiety and help her level the playing field.

However on one of their drives back to Weisbaden, Currie told Finstad he became excited at Priscilla's recounting and pulled off the autobahn for a quick a.s.signation. He tried to kiss her, and she resisted, and then he fondled her breast, and she wriggled away. Finally, he quit. It was the old syndrome-she'd been up in the bedroom with Elvis, and so she didn't need him.

Priscilla would describe the event to Finstad as more of an attempted rape. "I was terrified. I did everything in my power to keep him off me. There was a house there . . . [and] I was going for that. I kicked doors open and blew horns." When the lights came on in the house, it scared Currie, she said, and he stopped. She told no one, "because I thought I wouldn't see Elvis anymore."

And she had to see Elvis again. But she later said to Finstad that when Currie tried to rape her a second time, taking her by the Rhine River, she told her parents and Elvis what had happened.

Her parents had become concerned about her friendship with Elvis, they said, when Elvis started calling her. Priscilla talked about him every minute at home, too, and suddenly the captain needed some answers.

"I don't think he was prepared to know what was going to happen, because I only went for a visit," Priscilla has said. "But I just kept visiting and visiting. And then we started to fall in love. I visited a lot, but it was always with other people. And there were parties. In [my father's] mind, there were always a lot of people, and I wasn't the only one Elvis was seeing. When you are a parent, you never really see the full picture. And when you are a child, you don't really give the full picture."

Captain Beaulieu insisted that Elvis come to the house before Priscilla would be allowed to see him again. Elvis agreed, and when he arrived, he wasn't alone. "I'm Elvis Presley," he said. "And this is my father, Vernon."

"I enjoyed speaking with Elvis and was impressed with his manners," the captain said in 2005. "Anyone would be. He seemed impressed by my military service and asked a number of intelligent questions about my work. All this was fine. But at a certain point I had to ask him, 'Why my daughter? With millions of women throwing themselves at you, why Cilla?' His answer was straightforward. 'I feel comfortable talking to her,' he said. 'She's more mature than her age. And don't worry. I'll take good care of her.' I concluded that he was genuine, and now I am absolutely certain that I came to the right decision."

Ann Beaulieu felt the same.

"When we met Elvis that first time, our entire outlook changed," she said in a doc.u.mentary DVD. "I'd never met such a polite young man. He addressed my husband as 'sir' or 'captain.' He addressed me as 'ma'am.' He was soft-spoken and sincere. You couldn't help but like him. He treated us with complete respect."

As Joe Esposito observed, "Elvis could talk anyone, particularly female, into anything."

But there were other reasons, perhaps, why Priscilla's mother was so willing for her to attach herself to Elvis, as Finstad wrote in Child Bride Child Bride. Ann had been only fifteen when she snuck out to see another handsome dark-haired serviceman, Jimmy Wagner, at the USO. And there was another factor: Ann loved it that her daughter was seeing a celebrity, as if some of his stardust would rub off on Priscilla and on her, as well. Ann had always dreamed of a career in show business, perhaps as a dancer, if not an actress. In fact, Ann had become infatuated with Elvis while watching The Ed Sullivan Show The Ed Sullivan Show.

The surprise, then, was that she didn't just let let Priscilla go to see Elvis-she Priscilla go to see Elvis-she encouraged encouraged it, in part to live vicariously through her daughter. When Currie first spoke with the Beaulieus about getting permission to take her to the house, he told Finstad, "It was not a question of if Ann would let Priscilla go," he said. "It was rather a question of when I would take her." it, in part to live vicariously through her daughter. When Currie first spoke with the Beaulieus about getting permission to take her to the house, he told Finstad, "It was not a question of if Ann would let Priscilla go," he said. "It was rather a question of when I would take her."

The Beaulieus had to have known what eventually would happen with a twenty-four-year-old man and a fourteen-year-old girl who kept such close company. But Elvis a.s.sured them they were just playing music.

Priscilla wrote in her autobiography that she begged Elvis "to consummate our love" before he left Germany, and that he refused to do it. But in this case, "consummation" becomes a matter of semantics. Elvis's young visitor was apparently not s.e.xually shy in the slightest. Joe Esposito remembers Elvis telling him, "She's a beautiful girl. I wouldn't lay a hand on her. But to have her sit on your face!"

