Expert: Beverly Taylor - 10/25/2009

Question
What was the hardest thing Elvis ever faced?

Answer
Hi Belinda....somehow this question got away from me. As you may know, hardships were no stranger to Elvis. He faced them his entire life aa surviving twinless twin....he became a little man as a toddler when his father was sent to the state penitentiary and he and his mother faced their poverty alone......
   Elvis crumbled in the face of deaths of people he loved or admired......including his Jailhouse Rock costar Judy Tyler and Dr. Martin Luther King.  Many say the death of his mother changed him forever due to his irreconcilable grief over it.
    The ongoing hardships of celebrity status closed the door to normalcy for Elvis. As he said "I can only be myself when I lock the door from the inside."
    Priscilla's long affair with Mike Stone and her decision to move to California with him to live thereby removing Lisa Marie from Graceland part of the time; threw Elvis into despondence. The "fellas" around him remembered that he locked himself up in his room for days crying and screaming. It was his fear that Lisa would grow up a product of LA,CA and not the south.......
    All in all,my OPINION is that his worst hardship was facing life after the book of betrayal by the West Boys, "Elvis What Happened?" which he read two wks prior to his death. He obsessed over how the book would affect "my little daughter" when Lisa Marie became old enough to read it.