Lisa Marie Presley

• 1. Introduction

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  Lisa Marie Presley was nine years old in August 1977 when her father, Elvis, died and left her a share of his estate. The will made her a joint heir beside two much older relatives: her 61-year-old grandfather, Vernon, and her 87-year-old great-grandmother, Minnie Mae. A girl who split her days between Los Angeles and Graceland suddenly held a piece of one of the most famous names in American music. What does a child do with a name like that? How does a singer find a voice of her own when the most famous voice in the family is her father's? And what happens to a legacy once the last of its heirs is gone? This documentary follows Lisa Marie from Memphis to her final years and looks for the answers.

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• 2. Heir to Graceland

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  Lisa Marie was born on the 1st of February 1968 at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis. She was the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, arriving nine months to the day after their wedding. Her parents separated when she was four, and their divorce became final in October 1973. She lived with her mother in Los Angeles and often stayed with her father at Graceland. Priscilla's 22-year relationship with Marco Garibaldi later produced a son, Navarone Garibaldi, who was Lisa Marie's half-brother.

  In November 1975, Elvis named one of his private aircraft after his daughter. He spent more than $1 million refurbishing the converted Convair 880 jet, which became his main transport on tour. The Lisa Marie now sits on exhibit at Graceland beside another of his planes, Hound Dog II.

  A year or two after her father's death, she saw Queen play at The Forum in Inglewood, California. It was her first rock concert. Afterward she gave Freddie Mercury one of Elvis's scarves and told him how much she appreciated theatrical performance.

  In a 2003 interview with Playboy, Lisa Marie made an allegation about Michael Edwards, an actor who began a relationship with Priscilla shortly after Elvis died. She said he entered her room while intoxicated and behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner toward her. In her later memoir she repeated the claim and stated that he sexually assaulted her beginning in 1978.

  Vernon Presley, named in Elvis's will as executor and trustee, died in 1979. Elvis's grandmother Minnie Mae followed in 1980, which left Lisa Marie as the only surviving beneficiary. The will had directed that her share stay in trust until she turned 25. After Vernon's death, Priscilla became one of three trustees, alongside the National Bank of Commerce in Memphis and the family accountant, Joseph Hanks.

  On her 25th birthday in 1993, Lisa Marie received the estate. Thanks largely to her mother's stewardship, it had grown to an estimated $100 million.

  From 1998 she took a closer hand in the Elvis Presley Trust and its business arm, Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc. She served as owner and chairman of its board until the mid-2000s. Then she sold 85 percent of the estate's business holdings to CKX, Inc. The sale excluded Graceland itself and the property inside it.

  In February 2012, she opened an exhibit titled Elvis... Through His Daughter's Eyes. It is part of the Graceland VIP Tour and holds 200 items chosen by Lisa Marie and the Graceland Archives staff. Home movies, toys and rarely seen family mementos show what it was like to grow up with a famous father.

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• 3. Making Her Own Records

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  To Whom It May Concern arrived on the 8th of April 2003 and reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200. The Recording Industry Association of America certified it gold that June. Lisa Marie wrote all the lyrics except for one song, The Road Between, which she co-wrote with Gus Black. She also co-wrote every melody.

  The first single, Lights Out, reached No. 18 on the Billboard Hot Adult Top 40 chart and No. 16 on the UK charts. Its B-side, Savior, was a co-write with Billy Corgan. Los Angeles Times critic Robert Hilburn wrote that the album had "a stark, uncompromising tone" and praised her gutsy, blues-edged voice.

  On the 22nd of May 2003, she joined Pat Benatar at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas for VH1 Divas Duets, a benefit for the VH1 Save the Music Foundation. They sang Benatar's hit Heartbreaker, which Lisa Marie kept performing on later tours. That year she also contributed a recording of Silent Night to an NBC holiday collection and presented a concert in the UK. The S.O.B. Tour ran from 2003 to 2004.

  Now What came out on the 5th of April 2005 and peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard 200. She co-wrote ten of its songs. Its first single was a cover of Don Henley's Dirty Laundry, which hit No. 36 on the Billboard AC singles chart. Patrick Hoelck directed the video, and George Michael made a cameo appearance. Another cover on the record was the Ramones' Here Today and Gone Tomorrow.