On the third or fourth nights, the temptation got to be too much, and after the tickling, and the teasing, and the kissing, Elvis and Priscilla had intercourse, she told Currie. And not just once. But Elvis didn't consider it going all the way, because he would pull out before he felt that they had consummated the relationship. That way, in his mind, she was still untouched. But in time, Elvis would tell members of his entourage that, indeed, he and Priscilla had had s.e.x in Germany. And Priscilla would later confirm it to Billy Smith's wife, Jo.

Once that behavior began, Priscilla returned to Goethestra.s.se three or four nights a week, becoming a part of the group that regularly congregated at the house. With such hours, it took everything she had to keep from falling asleep in cla.s.s, and Elvis began slipping her pills to keep her awake. She swore she didn't take them, though, only keeping them in a box with her other Elvis souvenirs. "I was leading two lives," she says, "ninth grader by day, Elvis's girl by night."

After each visit, Currie, or Lamar, or Joe would drive Priscilla home. In dreadful weather, the forty-five-minute drive would take far longer, and they would sometimes get her home at two or three in the morning, far after her curfew. Instead of a dressing-down, however, they received only pleasantries from her parents. Priscilla could hardly get up for school the next morning, but all her mother would say, Currie told Finstad, was, "What time do you want her ready the next time?"

Priscilla was right to worry about Anita Wood. Late that fall, while out on winter maneuvers in Bavaria's Wildflecken, where he spent thirty days sleeping out on the ground, often in snow, Elvis wrote Anita a four-page letter. Postmarked November 6, 1959, it was the last of three letters Elvis wrote her during his military service, and it was by far the most revealing, as he rolled out in frank terms his homesickness, mother need, and hormonal desire. maneuvers in Bavaria's Wildflecken, where he spent thirty days sleeping out on the ground, often in snow, Elvis wrote Anita a four-page letter. Postmarked November 6, 1959, it was the last of three letters Elvis wrote her during his military service, and it was by far the most revealing, as he rolled out in frank terms his homesickness, mother need, and hormonal desire.

He addressed her as "My Dearest Darling 'Little,' " and began by saying how miserable he was out in the field. He was down with a fever and tonsillitis again, he wrote, and listening to the radio. His only consolation was that his tour of duty was almost over, and he would soon come home to his career, friends, and "most of all you, my darling."

His reason for writing, he told her in well-thought-out paragraphs, was that he was worried about how she might react when he did return home. He didn't know how she felt about him now, he said, "because after all, two years is a long time in a young girl's life."

It was a curious choice of words, considering that Anita would turn twenty-one in May, and was nearly a woman, while fourteen-year-old Priscilla was clearly a child. His words suggest that he was melding them emotionally in his mind. But on the surface, he seems concerned that Anita may have gotten older and wiser, and that she might have moved on.

Whether Elvis wrote the letter as much to make up his own mind between his two loves, he spent the majority of it declaring his love for Anita and apologizing for things she might have read or heard. He also said that he had the feeling she had cooled on him, not only because she hadn't written to him, but also because of the sound of her voice on the phone. "The warmth and love seems to have dimmed," he said.

I want you to know that in spite of our being apart, I have developed a love for you that cannot be equaled or surpa.s.sed by anyone. My every thought is you, my darling. Every song I hear, every sunset reminds me of the happy and wonderful times we've spent together. I tell you this because I want you to know my feelings toward you have not changed, but instead has [sic] grown stronger than I ever thought it [sic] could.I have hurt you sometimes because I was mad at some of the things you did, or I thought you did, but every time these things happened, I thought that maybe you only liked me for what I am, and didn't really love me for myself. . . . The fact remains, if it's really love, Anita, if we really love each other, it will last . . . although things will come up in the future that will hurt us both. They are to be expected.Please believe me when I tell you it's you and only you, my darling. But I think that you will keep our word, and tell me if you had grown to care for someone else and vice versa . . . Darling, I pray that you haven't let your loneliness, pa.s.sions, and desires make you do something that would hurt me. If you have, it is better you tell me now. I can't believe you have or would.So darling, if you still feel the same and if you love me and me alone, we will have a great life together, even though you hear things and read things. Just think as you said, everyone knows how I feel about you. I can't explain to you how I crave you and desire your lips and your body under me, darling. I can feel it now. The things we did and the desire we had for each other's body!!! Remember, darling, "True love holds its laurels through the ages no matter how loud the clamor of denial." That which deserves to live-lives.

Yours alone,EP In challenging Anita to "keep our word" about growing to care for someone else, Elvis breaks his his word in not being truthful with her about Priscilla. word in not being truthful with her about Priscilla.

