Authors: Suzanne Finstad
Elvis glided back into civilian life, his career, and his tangled love life seemingly effortlessly. Elisabeth Stefaniak followed him to Graceland, pondering an offer to continue as his secretary-companion. Anita Wood was in Memphis, ready to resume her active status as his girlfriend, encouraged by Elvis. Anita had seen the
Life
pictorial on Priscilla Beaulieu and pressed Elisabeth for the details, testing Elvis’s dismissal of Priscilla as just a child. “I know she was asking Elisabeth a lot of questions,” declared Rex Mansfield, who flew back from Germany with Elvis and was mulling over an offer to become his road manager. “Kind of put Elisabeth on the spot. And she had to be very careful about how she answered those questions.” Anita accepted Elvis’s explanation and Elisabeth’s evasive responses about Priscilla, she said, “Because she was so young. And I just thought she was an ardent fan. I knew she was very pretty from the pictures of her, but … he always made me feel, even after I saw her picture, that I was it, I was his girl, and that we would have a future together.”
Yet Elvis was telling Joe Esposito, on the set of
G.I. Blues
that spring, that he missed Priscilla and “was going to marry that girl someday.” According to his cousin Earl Greenwood, Elvis had read a book on soul mates that deeply impressed him. Elvis felt that if he had a “twin soul,” it must be Priscilla, because of her strong resemblance to him, to his mother, and to Debra. “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” was among the first songs he recorded when he got out of the army; not only would he be forever associated with it, but the bittersweet spoken verse, taken from
As You Like It
, would be an almost eerie parallel to his unfolding relationship with Priscilla Beaulieu.
Elvis was a confused man in matters of the heart that spring. After
G.I. Blues
wrapped, he gave Anita a diamond necklace, encouraging her belief that theirs was a potentially permanent
relationship—though marriage, he made clear, was far off. “In his letter he talked about marriage, and when he came home he had to go right back to work and he couldn’t have a serious relationship,” Anita later explained. “We had to keep everything so quiet. Things we said, things we did, the way we felt about each other, could not be public because the Colonel said it would hurt his career.” Whether that was true or whether Elvis was avoiding commitment was one of the mysteries of Elvis. Joe Esposito, who became Elvis’s road manager when Rex Mansfield turned down the job to marry Elisabeth, saw Elvis as “young, wild, having a great time at the height of his career. I think marriage was the furthest thing from his mind.” Elvis, judging by his frequent allusions to it, cherished the
concept
of marriage more than the practice itself.
Priscilla, in truth, was similarly conflicted about Elvis. She and Tom Stewart, the school bad boy, continued their hot-and-heavy relationship, which intensified that spring. “She didn’t seem very heartbroken to me,” remarked Donna Pollen, who became friendlier with Priscilla that semester. Yet Priscilla wasn’t prepared to release the fantasy of Elvis. With her driven, goal-oriented personality, she continued to analyze and scrutinize the competition. When Nancy Sinatra met Elvis’s plane in the United States to promote his appearance on a Frank Sinatra TV special, the press linked the two of them. “I used to wonder if he dated her,” conceded Priscilla. “I used to envision him dating her, and I would talk myself out of it: ‘I
know
she’s not his type. It’s not something that I know he’s attracted to!’ ” She wrote him girlish letters on pink stationery, addressed to Joe, that amused Elvis’s office staff—his cousin Patsy and his aunt Lillian.
Priscilla’s parents emphatically had not let go of Elvis. Al Corey, who dated Priscilla during a brief breakup from Tom, stopped showing up at her house, he recalled, because the Beaulieus made him feel unwelcome. “The parents would say, ‘Our daughter is with Elvis Presley; you need to find someone else.’ Her mother was like a stage mother: ‘You’re seeing Elvis Presley’ was said to her more than one time.” Al got the impression that Paul and Ann were reserving Priscilla for Elvis.
For Priscilla, the Elvis side of her life was becoming increasingly surreal. Three weeks passed before Elvis called her from Hollywood, where he was beginning
G.I. Blues
—three weeks that must have seemed like three months in ninth-grade time. Her relationship with a movie star/rock-and-roll idol, though
thrilling and exciting on one level, was torturous for Priscilla on another. She wondered if Elvis would ever call her again, she worried about how serious he was with Anita, and she bedeviled herself with images of him romancing his latest sexy costar. Her fears were not unfounded, for Elvis had begun an affair with Juliet Prowse, his leading lady in
G.I. Blues.
