When Elvis met Priscilla Ann Beaulieu through the introduction of a friend, he was 24 years old, she 14. He was immediately taken with the petite, mousy-haired girl, and agreed to follow strict orders from her father, Air Force Capt. Joseph Beaulieu, to see Priscilla on a more and more frequent basis. He or his father had to pick her up for every date. And she was to be supervised for every visit.

When he was discharged from the Army, he started his marathon string of B-movie musicals. Priscilla didn't hear from him again for months. And she didn't see him again until 1962, when he asked her to visit him in Los Angeles.

For this visit, Elvis agreed once again to a long list of stipulations from Priscilla's military father, including that she must write home daily. Breaking the rules, Elvis took her to Las Vegas the day after she arrived, where he bought her a new, sophisticated wardrobe and arranged for a hairdresser in their Las Vegas hotel to give her elaborate hairdos and heavy makeup, the way he liked it, daily. They made sure Priscilla's letters would be postmarked from the right city by having her pre-write several letters, which a friend of Elvis mailed from L.A.

Elvis, not yet 30 years old, had already started taking sleeping pills to help him fall asleep. He and his entourage of bodyguards and assistants usually retired near dawn.

Priscilla visited Elvis one more time, for Christmas at Graceland, before they arranged for her permanent move to Memphis. When she returned home from her Christmas trip, Elvis began asking her parents for permission to let her return; he promised to enroll her in a private Catholic school. Faced with a surly daughter increasingly uninterested in school in Germany, her parents reluctantly allowed her to move to Tennessee in 1961.

She barely graduated, partly because of the odd hours associated with Elvis' social life. Elvis's hours were no shorter in Memphis than they were on the road; he rented entire movie theaters and skating rinks to entertain his friends throughout the evening hours, and took Priscilla on after-hours shopping sprees in exclusive Memphis boutiques.

Whatever the activity, he was in charge -- his entourage catered to his whims, and Priscilla recalls that he expected her to do the same. He gradually modeled her into his ideal woman, directing her on how to dress, how to do her hair, what makeup to wear, even how to walk and what to say. According to Priscilla's accounts, he was uninterested in hearing about other people's problems, preferring instead to talk about the miserable movie scripts his manager, Tom Parker, continued to make him take on.