Anita had read about her in the papers, and "he a.s.sured me that this was a child, a fourteen-year-old child." While she considered this letter from Elvis to be "a little cruel," she says, "I had been a little cruel to him."

If he really thought that Anita might leave him, it would have been a grave concern, particularly now that he was returning to Graceland for the first time since his mother's death. His letter suggests that his real intention in writing was to secure Anita as a backup-that he was making certain he had, literally, a warm body awaiting his return from frozen, frosty Deutschland.

Elvis's psychological set would have mandated a backup, in case he had trouble with Captain Beaulieu, for his relationship with Priscilla had to feel tenuous, given her age and the fact that she would remain in Germany when he went home. If Priscilla were the new obsession, "Anita was a known ent.i.ty, comfort food for the mind, a distant, pa.r.s.ed-off reality that in Elvis's mind smelled, felt, reeked of home, Gladys, Memphis, and stardom," says psychologist Whitmer. "Whatever carnality the two of them had enjoyed, that, too, would be exponentially magnified."

Elvis's reference to two years being "a long time in a young girl's life" may also have been his subconscious-and accurate-a.s.sessment of the time it would take to get Priscilla to Memphis. Yet given the malleable mind of a fourteen-year-old, Elvis must have sensed that he was in the catbird seat in being able to mold her during those years, even from afar.

That Christmas, he arranged for a French poodle to be delivered to Anita, while at a party at Goethestra.s.se for his family and friends, he had Priscilla sit next to him at the piano as he sang "I'll Be Home for Christmas." She was furious with him-when he started to switch to guitar, he nonchalantly asked two English girls where his pick was. One of them told him its precise location: "It's upstairs on the table right beside your bed," she answered, smiling. "I'll get it."

Priscilla, who'd given Elvis a pair of bongo drums for Christmas, knew he had betrayed her once more. But he denied it, explaining that he'd mentioned how unkempt his bedroom was, and the girl had merely offered to clean it for him. Priscilla didn't believe him, but now, at the piano, "when he leaned over and gently kissed me, when he told me I was the one, the only one, when I saw tears in his eyes, nothing in the world mattered but our love. Nothing mattered but him."

When Elvis returned from winter maneuvers, he contacted a South African doctor named Laurenz Johannes Griessel Landau, who advertised herbal skin treatments to reduce acne scars and enlarged pores. Elvis, who "had pores big enough to hide a tank in," as Lamar put it, fretted about how he looked in his close-ups on screen, and began weekly treatments with the doctor. But their a.s.sociation came to an end when the dermatologist-who turned out not to have a medical degree at all-made inappropriate advances to Elvis during a procedure. "He eased his hand down between Elvis's legs and gave him a good squeeze," Lamar remembers. "And, boy, Elvis jumped thirty feet up in the air." named Laurenz Johannes Griessel Landau, who advertised herbal skin treatments to reduce acne scars and enlarged pores. Elvis, who "had pores big enough to hide a tank in," as Lamar put it, fretted about how he looked in his close-ups on screen, and began weekly treatments with the doctor. But their a.s.sociation came to an end when the dermatologist-who turned out not to have a medical degree at all-made inappropriate advances to Elvis during a procedure. "He eased his hand down between Elvis's legs and gave him a good squeeze," Lamar remembers. "And, boy, Elvis jumped thirty feet up in the air."

Elvis told him to get out, that his work was finished. But Landau was not so easily dismissed. He had tape recordings and pictures of Elvis and "a young, young girl" in intimate situations, he said, and he threatened to expose them. Panicked, Elvis gave Landau enough money to relocate to London. Then he called the Colonel, who recommended that he go to the army's Provost Marshal Division, which referred the case to the FBI.

It never occurred to Elvis to end his inappropriate relationship with Priscilla, however, nor to curtail his activities with the dancers and strippers at the clubs. In early January 1960, just after his twenty-fifth birthday, he returned to Paris for six days with Cliff, Lamar, and Joe, acting as his new friend's tour guide in the romantic city. Joe, at Vernon's request, would keep tabs on the expenditures, a job he would do well, impressing not only Vernon and Elvis, but also their accountant back in Memphis.

"We just played all night and slept during the day," Joe remembers. ("Well, I'll tell you, it's a gay town . . . if you like nightlife and everything," Elvis would soon remark to Armed Forces Radio.) They stayed in the penthouse at the George V Hotel and hit all of Elvis's usual nightspots, taking in the drag show at Le Bantu. Elvis had enjoyed an encounter with a female contortionist in Frankfurt one night ("He stayed in that dressing room five or six hours-came out of there wringing wet," Lamar says), but he kept his distance from the impersonators. Lamar and Cliff had already gotten burned, and he didn't want to be next.