  The song Idiot is a pointed critique of several men in her life. Unlike its predecessor, Now What carried a Parental Advisory sticker. Pink made a guest appearance on Shine, and a B-side covered Blue Öyster Cult's Burnin' for You. The Now What Tour ran from 2005 to 2006.

  In 2006, Lisa Marie turned up in two projects beyond her own albums. She appeared in the video for Johnny Cash's God's Gonna Cut You Down, produced by Rick Rubin and directed by Tony Kaye. The video featured many celebrities and won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video. She also took part in Too Tough to Die: A Tribute to Johnny Ramone, a documentary by Mandy Stein. It follows a benefit concert marking the Ramones' 30th anniversary and raising money for cancer research.

  In October 2009, she joined Richard Hawley on stage in London to sing a song they were developing called Weary. Hawley wanted to help relaunch her music career. The two began a partnership in which she wrote the lyrics and he composed the music. She told Oprah Winfrey she was recording a new album in London, scheduled for release in 2011.

  Storm & Grace was released on the 15th of May 2012 and produced by Oscar and Grammy winner T Bone Burnett. Lisa Marie said, "It's much more of a rootsy record, organic record, than my previous work." It peaked at No. 45 in the US, and her tour behind it ran from 2012 to 2014. AllMusic called it "a stronger, more mature, and more effective work than one might have expected". Spinner.com named it "the strongest album of her career". Entertainment Weekly praised the "smoky, spooky" single You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.

  Burnett wrote that he had been curious when her songs showed up at his door. What he heard was "honest, raw, unaffected and soulful". His verdict was short: "I thought her father would be proud of her."

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• 4. Duets With Elvis

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  On the 16th of August 1997, a tribute concert marked 20 years since Elvis had died, and a new video for Don't Cry Daddy was shown there. It paired his original vocal track with fresh instrumentation and Lisa Marie's added vocals. It was the first of several duets she would build around her father's archival recordings.

  In August 2007, she released In the Ghetto, a virtual duet using Elvis's 1969 recording of the song. The single commemorated the 30th anniversary of his death. Its video came out at the same time, reached No. 1 on iTunes sales and climbed to No. 16 on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100. Proceeds benefited the new Presley Place Transitional Housing Campus in New Orleans.

  She performed the song on The Oprah Winfrey Show with the Harlem Gospel Choir, and vintage footage of her father played behind her. Her discography also lists a second duet with Elvis, I Love You Because.

  In 2018, she appeared on the title track of Where No One Stands Alone, a compilation of her father's gospel recordings. The song was reworked into a duet between father and daughter. The music video digitally placed Lisa Marie into scenes with Elvis.

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• 5. Marriages

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  On the 3rd of October 1988, Lisa Marie married Chicago-born musician and actor Danny Keough at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles. They had dated for the previous three years. Their honeymoon took place on a cruise ship owned by the Church of Scientology.

  Their daughter, Riley Keough, was born on the 29th of May 1989 in Santa Monica, California. Their son, Benjamin Storm Keough, followed on the 21st of October 1992 in Tampa, Florida. He was delivered according to a Scientology practice known as silent birth. Lisa Marie obtained a quick divorce in the Dominican Republic on the 6th of May 1994.

  Twenty days later, on the 26th of May 1994, she married Michael Jackson. Keough's younger brother served as an official witness. The two had first met in 1974, when six-year-old Lisa Marie attended one of Jackson's concerts at the Sahara Tahoe. A friend of hers said their adult friendship began in Los Angeles in November 1992.

  Later in 1994, Keough considered seeking custody of the two children because of child-molestation charges against Jackson. Lisa Marie later explained her view: "I believed he didn't do anything wrong, and that he was wrongly accused and, yes, I started falling for him. I wanted to save him. I felt that I could do it." Shortly afterward she persuaded Jackson to settle the allegations out of court and enter rehabilitation. In June 1995, she appeared in his You Are Not Alone video, directed by Wayne Isham.

  In January 1996, citing irreconcilable differences, she filed for divorce. Jackson's make-up artist, Karen Faye, later claimed that he had planned to file first but relented when Lisa Marie asked him not to. The next day he learned that she had filed herself.