The torture, for Priscilla, was that she had no control. Elvis determined whether he would call her and when, and whether he had any interest in pursuing the relationship. She was powerless to act and could only
re
act, a position of submission that had to be especially galling to a girl who was accustomed to being the queen, not a member of the court. Her doubts and insecurities where Elvis was concerned led to a disturbingly schizoid existence. “It was very difficult to get back to being a teenager.… Even though I tried to carry on a normal life, it was constantly, Was I going to get a phone call tonight? When was he going to call me back? Is he going to call me back? What’s he going through? Can he handle that? Will
she
still be there? My problems were now adult problems that I probably shouldn’t have been concerned with at fourteen. Military outfits, combat caravans—I would see him in them; I would see him go along in the Jeeps. I would see him—everything reminded me of Elvis. ‘Soldier Boy,’ the song by the Shirelles. A different song related to everything.”
While a part of Priscilla still clung to her Imagine If fantasies of Elvis, on a day-to-day basis she was embroiled in a real romance with Tom Stewart. “She wasn’t pining at all,” according to Al Corey, who became friends with her then. “Not at all. She wore Tom’s class ring around her neck. Tommy was the only one she was hanging around with. Those two were
it
—every break, every recess, every lunch break. You couldn’t put a piece of paper between them.” Al recalled that Priscilla’s parents tried to prevent her from seeing Tom, but she would sneak out of the house to meet him. “Her dad screamed about her seeing Tommy, and Priscilla just rebelled.”
Contrary to her later portrayal of herself as completely involved with Elvis and unable even to
think
of anyone else, Priscilla was in a relationship with Tom that spring that those who knew them or saw them together in and out of school—and Tom himself—regarded as serious, intense, and powerfully sexual. “It was as intimate as it could be,” declared Al, who was in the Spartan brotherhood with Tom and talked to him about his sex
life with Priscilla. Did they have intercourse? “Had to be,” Al averred. “Priscilla
told
me she and Tommy had sex.”
“[Priscilla] and Tom Stewart had a hot relationship,” confirmed another Spartan who was close to Tommy. “It wasn’t across a milk shake at the snack bar. She was wilder than that, Stewart was wilder than that, and our group was wilder than that. Al Corey would … know. Three guys know, not including Tom Stewart, and I’m one of them. I do know the story firsthand.” If so, Priscilla Beaulieu was certainly not a virgin on her wedding night; by the age of fifteen she had allegedly had intercourse with Currie, Tom Stewart, and Elvis himself.
Priscilla not only had her insecurities about Elvis’s other women to grapple with, but she was also haunted by his farewell warning to remain “untouched,” or he would know. “That was enough to scare the heck out of me,” she admitted later.
Priscilla’s life in Germany, post-Elvis, was not the lonely endurance test she later depicted it as. Wiesbaden, at the time, was considered the Hollywood of Germany, a beautiful resort town with big-name entertainment. Classmates of Priscilla’s described their time at H. H. Arnold as a charmed existence. “[We were] like little kings and queens living as teenagers in Europe after the war, skiing in the Alps and summering in Italy,” by Mary Ann Barks’s description. Both Mary Ann and Tom Muldoon, Tom Stewart’s close friend, remembered Priscilla drinking beer at the beer stübes, especially Grauerstein, a bar claimed by the Spartans as their hangout. “And then there was a place downtown that served pink champagne,” offered Tom Muldoon. “She used to go to that place more than I did.” From time to time Priscilla sneaked cigarettes—another item on Elvis’s forbidden list—in the bathroom with some of the other girls.
“We were all just little model children, [but] we had this underground life,” explained Mary Ann, speaking of the military kids at H. H. Arnold. Much of the mischief occurred when the school’s mixed chorus, which included Priscilla, performed out-of-town concerts, staying in hotels. “We were allowed to get away from our parents,” remembered Steve Fox. “And many of us, I remember, who were away from home were allowed to do things at fourteen—things like checking into hotels with our girlfriends. I mean, we led a fast-paced life.” According to Al Corey, Priscilla was one of the girls who spent the night in a boy’s hotel room.
