Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley’s relationship is one of the world’s most iconic rock and roll romances. They met when Priscilla was just 14 and married eight years later. However, he always thought of her as “a little girl,” even when she started wearing the trendy, heavy makeup popular in the era.
Even under all her iconic, heavy makeup, to Elvis Presley, Priscilla ‘was always a little girl’
Prisiclla Presley didn’t always wear the heavy, Cleopatra-style makeup that became her trademark look for the latter part of the 1960s and early 70s. She adopted that style after taking a Patricia Stevens Finishing School course.
In a 1973 interview with Ladies Home Journal, Priscilla discussed her now-iconic makeup look, how it came about, and what Elvis thought of it. The interview was reprinted in full by Elvispresleymusic.au.
“When I went to Patricia Stevens, I overdid it with makeup. At that time, I was going through the Cleopatra stage,” Priscilla admitted.
“But it was fun. I still love to fool around with cosmetics, but not as much as when I was younger. I think every girl goes through that stage,” she continued.
Priscilla quipped that looking back on all those old photographs wearing all that makeup, she thinks, “Oh, how blind I was!” She also wishes Elvis would have commented on her dramatic makeup look.
“I wish that Elvis had said something, but he must have liked it because he never commented. I do think that men is show business like to have women in makeup because they are used to seeing women looking the best that they possibly can,” she continued.
However, she doesn’t believe her heavy makeup “changed Elvis’ impression” of her. “I was always a little girl to him,” she admitted.
Priscilla underwent a personal metamorphosis after her 1973 divorce from Elvis Presley
In the same interview, Priscilla Presley discussed her metamorphosis as a woman after divorcing Elvis Presley in 1973. She says she learned to “accept” herself as a single woman.
She explained, “The change is from being the person you think you are to accept the person you are. I know who I am and where I stand, and I feel I have an identity. I don’t have to be or please anybody other than myself.”
However, that’s not to say that being the girlfriend and later wife of the king of rock and roll didn’t come with its perks. Priscilla admits there were times she liked the attention paid to her due to her association with Elvis.
She says she felt “flattered when people would stare at me in public, at a restaurant, or on an opening night.” Priscilla said she would be “less than honest if I didn’t say I liked the attention.”
For the most part, her life with Elvis was one of being surrounded by friends and family. She believed her predominant desire to enjoy life at Graceland was at Elvis’ design.
She believes the king of rock and roll had a lot to do with being a homebody because he didn’t regularly associate with celebrities, though he had many celebrity friends. “He always had his friends from his hometown [that he spent time with],” she explained.
Elvis Presley and Priscilla co-parented their daughter Lisa Marie until his 1977 death
In the 2005 memoir Elvis – By the Presleys, which she wrote with her mom, Lisa Marie spoke of growing up at Graceland, calling it “amazing” and “filled with energy and excitement.” Lisa went back and forth between her parents after their amicable 1973 divorce.
“If [Elvis] was in a good mood, it would be a great day. We’d ride horses or ride around in golf carts. The thing about my father is that he never hid anything. If he was crabby, you knew it,” she wrote. “His temper could give Darth Vader a run for his money. But if he was happy, everyone was happy. He’d never bore you.”
After their divorce, Elvis and Priscilla co-parented Lisa Marie. She lived part-time with her mother in California and stayed with Elvis at Graceland during school breaks and holidays.
Lisa Marie was at the end of her school break in the summer of 1977 when Elvis Presley died in the master bathroom of his Graceland home. She was just nine years old.