Elvis had a more legitimate reason for going to Paris-to further his new study of karate. ("It gave him permission to be a bada.s.s," says Lamar.) For the last month, he had been taking lessons twice a week from Jurgen Seydel, the father of German karate. Elvis had been fascinated by martial arts since 1957, when Tura Satana mentioned their influence on her strip act and showed him some of the moves. Only recently, he had read a magazine article about Hank Slamansky, the ex-marine who introduced the sport into the armed services. Seydel saw how serious Elvis was about it and recommended that he take cla.s.ses from the j.a.panese instructor Tetsuji Murakami in Paris.

Within days of returning to Germany, he was promoted to acting sergeant, and after another round of maneuvers, he threw a party to celebrate his forthcoming transfer. His army experience was finally coming to an end. On March 3, 1960, he would be on his way home, flying into Fort Dix, New Jersey. "They thought I couldn't take it, and I was determined to go to any limits to prove otherwise," he told Armed Forces Radio.

Now he began making real plans to resume his old life in the States. Joe Esposito would go to work for him when they got home, and Elisabeth had agreed to come to Graceland to be his secretary, with occasional trips to Hollywood. Elvis hoped Rex Mansfield would also join the group as his road manager, and he would talk with him about it on the train heading home to Memphis. They had walked every step of their army hitch together, from the first day to the last.

Looking back on it all, he defined his time in the service as a blessing in disguise. "It was a time of grief for me. . . . It came at a time when I sorely needed a change. G.o.d's hand at work. The army took me away from myself and gave me something different."

On March 1, the day before his departure, the military held a press conference for its celebrity sergeant. More than one hundred reporters and photographers attended, capturing Elvis's every word and gesture as his commanding officer presented him with a certificate of merit for "cheerfulness and drive and continually outstanding leadership ability."

n.o.body but Joe Esposito knew that at that very moment, Elvis had 1,200 pills packed in his luggage, "a box of twelve bottles with a hundred pills in each one." In Paris, "We'd be out partying all night, then get up and take one of those little pills, and it was great. Elvis was the type who thought you never take just one, because two is even better."

Before he left the press conference that day, Elvis ran into an old friend, someone he hadn't seen since her enlistment in 1957. He hadn't even known she was in Germany. It was Marion Keisker, his mentor from Sun Records, who still insisted that she, and not Sam Phillips, had really discovered him. She was a.s.sistant manager of Armed Forces Television there, a captain under her married name, MacInness.

She caught him just as he was coming in the door, flanked by M.P.s. It was "like they were taking him to the gallows," she thought. "He stepped through and I said, 'Hi, hon,' and he turned around and his jaw fell. He said, 'Marion, you're in Germany and an officer!' I knew he didn't know. He said, 'Do I kiss you or salute you?' I said, 'In that order.' There I was in my uniform and he was in his uniform, and I just flung myself on him."

But the only girl he was really thinking of was Priscilla. The countdown to his departure had been h.e.l.l for both of them, and they clung to each other on that final day, first at the house, and then on the ride to the air base.

The night before, he told her for the first time that he loved her. "We swore undying fidelity," she says. But underneath, she was a ma.s.s of insecurity. "What was I to think? What was I to believe? He was going back to America where he was [the] biggest star. He was going back to making music and making movies. He was going to appear on the Frank Sinatra [special]. Where did all this leave me?"

She tried not to worry too much. Hadn't he given her his combat jacket and his sergeant's stripes? "Little One," he said softly, "these prove you belong to me." Then he got out of the car, waved cheerfully to the crowd, and boarded the plane.

"He was in love with Priscilla, no two ways about it," says Joe.

And it showed. The photographers figured out who she was and snapped her picture as he waved directly to her. Priscilla offered a lonely wave in return, and even in her sorrow, with a scarf wrapped around her head to keep the March wind at bay, her face rivaled that of a Hollywood starlet. She didn't smile, but she didn't cry, either. She kept her famous family reserve. And then he was gone.

But there was a postscript to the story, and it involved Currie Grant and how Suzanne Finstad knew that he was telling the truth in the he said/she said account.

After Currie had attacked her in the car the second time, Priscilla told Finstad, her parents banned Currie from ever coming anywhere near her. Elvis, too, declared he was no longer part of the group, according to Priscilla. But Currie argued that Priscilla was wrong, that he was still very much a part of the inner circle. Finstad arranged to interview them together, face-to-face, and to record the conversation with their permission, Currie said he brought Priscilla to the air base the day that Elvis flew back to the States. He and Carol had picked her up at her house.

