Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [186]
“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 documentary 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. 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 surprise, then, was that she didn’t just let Priscilla go to see Elvis—she 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.”
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 assured 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 sexually 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 sex in Germany. And Priscilla would later confirm it to Billy Smith’s wife, Jo.
Once that behavior began,