She was also seeing a nineteen-year-old Elvis impersonator
who performed at the Eagle Club, a Presley look-alike named Peter Von Wechmar, the self-described “hell-raiser” son of a German baron. Peter was a friend and something of a sexual protégé of Currie Grant’s. He told Currie about his relationship with Priscilla. “[Peter and Priscilla] saw each other at the club and had something to drink at the snack bar, and it all started from that,” according to Currie. “The club has beautiful grounds and they were walking around, and Peter started kissing her and she responded.” Peter told Currie he met Priscilla several times over the coming weeks, primarily for sex. “Because he reminded her so much of Elvis,” Currie speculated. “It kind of surprised me a little bit, but then it didn’t. Because I knew she was so used to sex, she was really hot-blooded now.” Both Peter Von Wechmar and the woman he married within a few years of the Priscilla affair died in the 1980s; Peter’s uncle, who was in Wiesbaden when Elvis left Germany, remembered his nephew dating Priscilla. Peter also told his son Victor, now in his thirties, about the relationship. “I don’t know if it was intimate,” posited Victor Von Wechmar. “I just know they were dating.” Peter’s adult daughter, Michelle, said she “wouldn’t doubt” that her father made love to Priscilla. “No, honestly. Not with my dad, no. He was a playboy back then. Especially looking like—he was almost a twin of Elvis.”
“Peter told me they had sex several times after Elvis left and I believe him one hundred percent,” Currie said.
As Priscilla carried on her active sex life with Tom and Peter, occasionally dating Al, she maintained the illusion of purity for Elvis, who believed she was sitting at home waiting to hear from him. “He was assuming she wasn’t dating in Germany,” confirmed Joe Esposito. “He thought she was crazy about him, and I don’t think he thought she’d be the type who’d try to [deceive him]. I’m sure he asked her on the phone if she did, and I’m sure she said no. I don’t think she did. I’m pretty sure she was consumed with Elvis at that time.” This was another of Priscilla’s powerful self-created myths. She reinforced the illusion in her autobiography, declaring that after Elvis called her at the end of March, “I spent all my time writing and rewriting letters to him … living in a state of suspended animation, waiting for Elvis’s infrequent calls.”
“That’s the manufactured truth of a celebrity or a quasi-celebrity,” claimed Tom Muldoon, a classmate and eventual confidant of Priscilla’s: “She is no longer who she was.” This
altering of reality fit with Priscilla’s clash with Currie; for if Priscilla “manufactured” the artificial reality of a lonely, celibate life after Elvis left Germany, what was to prevent her from creating her own whitewashed version of how she met Elvis and whether she slept with Currie?
Priscilla was so adept at projecting that seemingly innocent persona that the image is perpetuated by some who knew her even in Germany. Classmate Steve Fox, who never dated her, recollected, “My perception of Priscilla was that, in retrospect, she conducted herself with a lot of class. She might sit there and have a beer, but she would sit there and have one beer very slowly, while the rest of the people would get blotto.… She didn’t. She conducted herself with class and dignity. That’s how I would describe her.” The Priscilla dichotomy—the Gemini double personality—rendered her alternately wild and refined. The demure Priscilla was the observer. “I hardly ever remember her verbalizing,” conceded Steve. “She never was one to start a subject, change a subject, or interrupt a subject. She would just sit there and look pretty.”
The daring, fun-loving Priscilla was always present, however, ready to surface when the circumstances were right. Some of her female classmates in Wiesbaden remembered Priscilla as closely chaperoned, unable to attend even girls’ slumber parties. But this was another misperception. A month after Elvis flew out of Germany, Priscilla attended a sleep over at the home of Linda Plank, a classmate who worked in the school office with her. Several of the girls at the slumber party, including Priscilla, sneaked out of Linda’s house around two-thirty in the morning, went to the school dorm, and pounded on the first-floor window of one of the boys’ rooms. At this point the story became blurred depending upon whom one consulted. According to two eyewitnesses in a building across the street and a student in an adjoining dorm room, someone called the air police as the boys opened the window, unhooked the screen, and pulled three girls into the room. One of those girls apparently was Priscilla.
The students were questioned later by school counselors, and their parents met with the principal and vice principal. Donald Trull, the vice principal, confirmed afterward that Priscilla was a member of the slumber party “raising Cain … around the dorm.… It was a really wild night, apparently.” The school’s official report was that the girls knocked on a boy’s window at about 2:30
A.M.
and “one unidentified girl sat on the windowsill.”
Though they received accounts that a few of the girls, possibly including Priscilla, were inside boys’ rooms, “we didn’t catch any of them at the time,” as Trull put it. “Even if they had,” the principal, Leslie Murray, said then, “I would think the last thing that we’d want to do would be to publicize or sensationalize that type of activity.”