NEED TO KNOW
- Priscilla Presley says that her daughter Lisa Marie took great pride in their famous last name
- The actress and businesswoman spoke about her new memoir during a conversation at the 92Y in New York on Sept. 24
- Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis is available for purchase wherever books are sold
Priscilla Presley is reminiscing about how her daughter embraced the name “Presley.”
During a conversation at the 92Y in New York City on Wednesday, Sept. 24, the businesswoman and actress spoke about her new memoir, Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis, sharing anecdotes with the moderator, broadcaster Budd Mishkin.
When asked about how Priscilla’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, felt about having the last name “Presley,” Priscilla, 80, praised her daughter’s enthusiasm.
“With all respect to Elvis and love for her father, do you think she ever had moments of, ‘Oh, I really wish my name was something other than Presley?’ ” Mishkin asked.
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“No, she loved her name,” Priscilla replied, adding that Lisa Marie, who died in 2023 at 54, would “use it.”
Priscilla recalled how Lisa Marie used to tell people, “You know, I’m Lisa Presley. Do you know who my dad is?” “And she was only like 9 or 10 years old. She knew she had a good name,” Priscilla quipped.
She also spoke about how her daughter missed her father, Elvis Presley. Elvis died in 1977 of a heart attack when Lisa Marie was only 9 years old.
“I found a letter from her that she basically was writing to herself, really. And how much she missed her dad. And one of the things that she wanted to do with him and the loss of — you know, that she felt she missed out.”
“And it literally broke my heart, because that relationship that she had with him, that meant everything to her,” added Priscilla. “And he played a big role in her life. It was very heartbreaking.”
Priscilla’s memoir examines her life after Elvis, whom she married in 1967, died. She wrote about how she still pays tribute to him over 50 years after they divorced. “With me, he was usually gentle and often tender. He was also extremely generous,” she writes in Softly, as I Leave You.
“He bought me beautiful things, expensive gifts, amazing jewelry. I still wear the diamond cross he gave me. I had much to be grateful for in my marriage.”
Lisa Marie wrote about her father’s death in the posthumous memoir published in 2024, From Here to the Great Unknown. She discussed how she was “always worried” about her father dying. “Sometimes I’d see him and he was out of it. Sometimes I would find him passed out. I wrote a poem with the line, ‘I hope my daddy doesn’t die.’ “
The day he died in August 1977, she felt that “my life as I knew it is completely over.”
“I ran to him, but somebody grabbed me, pulled me back. They were trying to work on him,” she wrote of Elvis. “I was screaming bloody murder. I knew it was not good.”
Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis is available for purchase wherever books are sold.
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