During one of Elvis Presley’s concerts, Priscilla Presley got onstage with the musician as a joke. He brought women up to the stage each show to “give away kisses.” Priscilla decided to walk up with these women, but her joke didn’t go as planned. She spent far longer in front of the crowd than she planned and walked back to her seat in embarrassment.
Priscilla Presley got embarrassed while on stage with Elvis
Elvis spent a great deal of time away from home to perform. Even when he didn’t have concerts scheduled, he avoided returning home to Priscilla and their daughter. This left Priscilla feeling like she had to compete for his attention.
“The jokes I played on him were also efforts to get his attention,” she wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “One night, after he’d left early for a show, I put on a black dress with a black hood and an exceptionally low-cut back. When it came time for Elvis to give away kisses to the girls in the audience — a regular part of his show — I went up to the stage.”
Elvis didn’t kiss her, though. Instead, he kept singing the song, leaving her standing there.
“With my hair hiding the dress strap around my neck, I appeared from the back to be nude from the waist up,” she wrote. “I could hear the ‘oooh’s’ and ‘aaah’s’ of the audience. They were under the impression that a topless girl had cornered Elvis and that he couldn’t figure out what to do.”
The prank lasted far longer than she’d hoped
Priscilla stood there as Elvis sang the rest of the song, trying desperately to get his attention.
“I kept whispering to him, ‘Kiss me, kiss me, so I can sit down,’ but he decided to turn the joke on me, and made me wait in the spotlight for the duration of the song.”
Then, Elvis took her entirely by surprise and introduced her to the audience. She found the whole experience embarrassing
“Planting a big kiss on my lips, he surprisingly introduced me to the audience,” she explained. “I felt a bit embarrassed and made my way back to my seat.”
Priscilla Presley shared her other ways of getting Elvis’ attention
Priscilla explained that the pranks were only one of the ways she tried to get Elvis’ attention. Once, while Elvis was poking fun at his father for flirting with a woman, he pointed out Priscilla’s outfits.
“You’re going to have problems of your own if your wife goes out in the street looking like that,” he told Elvis.
Priscilla admitted that she had taken to wearing more revealing clothing to keep Elvis’ eyes on her. It worked; Elvis liked being able to show Priscilla off.
“I had begun wearing skimpy knit dresses and see-through fabrics that were daringly revealing,” she wrote. “Lamar and Charlie whistled and gave wolf calls, while Elvis proudly showed me off.”
