Child Bride by Suzanne Finstad Read Free Book Online Page B

for
me.
And it was going to create a very big effect.”
    Just as Priscilla Beaulieu was being elected carnival queen, Elvis Presley was labeled the King of Rock and Roll. It was the end of 1956 and the beginning of his phenomenal trajectory to fame. By October he had earned five gold records in a single year, with two more to come; released his second album,
Elvis;
starred in a major feature film, the civil war drama
Love Me Tender;
and signed a ten-picture movie contract. He appeared in concert all over Texas that fall, fanning the flames of Priscilla’s growing infatuation.
    She and Pam went on a double-date to see her idol in
Love Me Tender
at the Base theater. Priscilla’s date was her current beau, seventh-grader Larry Powell. Pam and Priscilla, he remembered, were hysterical over seeing Elvis on the screen. “She was definitely screaming,” Larry recalled of Priscilla. “Standing up and hollering. You know those black-and-white reels of Elvis atsome of his early concerts, with girls screaming and crying? She was just like you see in those old movies.”
    Both girls scrutinized Debra Paget, Elvis’s costar. Pam idolized Paget, her “favorite movie star,” while Priscilla was simply sizing up the competition. Earl Wilson quoted Elvis in
Photoplay
that January of 1957 describing Paget as “the most beautiful girl in the world,” and fan magazines were reporting his unrequited love for her.
    There was truth to the rumors, though the real story has never been told until now. The account repeated in most Presley biographies states that Elvis developed an intense infatuation with Debra Paget, who, at twenty-two, rejected the shy nineteen-year-old singer as unsophisticated. According to Debra Paget, however, she and Elvis Presley fell in love.
    She “was a very young twenty-two,” as she put it, and extremely shy, and “found Elvis to be a very sweet, unassuming, fun, and kind person.” Their conversations, on and off the set, revolved around God. Debra’s parents—particularly her mother, who dominated her life and her career—refused to allow Debra to date Elvis, because, she recalled, “there were stories going around about him,” a side effect of his reputation as a rock-and-roll rebel. Willie Jane Nichols, Elvis’s mother’s best friend from Tennessee, would hear about Debra from Gladys Presley during the
Love Me Tender
shoot. “She talked to Elvis daily,” recalled Nichols. “Gladys would say, ‘I wish you could hear him talk about Debra Paget!’ He was just overwhelmed with her.”
    Debra Paget was Elvis Presley’s ideal in a woman. Like him, she had a close, intense relationship with her mother, a heavyset, formidable woman who physically resembled Elvis’s own mother, Gladys, a fact that didn’t escape either Elvis’s or Debra’s attention. Debra’s mother noticed that her daughter bore a certain facial resemblance to Gladys Presley, a fact that could only further endear her to Elvis. These similarities may have marked the beginning of Elvis’s obsession with physical resemblances between people close to him—an understandable preoccupation in a surviving twin, as he was.
    Debra Paget was a stunning ingenue with a heart-shaped face, clear blue eyes, and cupid’s-bow lips. Elvis the aesthete admired beauty in any woman. But Debra Paget offered more than a pretty face and a matching mother complex. She was also religious. And more importantly, she was a virgin. Her mother would not allow her to leave the house unchaperoned, so shehad never been on a formal date. To Elvis, this combination was perfection. “He always said he’d marry a virgin,” recalled Debra, “and maybe that’s why he said he’d marry me. Because his mama always told him to marry a virgin.”
    Contrary to previously published accounts, Debra did not consider Elvis Presley an undesirable hayseed. “Had my parents not objected,” she related, “I would have gone ahead. I thought a great deal of him.” Because