Elvis and Hollywood starlet Anita started dating in 1957. When he left for military service in Germany in 1958, he gave her a diamond ring(a ‘friendship ring’) and a car. He called her and wrote letters. Anita, who Elvis always called ‘Little’, said: “He swore he loved me, how we would get married, how there was so no one else, how I need to stay true to him and remain and wait for him. How he was afraid I would not.” Instead, it was Elvis who betrayed her.
Anita explained why she was not alllowed to visit Germany: “(Elvis’ manager) Colonel Parker had stopped that… He thought that if I went over there, they would have us engaged or getting married. Colonel Parker said ‘Elvis does not need to have that kind of publicity.'”
When Elvis returned home in 1960, he continued to date Anita, who had waited for him. But she had heard rumours of a young “sweetheart” in the press and fan groups. Whenever she asked him about Priscilla he would say she was just a child and nothing was going on.
This went on for two years until Anita found proof and confronted the star.
Priscilla was detrmined not to let Elvis forget her and sent him letters in bright pink envelopes. Anita finally found one in 1962 when they were together in California, where Elvis was shooting a movie.
Anita said: “It was pressed in a book in the library outside of his bedroom… In the letter, it said, ‘Please call my dad. I want to come over there and if you call my dad, I know he will let me come, he will listen to you. I miss you’.
“So when he came in, I said, ‘What is this letter, who is this, this Priscilla, you said she was just a child?’
“He got so mad because I found the letter. He took me and he shoved me up against the closet. He was so mad at me, just livid because I had found the letter.”
Anita was so upset she leftand flew back to Memphis to stay with Elvis’ grandmother, Minnie Mae, who adored her.
She said: “I know when I walked in the door the phone was ringing and it was him. I didn’t want to talk to him. But he kept calling.
‘I remember when he got me on the phone, (he said) ‘Little, please don’t tell anybody about this. This girl, again, she’s just a child. She’s just a fourteen-year-old child it means absolutely nothing. She just wants to visit, it means nothing.
‘And if you told anybody, I’d get in a lot of trouble, she’s so young’. He just begged me, ‘Little, Little, Little’. So I said, ‘I won’t tell anybody’, and I never did, I never did tell anybody.”
Anita added: “I thought she (Priscilla) was a very pretty, pretty young lady. She was probably crazy about him too, fourteen-years-old, I don’t know if she could be in love; she probably was. I don’t know at fourteen-years-old.
“And I just couldn’t imagine, well anyway. Coming over to the United States, it just didn’t sound right to me.”
Elvis and Anita continued to date but he did persuade Priscilla’s parents to let her visit, behind Anita’s back. Eventually, Anita realised Elvis had to choose between then.
PART 2 TOMORROW: THE FINAL TEARFUL ANITA AND ELVIS SHOWDOWN
