Carole Douglas: Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

Here's mine: both nature and nurture created and destroyed Elvis Presley. His extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins had what is now recognized as a genetic disposition to the disease of alcoholism. His mother was never autopsied, and her death at age forty-six was attributed to liver disease, but it is thought to have been cirrhosis of the liver. She certainly drank in her last years. The headstone Elvis put on her grave reads "She was the Sunshine of our Home," and during Elvis's youth she was described as musical and fun-loving, although possessed of a frying-pan-throwing temperament. Photos of Elvis with his parents as his fame grew show a somber, tender symbiosis: Elvis and Gladys always focusing on and touching each other; Vernon a tangential figure on the fringe of this consuming bond. But Gladys's eyes are ringed with unhealthy black, her expression is dead (or dazed by alcohol). She is not a well or happy woman. Her cherished son's meteoric rise, her loss of contact and control as he was swept away in a fever of touring and publicity and screaming girl groupies, coincided with her decline and death.

Wisely, Elvis disliked and avoided liquor, except for brief experimental periods, and disdained "recreational" drug use even as he escalated into massive doses of prescribed uppers and downers. He had no more knowledge than anybody then of the addictive dangers of mood-altering medications. He educated himself in the medications' side effects so he could prescribe for himself with authority. The seeds of his psychological and physical downfall were not only genetic and familial, but rooted so early in his performing career as to make his "unmaking" inevitable, which is where the word "tragic" enters his saga.

Because of lifelong sleeping problems, including nightmares and sleepwalking incidents, he slept with his mother until the age of twelve. He had never slept away from home until he went on the road in his late teens, to perform. This extended maternal closeness drove him into a confused sexuality: women he became truly close to became mothers, and the sexual side of the relationship became nurture and caretaking rather than passionate. Elvis always had "other women," often actresses or groupies, whom he pursued for shallow sexuality, but were more often needed as bedtime companions rather than lovers.

Through many books, the first reference I found to his using "uppers" was when he was given Dexedrine by other soldiers to stay awake on night guard duty in Germany. He came home with massive jars of the pills for the whole entourage. Although he'd made a few movies by then, Hollywood's tendency to medicate stars doesn't seem to be the culprit in his case. Then I found a referenceto Gladys, self-conscious at the media attention Elvis's stardom drew to her. She took diet pills and Elvis borrowed them at the very brink of his career. Diet pills then were amphetamines, "speed" prescribed readily by family doctors. They depressed the appetite center in the brain, which also interfered with the sleep center. They make you sleepless, but give you energy to burn. Minds on speed will run in creative circles, inventing all sorts of ambitious projects, but the impulse rarely produces anything concrete. When the effect wears off after a few weeks, takers need to increase the dosage to get the same effect.

Performers draw on superhuman amounts of adrenaline to enthrall their audiences, and stay awake hours after performing to come "down." Speed would have aggravated Elvis's naturally hyperactive metabolism and performer's lifestyle. He was soon also taking downers to sleep, the typical Hollywood doctor cocktail. The two medications create a manic/depressive roller coaster. Everything excessive that Elvis became had its roots in his impoverished youth, but was later enacted with the grandiose extravagance of a speed addict. The vampirish hours of a rock star made him into a man who reversed day and night, sleeping at dawn and rising to start the day at dusk. It was convenient for everyone around him, including women, to follow the same schedule, so Elvis enthusiastically converted them to the wonder pills too.

He was an overprotected mama's boy, a shy and sensitive soul ripe for loneliness, ostracizing, and bullying. He found identity in embracing his differences, in dressing like the black musicians who made Memphis's Beale Street a musical legend. Like many an outcast teenager, he took on a protective aggressive coloring. He hid his vulnerabilities behind the accoutrements of a fifties "hood," those black-leather-clad urban bad boys with the greaser hair, sideburns, and attitudes. He even dyed his hair and eyebrows black, covered his blond eyelashes in mascara. He ached to play football, but his over- protective mother forbid him to. The coach hated his long hair and wouldn't let him play without a buzzcut anyway. Years later, Elvis organized his Memphis Mafia into a football team. He was quarterback, of course.

An only child, he often gave the rare toys, a wagon or toy car, his family could ill afford to other children. As a wealthy and famous adult, he became famous for dispensing Cadillacs and other luxury cars by the dozen to friends and strangers, perhaps 280 in all. His impulses were always generous. Beneficiaries could be girls after only one date, poor workers on his one-time ranch, strangers, members of the Memphis Mafia. Jealousy swirled around Graceland when Elvis was on a buying jag: who would get the gravy? It wouldn't always be whoever most deserved the extra calories. His donations to charity were less quixotic and his generosity was inbred, not merely a speed-assisted profligacy. He arranged a liver transplant for one of his record producers, for instance.

Of course his music, the synthesis of white hillbilly and black blues music that got him attention, developed during his teen years on "lonely street," which was broader than Beale Street in Memphis, and included the "race music" on the radio and the gospel music in the church Gladys and Vernon attended.

When the Jaycees named him an outstanding young man of 1971, Elvis Presley reveled in the achievement because it was more than another performing benchmark. It was a testimony to character and personal worth. He was already outstandingly indentured to prescription medications by then, and Priscilla would leave him in a year. It was already the beginning of the end, but a proud moment. As he said in his acceptance speech, he'd fulfilled every dream he'd had as a child worshipping comic book heroes who would doff their impotent ordinariness, don a gaudy jumpsuit, and fly to everyone's rescue.

That was the problem, he had fulfilled every dream. Only the nightmares were left.