Elvis,Sex and the Ultimate Taboo... ; (1) a Bizarre Penchant for Baby-Talk. An Insatiable Hunger for Underage Girls.And the Obsessive Bond with His Own Mother That Plagued Elvis Presley's Troubled Love Life (2) the Elvis Files

Daily Mail › February 07, 2006

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Summary

THIRTY years after his death, public fascination with Elvis Presley is unabated. The Mail sent Reporter of the Year David Jones to Memphis to investigate his secret world for this major five-part series. Today, we look at the dark side of Elvis's life as rock's greatest sex symbol . . .

FROM his earliest, self-conscious performances in supermarket car- parks and at countryside fairs, women were mesmerised by Elvis Presley. By late 1954, when the brooding, raw-boned 'hillbilly' singer began touring the southern United States - in a pink and white Cadillac with his name emblazoned in black on the bodywork - he was in the eye of a sexually-charged storm.

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Elvis,Sex and the Ultimate Taboo... ; (1) a Bizarre Penchant for Baby-Talk. An Insatiable Hunger for Underage Girls.And the Obsessive Bond with His Own Mother That Plagued Elvis Presley's Troubled Love Life (2) the Elvis Files

In the first scenes of teenage mass hysteria the world has witnessed, frenzied girls would burst into his dressing room, ripping off his drape jackets and lace-frilled shirts, and smothering him with kisses. The deeply conservative Southern Baptists who ran small-town America grew so concerned that Elvis - a God-fearing boy, raised in a devoutly religious family - was denounced from the pulpit as the anti-Christ.

Risible as it may seem now, TV stations censored his hip- swivelling dance movements, which were considered to simulate sexual intercourse, by showing only the upper half of his body. And in an effort to prosecute him for lewd behaviour, the FBI sent undercover officers to his concerts.

Though Elvis protested himself utterly bemused by the offence he was causing the Establishment, and claimed he did not deliberately set out to arouse female passions ('my legs just shake naturally when I sing'), he wasted little time in taking advantage of his sex symbol status.

When his singing stint had finished, he would peep through a gap in the curtains, pick out a girl he liked, and swagger over to drape his arm over her shoulder, acting as though he was slightly drunk, even though he was teetotal.

Sometimes he would make inane small-talk, asking his starry-eyed target her name, where she came from, and her age (always of interest to Elvis, as we shall see). But often he just gazed at her with his big, droopy eyes, as though she was the prettiest thing he had ever seen, and chewed his gum.

The technique rarely fail...

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