  In a 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Lisa Marie said the two kept trying to reconcile for four years after the divorce. She said she had traveled internationally to be with him. Jackson died in 2009 at age 50, and she was reported to have "felt shattered". She attended his funeral service at Glendale Forest Lawn Memorial Park on the 3rd of September 2009. She recalled being the last person standing over his casket: "I didn't want to leave him."

  In 2014, she told The Sydney Morning Herald that there had been "a very deep strong love there; intense". In her 2024 memoir she wrote, "I've never been that happy again."

  In May 1999, she met the musician John Oszajca, and they became engaged two days before Christmas. She ended the engagement in March 2001, about five months after meeting Nicolas Cage at a party. She and Cage married in Kamuela, Hawaii, on the 10th of August 2002. He filed for divorce 107 days later, on the 25th of November 2002, and it was finalized on the 24th of May 2004.

  On the 22nd of January 2006, in Kyoto, Japan, she married Michael Lockwood, her guitarist, music producer and musical director. Keough served as best man. On the 7th of October 2008, she gave birth by Caesarean section to fraternal twin daughters, Harper Vivienne Ann Lockwood and Finley Aaron Love Lockwood, at Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, California. The family kept a home at Coes Manor in Rotherfield, East Sussex, where she enjoyed living outside the public spotlight.

  In 2016, after ten years of marriage, she filed for divorce from Lockwood. In February 2017, their children were placed in the temporary care of Priscilla after Lisa Marie alleged in a court filing that she had found inappropriate images of children on his computer. Beverly Hills police examined more than 80 electronic devices and found no criminal activity. They referred the matter to authorities in Tennessee, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations closed its inquiry later that year, citing no evidence of a crime. The divorce was not finalized until the 26th of May 2021.

  In a 2003 interview with The Commercial Appeal, Lisa Marie described Keough as her best friend, "always has been, always will be". By 2005 he was playing bass in her band, acting as her musical mentor and living in the guest house on her property. She told People that year that the two were like brother and sister. Of their bond she said, "But he and I had a special thing. Unconditional." They stayed close friends until her death.

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• 6. Causes and Honors

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  Presley Place welcomed its first residents in 2001. The program gives homeless families up to one year of rent-free housing. It adds child day care, career and financial counseling, and family-management guidance. Its aim is to help families break the cycle of poverty and regain self-esteem and independence.

  Lisa Marie formed the Presley Charitable Foundation in 2007. The foundation also funds the Elvis Presley Music Room, where children from Presley Place and elsewhere can use instruments and take lessons. It was reincorporated as The Presley Foundation Inc. on the 10th of November 2022 and registered as a public benefit and grantmaking foundation on the 13th of February 2023. Separately, her father's foundation, the EPCF, created the Elvis Presley Endowed Scholarship Fund for arts students at the University of Memphis.

  After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the surrounding area, Lisa Marie joined Oprah Winfrey and her Angel Network in the relief effort. She volunteered in Memphis, saying she was there because she "definitely needed to do something". Her first stop was a food bank, where FedEx and Kroger helped her load a truck with groceries. She then bought toiletries and clothes at Target. "I thought I was going to grab a couple things at the store," she said, "and I ended up filling up a truck."

  Her last stop was the Grand Casino Convention Center in Mississippi, where she handed out supplies to people who had lost everything. One evacuee said, "We have nothing, so we're very grateful for everything she's doing." In 2011, she became a patron of the Dream Factory, a charity based in Hainault, London.

  On the 22nd of October 2005, she and producer Jimmy Jam jointly presented a special award to Isaac Hayes at the Memphis Recording Academy Honors. Lisa Marie was herself among the hometown artists recognized that night, alongside Justin Timberlake, Hayes and David Porter. She also supported the Grammy Foundation's Gold Grammy Signature Schools program, which recognizes US public high schools with an outstanding commitment to music education. On the 11th of November 2005, she joined a Grammy SoundCheck at the House of Blues in Los Angeles, where music students met industry professionals.

  On the 24th of June 2011, Tennessee governor Bill Haslam proclaimed a day of recognition for her charitable work. Two days later, New Orleans mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu gave her a Certificate of Proclamation. Memphis issued its own proclamation on the 28th of June.

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• 7. Scientology

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  In October 1997, Lisa Marie and her friend Isaac Hayes, a fellow Memphian and Scientologist, opened the Literacy, Education and Ability Program, known as LEAP. It is operated by Applied Scholastics, an organization run by Scientologists.

