Priscilla Presley coming to Victoria

Presley has confirmed she is coming to Victoria to launch the Elvis: Direct From Graceland exhibition in Bendigo. The exhibition features 300 artefacts owned by Elvis Presley.

Elvis Presley with Priscilla on their wedding day, 1967.

Priscilla Presley is coming to Victoria to launch the Elvis: Direct From Graceland exhibition in Bendigo.

“I’m so excited about coming back to Australia,” Presley told the Sunday Herald Sun. “Elvis was very popular in Australia, and we’re bringing some wonderful artefacts with us that will showcase all aspects of Elvis’ life.”

Priscilla will launch the exhibition, which features 300 authentic artefacts owned by Elvis Presley, direct from his Graceland home, at the Bendigo Gallery on March 19.

The rarely-seen items include his military uniforms, a customised Harley-Davidson, costumes from the famous 1968 comeback special, his jumpsuits, Elvis’ wedding tuxedo and Priscilla’s wedding dress. 

Priscilla Presley will be in Victoria late March.

Priscilla said every item evokes wonderful memories for her, but the wedding dress she wore in 1967 when she married Presley is the most sentimental.

She went undercover to buy a wedding dress, accompanied by Charlie Hodge, who worked for Elvis, posing as her fiance.

“Elvis and I were so nervous. We had to keep it hush hush, so I wore a wig and sunglasses,” Priscilla told the Sunday Herald Sun.

“I would try the dresses on for Charlie, and ask him what he thought. But I knew the dress I wanted. Anyway, my wig kept getting looser and looser. I’m thinking, ‘I hope this wig doesn’t fall off or I’ll be outed.

“I went back to the dressing room, got my dress, and as we walked out the door, my wig fell off,” she said, laughing.

“It was quite a feat because if anyone found out about our wedding, that would have been it. We really wanted to have privacy and be with family and friends.”

Asked what she thought of Elvis’ wedding tux, Priscilla replied, without missing a beat: “It was beautiful, done to perfection. He looked so good in it.

“A lot of times, men don’t like a tux and they only stay in it for so long. But we wore our wedding clothes again at Graceland for all the people who couldn’t come to the wedding.”

Elvis Presley and Priscilla cut their wedding cake after exchanging nuptials in the Aladdin Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas.

Did she ever tell Elvis: “Please don’t wear that.”

Priscilla bursts into laughter. “Can you imagine? He had taste, he had style, whatever he wore, he looked good.

“The only time I ever said anything was one time, when he had on this shirt that was like psychedelic. We had a fish tank in the lounge, and the fish kept looking at his shirt. They kept coming up to the glass, then they’d swim away, then come back.

“I said to Elvis, ‘I think it’s your shirt. It’s scaring those fish half to death!’”

Priscilla says Elvis was a humble man who felt uncomfortable with the king of rock and roll title bestowed on him.

“He didn’t want anybody calling him the king,” she says. “There was only one king, and that was Jesus. He; d say: ‘I’m just doing what I feel, singing what I sing.

“Elvis felt the music. He was immersed in it. He could never figure out why the crowds, the girls, were making a fuss over him. He was doing what he felt within the music. It was in his soul.”

Elvis: Direct From Graceland runs from March 19 to July 17.