Elvis cried before his wedding ‘I have no choice’ – Why did Elvis Presley marry Priscilla?
Elvis Aaron Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu Presley on May 1, 1967, in Las Vegas. It was the showbusiness wedding of the year between two people who had fallen madly in love six years earlier. The beaming couple posed for photographs and then jetted off to a glamorous honeymoon in Palm Springs. Priscilla was still only 21 and maintains she was a virgin on her wedding night. Exactly nine months later they had a daughter, Lisa Marie. It sounded like a fairy tale.
Elvis’s housekeeper and cook Alberta Holman had been with the family for years and had been very close to his mother, Gladys. The King nicknamed her Alberta VO5 after the famous hair product brand, Alberto VO5.
After Gladys passed away, Alberta used to make Elvis his favourite meal of bacon, hashbrowns and black-eyed peas.
According to the biography Down at the End of Lonely Street: The Life and Dеаtһ of Elvis Presley by Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske, Alberta said she found him crying about the upcoming wedding in 1967.
She asked the star why he didn’t just cancel it if it was making him so unhappy and he apparently replied, “I don’t have a choice.”
There were rumours that Priscilla’s father, angry after so many years living with his daughter, threatened to prosecute Elvis for taking a minor across state lines.
He had been travelling with Priscilla to Los Angeles and Las Vegas when she was 15, which was contrary to the agreement made with her parents when they permitted her to leave Germany aged 16 to move to the US.
Elvis had assured them that their daughter would remain in Memphis, chaperoned by the star’s grandmother Minnie Mae, living in a separate house and attending school.
Instead, Priscilla even wrote fake postcards which were mailed from Memphis by staff whle she was travelling with Elvis.
However, other claims suggested Priscilla herself had pressured Elvis into marriage, threatening to go to the press with the details about their relationship, especially when she was 14 and 15.
Priscilla has always denied this.
Asked by Barbara Walters what had really happened, she said; “I think the pressure was on somewhat. We’d been together six years, the relationship was going well. The suggestion I think came from Colonel Parker (Elvis’ manager) ‘Either you should get married or go on. If you’re not getting married, then what are you doing?’”
There was certainly very little romance to the wedding which sounds more like a business transaction and publicity stunt. Shortly before Christmas 1966, Elvis proposed to Priscilla and they married on May 1, 1967, at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The wedding, arranged by Parker, lasted only eight minutes.