  On the 5th of January 2002, she received the Humanitarian Award from the World Literacy Crusade, which is supported by the Church of Scientology. The award honored her efforts to help American children develop study skills. Hayes, Chaka Khan and Yolanda King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., presented it. Critics regard the World Literacy Crusade as a front group for the church.

  On the 26th of September 2002, she addressed a US congressional hearing as International Spokesperson for Children's Rights for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, an organization run by Scientologists. She spoke against using medication to treat ADHD. "The psychotropic drugging of millions of children has to stop," she told the committee. She argued that parents should be told about alternatives so they could "make an informed choice about their child's educational and medical needs".

  Between 2010 and 2016, she lived in a 15th-century manor house in Rotherfield, East Sussex. It stood 15 miles east of Saint Hill Manor, the British headquarters of the Church of Scientology.

  She left Scientology in 2014, though she had felt growing discontent with the organization as early as 2008.

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• 8. Final Years

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  In the foreword to United States of Opioids, published in 2019, Lisa Marie wrote openly about her own dependence. She said she had been prescribed opioids after the birth of her twin daughters in 2008 and had become dependent on them.

  Benjamin Keough died on the 12th of July 2020 in Calabasas, California, at the age of 27. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office ruled his death a suicide. Lisa Marie was devastated and struggled profoundly in the years that followed. On a CBS primetime special, The Presleys: Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley, Riley told Oprah Winfrey that her mother's last years were marked by deep grief. She said losing Benjamin left her mother without the will to keep living. Riley had married Ben Smith-Petersen in 2015, and their daughter, Lisa Marie's grandchild, was born in 2022.

  Two days before she died, Lisa Marie attended the 80th Golden Globe Awards with Priscilla, because the biographical drama Elvis was nominated for three awards. It was her last public appearance. On the 12th of January 2023, at about 10:30 a.m., she suffered cardiac arrest at her home in Calabasas. Emergency responders gave her CPR, and she regained a pulse before being taken to West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles. She died later that day at age 54.

  The autopsy report found a small bowel obstruction caused by complications of a prior bariatric surgery. A toxicology analysis found opioids in her system, but they were not considered a factor in her death. She had been using opioids again in the weeks before.

  Hundreds of people attended a public memorial service at Graceland on the 22nd of January, and more than 1.5 million watched by live stream. Some gave spoken or musical tributes. Attendees included Priscilla, her surviving children, family friend Jerry Schilling, former Memphis mayor A. C. Wharton and Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose. Billy Corgan, Sarah, Duchess of York, and Alanis Morissette were there too, along with Elvis director Baz Luhrmann and star Austin Butler. The gospel quartet the Blackwood Brothers took part. Lisa Marie was interred in the Graceland Meditation Garden, next to Benjamin and adjacent to her father.

  From Here to the Great Unknown began as a series of audio tapes Lisa Marie recorded before her death. Riley completed the manuscript from that material, and both women are credited as authors. The memoir was released on the 8th of October 2024 through Random House. Riley also narrated the audiobook, which includes "Never-before-heard recollections" in her mother's own voice. The cover shows a photograph of a young Lisa Marie with her father.

  After her death, her three daughters were expected to inherit Graceland. Priscilla challenged a 2016 amendment to Lisa Marie's estate that had removed her as trustee and named Lisa Marie's two oldest children instead. Benjamin's death in 2020 left Riley as sole trustee.

  On the 16th of August 2024, Missouri woman Lisa Jeanine Findley was arrested over a scheme to force the sale of Graceland. According to the US Department of Justice, she allegedly fabricated loan documents with forged signatures of Lisa Marie and a Florida notary public. She then allegedly filed a false creditor's claim in Los Angeles and a fake deed of trust in Memphis. One person involved told The New York Times in May 2024 that the plot was tied to a ring of identity thieves based in Nigeria. The supposed lender, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, was not a real company, and Findley allegedly posed as three different people connected to it.

  The Florida notary, Kimberly L. Philbrick, supported Riley's lawsuit against Naussany. In an affidavit she stated, "I have never met Lisa Marie Presley, nor have I ever notarized a document signed by Lisa Marie Presley."

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