"You think my father would let let you pick me up at the house?" Priscilla countered angrily, as Finstad reported in you pick me up at the house?" Priscilla countered angrily, as Finstad reported in Child Bride Child Bride.

"He was glad to let me pick you up that day," Currie mocked. "A Life Life cameraman took all the pictures around my car. I'm standing outside, holding the door. Priscilla, you don't remember that, huh? You've got something up there that's really blocking your memory." cameraman took all the pictures around my car. I'm standing outside, holding the door. Priscilla, you don't remember that, huh? You've got something up there that's really blocking your memory."

Priscilla soon left, insisting Currie was "in a dream world."

Finstad had a scientist, Ray Gunther, put the tape of their conversation through a personality stress evaluator, or PSE, a computerized voice stress test considered more accurate than a polygraph, and used by police departments all over the Unites States. In evaluating twenty-eight points in Currie and Priscilla's dispute, Gunther concluded that Currie was telling the truth 100 percent of the time, and that Priscilla was deceptive in all but one of her statements, an innocuous one about how Currie originally introduced himself.

Finstad also discovered that Currie had an almost photographic memory for details. He had even remembered the make, model, and license plate number of the car that he was driving at the time.

In the course of her research, Finstad found a German magazine, Film Journal, Film Journal, from 1960. The publication chronicled Elvis's last day in the country in a minute-by-minute account, replete with a little clock in each photograph. There in the magazine was a picture of Currie, opening the door of his 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air for Elvis and Priscilla. Not only did the license plate number match what Currie had told her, but so did the hour. from 1960. The publication chronicled Elvis's last day in the country in a minute-by-minute account, replete with a little clock in each photograph. There in the magazine was a picture of Currie, opening the door of his 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air for Elvis and Priscilla. Not only did the license plate number match what Currie had told her, but so did the hour.

"It was literally the smoking gun," says Finstad. "I didn't care which one was telling the truth. I simply wanted to know what really happened."

In her opinion, Currie's story doesn't in any way tarnish Priscilla, she adds. It just makes her more human. She was like every other teenage girl in the world, desperate to make Elvis Presley her own.

On Wild in the Country, Wild in the Country, filmed in late 1960 and early 1961, Elvis met actress Tuesday Weld. She called him "dynamite-real dynamite." Their relationship was often tempestuous. filmed in late 1960 and early 1961, Elvis met actress Tuesday Weld. She called him "dynamite-real dynamite." Their relationship was often tempestuous. (Robin Rosaaen Collection) (Robin Rosaaen Collection)

Chapter Twenty.

"Crazy"

He arrived at McGuire Air Force Base near Fort Dix, New Jersey, at 7:42 A.M. A.M., in the midst of a snowstorm, full of barbiturates to stave off his nervousness about flying. It was still dark that early March morning, and standing in the snow in his dress blues and hat, smiling, waving, and illuminated by hundreds of flashbulbs, Elvis was beyond handsome. He was lean, at 170 pounds, and positively glowing. No actor in Hollywood could have approached his magnificence. the midst of a snowstorm, full of barbiturates to stave off his nervousness about flying. It was still dark that early March morning, and standing in the snow in his dress blues and hat, smiling, waving, and illuminated by hundreds of flashbulbs, Elvis was beyond handsome. He was lean, at 170 pounds, and positively glowing. No actor in Hollywood could have approached his magnificence.

The army held a full-scale press conference, and on hand to welcome him were the usual parties-the RCA executives, his music publisher Jean Aberbach, as well as Nancy Sinatra, who presented him with two formal, lace-fronted shirts, a gift from her father, Frank.

The publicity stunt was to billboard his upcoming television special, "Frank Sinatra's Welcome Home Party for Elvis Presley," in which a new, cleaned-up, adult Elvis would be presented to the public with an imprimatur from the chairman of the board. It was a slick piece of behind-the-scenes machination by the Colonel, and came together through connections as simple and obvious as the William Morris Agency and as complicated and opaque as Las Vegas mobsters.

As far as the Colonel was concerned, rock and roll was dead, just like Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and the careers of Jerry Lee Lewis (who had married his underage cousin) and Little Richard (who had gone into the seminary). It was time for Elvis to move on to the next phase of his life as an all-American hero. That's what the military years had all been about.