as the King of Treating Women Like Shit

and Luring 14-Year-Olds into Bed

No thank you. No thank you very much.
By Elizabeth King
Oct 7 2016, 12:09pm
ShareTweetSnap

PHOTO VIA HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES

In addition to nabbing the title of "the King of Rock and Roll" with songs like "Can't Help Falling
in Love" and "He Touched Me," Elvis Presley stole many hearts. But a closer look at his life
beyond the music and swinging hips reveals that he was just as much the king of exploiting
teenagers for sex and treating women like shit.

Elvis was born January 8, 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi, but moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with
his family 13 years later. He was said to love singing in church, but his professional music career
didn't start until 1954, when he signed with Sun Records; before that, he'd been a truck driver.

Two years later, he was wildly famous. "Heartbreak Hotel," his first number-one hit, was
released in January 1956, and he quickly became a star with seemingly infinite potential before
him. The man was everywhere, and always with a swarm of screaming fans around to greet him.
But while on tour, Elvis's main focus wasn't "taking care of business." Instead, it seemed like he
cared more about exploiting the admiration of underage girls.

Read more: You Don't Have to 'Imagine' John Lennon Beat Women and Children—It's
Just a Fact

In his book Elvis Presley: A Southern Life, Joel Williamson writes about Elvis's life on the road,
including his time spent with teenagers. Williamson writes that while on tour, Elvis preyed on a
group of three 14-year-old girls who would pillow fight, tickle, wrestle, and kiss Elvis, who was
22 at the time.

Williamson also details an incident in which Elvis slept with a fan while he was in Louisiana
performing weekly on the Louisiana Hayride show in 1954. The condom broke while the act.
Not knowing what to do, Elvis asked his friends on tour how he should proceed, but they had no
helpful advice. In the morning, Elvis informed his friends that he brought the girl to the
emergency room and left her there to get a douche. All the while, he was obsessively calling his
15-year-old girlfriend, Dixie Locke, whom he loved to dress in clothes of his own choosing.

Eventually, Elvis found himself a 14-year-old he could get to commit to him. The King's first and
only wife, Priscilla, met him in 1959 while 24-year-old Elvis was serving in the military in
Germany. The two dated for six months before he returned to the US. In her memoir Elvis and
Me, Priscilla writes that Elvis did everything short of penetrative sex with her the first night they
spent together and until they were married. "It was as if Priscilla's virginity was another thing
that Elvis strangely and sorely needed to maintain," Williamson notes in his book.
PHOTO OF ELVIS PROMOTING "JAILHOUSE ROCK" VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
But the claims that Elvis and Priscilla did not have penetrative sex until their wedding night are
disputed, particularly by Suzanne Finstad, author of the Priscilla Presley biography Child Bride:
The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley. After their marriage (the two eventually tied the
knot in 1967), Elvis would bring other women into their bedroom; he would watch and film his
wife with them, sometimes also joining in—whether Priscilla was into this is undocumented.
According to Williamson, he also installed a two-way mirror in his Palm Springs home with
Priscilla so that he could secretly spy on couples having sex during lavish parties with showgirls
he would throw there.

When Priscilla gave birth to the couple's only child, Lisa Marie, in 1968 Elvis all but stopped
having sex with her, according to journalist Alanna Nash's book, Baby Let's Play House: Elvis
and the Women Who Loved Him. Priscilla wrote in her memoir that Elvis "had mentioned to me
before we were married that he had never been able to make love to a woman who had a child."

Priscilla eventually cheated on Elvis, and according to her book, she told him of the affair. She
writes that Elvis grabbed her and "forcefully made love" to her, saying, "This is how a real man
makes love to his woman." The duo separated in 1972 and divorced a year later. Two years after
that, Elvis went after yet another 14-year-old girl by the name of Reeca Smith. According to
Nash, Smith claims Elvis did not "take advantage of her" during their six-month relationship.

For More Stories Like This, Sign Up for Our Newsletter

His health deteriorating, Elvis couldn't help falling in love once again, this time with a 21-year-
old former beauty queen named Ginger Alden. The two got engaged and lived together in
Graceland, where Elvis's behavior worsened.

In her memoir, Elvis & Ginger, Alden writes about Elvis's abuse, some of which involved the
guns he kept in the house. Alden recounts a story in which Elvis, a compulsive eater at the time,
was on a yogurt craze and asked her to bring him more yogurt. "I don't think you need any more
yogurt," Alden says she told him. They both fell asleep, and Alden woke up to the sound of Elvis
firing a 57 Magnum pistol off in their bedroom. The bullet hit just above their headboard; Elvis
called it "an attention getter." Alden also writes in her memoir that he once fired a gun at the TV
and, in another incident, ran out of the house brandishing a machine gun because he had seen a
boy with a toy gun chasing Lisa Marie.

Elvis's career, and ultimately, his life, ended with drug abuse, which made him incontinent to
the point that he was having to wear diapers, according to Albert Goldman's 1981 biography. In
1977, at the age of 42, he died while wearing gold silk pajamas on a toilet in Graceland, where
Alden found his body. Despite his sexual pursuit of children, physical abuse, and dangerous,
emotionally driven decisions, fans still insist he was a God-fearing Southern gentleman led
astray by drugs. People also still want to believe he's really still alive and camped out in a cave
somewhere. Neither notion seems particularly true.

TAGGED:

MARRIAGE
MUSIC
FEMINISME
 VIOLENCE
MEN
CHILD BRIDE
ELVIS PRESLEY
ELVIS
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
THE KING
PRISCILLA PRESLEY 
ADULTERY
SEX WITH MINORS
MIDRANGE EDITORIAL
ELVIS AND GIRLS
ELVIS MARRIAGE
KING OF ROCK AND ROLL
BROADLY SEX
BROADLY VIOLENCE
Get a personalized roundup of VICE's best stories in
your inbox.
Subscribe
Related Articles

Who Was Harry Morton?

JELISA CASTRODALE

Steve Bannon Thinks Republicans Are Blowing It on Impeachment

ELIZABETH LANDERS

These Candidates Should Just Take the L and Go Home for Thanksgiving

MATT TAYLOR