Original subtitles

Are you lonesome tonight? Did you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we drifted?

I picked some cheeseburgers

up there too

and he really enjoyed them. But that was the last meal and that was on a Sunday night.

Do the chairs in your apartment seem empty and bare? Do you gaze at your doorstep and

picture me there? Is your heart filled with pain? Shall I come back again? Tell me dear. Are you so

The cause of death is cardiac arrhythmia due to undetermined causes. I wonder if

you lonesome tonight. You know, someone said the world's a stage. You must play.

He deteriorated quite rapidly. They had me. You can't ingest all he ingested and not deteriorate.

Rap. Act one was where we met. I loved you at first glance. He just said, you know,

the input's got to be just as great as the output. And that was his rational for, you know,

eating the way he did. Then came act two. You seemed to change. You acted strange. He said

that's the only thing he got any enjoyment out of was eating. And he liked his food real rich.

Shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lovesome tonight?

to read about the flood.

have a long time ago,

a little country town.

We're back in

We are about three miles up the old Silla Road from the Elvis Presley birthplace in

Tupelo. Squirrel hunting. Elvis uh probably ate some squirrels as a boy

because his family would have all been hunters. It's just part of your culture.

You develop a taste for them. And most of the people around this area did at one time

in their life eat it. It was a pretty good sustenance for their meals. Uh squirrels,

rabbits, deer, living off the land.

The um the squirrels seem to be a little bit shy today.

They they know there's somebody down here that's looking for them and wanting to eat them.

Well, now that's all right now, mama. That's all right for you. That's all right,

baby. Anyway, now that's all right. That's all right. That's all right.

Elvis lived across the highway about two blocks from where I live now. They were poor and

um his daddy worked some at different jobs and his mother worked different jobs and

um people in Chipelo would sort of look down their nose at us. They thought they was somewhat higher

class or better than we were. Uh it was during the depression. We were all poor. Everybody was poor.

And uh my father and mother had the grocery store and they would let people have groceries

on a credit. He helped everybody, you know, to have where they would have food to eat.

Anybody home? We got meat once a week. We done good. We eat vegetables during the week.

usually fix one or two vegetables and a pan of cornbread or a pan of biscuits for a meal. Now,

after I married into the Presley family, now they killed rabbits,

squirrel, and deer occasionally, and we raised our own hogs and killed them. And

they killed possum and possum and sweet potatoes. They loved them.

on the back of the

You ain't nothing but a hound.

You ain't nothing but a hound.

You can wag your tail, but I ain't going to feed you no more. This is lunch. Yeah.

We going to fry him up. I can see through that. You told me you was hot. I can see

through that. And daddy, I know you ain't no real cool cat. You ain't nothing but a hound.

You just first brown it and fairly hot grease and

then turn the turn the heat down and let it simmer. Cook slowly.

I like to try. I don't care for it really, but I've eat you. You ever eaten any psome? Psome? No,

I've never tried. Pretty good. Really? I've eaten bit. I have to eat them squirrel. Back

in the depression, you'd eat anything that didn't eat you. Go ahead and get

good. He beat. I ain't no squirrel and biscuit all day. Woke up this morning and I looked out

the door. I can tell the way she holy fellas. Well, his father had altered a

check for some cattle and u he got sent to the um Mississippi State Penitentiary and served

some time. But Glattis and would take Elvis and they would go see Vernon when he was in prison.

the great flow of Tupelo. They move from out here in East Tupelo over what we in those days

we called it um Shake Rag. Mostly black people and poor poor white people lived over there

on the farm. Elders was a liy boy. That's what he was. Yeah.

He He had his guitar most everywhere he went though, hanging on his shoulder. Sure did.

We eat soul food. Most black peoples eat soul food. We were rid off of pig feeds,

fat bag meat, and simmers, cornbread, turnup greens. And this is what Elvis

ate because he lived in this area most of the time and his friends was black.

This is what we was real on pig feet and pig ears and greens. The pig feeds

you have to wash them and real good and put them on the stove and let them cook

about 3 hours. It would have take them a long time. The greens, you wash them,

get the worms and bugs off them. You let them cook some for about an hour or so.

And this was a meal. Sometime we didn't have no meat, but we we you ate just cornbread and greens.

We do love chidlings. We would kill the chickens off the yard and cook chickens

for a lot of time when the preacher was coming and having big dinners and the

preacher would come and eat up all the chicken and we just eat the foot and

the big chicken feets. That's all we had to eat after preacher got through.

Hallelujah. Praise you Jesus. Praise the Lord. What a day that's going to be

when you'll put off of this body. You put on the immortality. He always went to church. He he loved

um gospel music and whether his parents went to church or not, he always went to church, too.

Would you like to see my chocolate raspberry cake?

Okay, here's my chocolate raspberry cake right here.

The morning service was over. We'd go outside and fix tables and everybody would eat and

everybody would bring their dishes. You fancy dishes usually, you know, like you'd fix for

Sunday dinner, chicken and chicken dressing, chicken and dumplings, stuff like that. All day

long, everybody gather in and spend the day, have a full day service. And then we' about 1:30 we'd

go back inside and have singing and whatever for the afternoon. And then Elvis would sing,

Glattus and Vernon sang, my husband sang. They all sang together. Oh well, I'm tired. I'm so weary,

but I'm go alone. Lord, we thank you, Lord, for this food today that we're about to partake of.

We pray, Lord, that you will bless it and take it to the nourishment of our bodies and

then use our bodies for your service. For we ask it all in the name of Jesus. Amen.

And a night that is as black as a sea. Oh yes, there will be peace in the valley for me. Someday

there will be peace in the valley for me. Oh Lord I pray there'll be no sadness no sorrow

trouble I see there will be peace in the valley for me

all But sh

16.

Well, the Presley family left Tupelo to come to Memphis because they wanted to

sort of better their status in life and there were jobs here and down in

Tupelo at the time in 1948, jobs were very scarce to come by. stole my baby.

Shortly after the presents arrived here, uh they moved into Lauderdale courts,

which is a housing project. And uh during the time they were living there,

I for instance were living in a poor neighborhood in South Memphis and we sort of looked down on the

people in the housing projects. You know, they were sort of what we call the poor white trash.

I worked hard all of my life tire been sh

getting up in the morning baby with the rising sun

up in the morning. This is him Junior High School in Memphis, Tennessee.

I'm making one of the meals that Elvis would have eaten when he attended Hughes Junior High

School. This is sloppy joe. This is one of his favorite meals. Well, uh this might sound like

a very cheap amount of what it cost to eat at the school, but we had to pay 25 cents for lunch. But

that was a lot of money for us in those days. And the way you got it was you cut grass and

you picked up cans and you brought in bottles for deposits and you did every kind of way in

the world to hustle that money up so you would have school money because basically your family

didn't have it. Uh Elvis when he was at Humes High School for instance the story goes that he was

uh kicked off the football team because of long sideburns. But that's not true. And I talked to

both of the football coaches and he came to both of them the same day and told him coach

uh I'm quitting the team because I'm hungry. And the reason I'm hungry because I used to work after

school to make my lunch money. And now playing football after school, I don't have a job. When I

don't have a job, I don't have money. When I don't have money, I don't eat. And so I got to leave.

When I was driving a truck, every time a big shiny car drove by,

it started me sort of daydreaming. I always felt that someday, somehow something would

happen to change everything for me. And I daydream about how it would be.

Well, that's all right, mama. Elvis graduated. I think it was June the

3rd of 1953, but it was uh July of 1954, a little over a year later,

that that's all right. Mama came out and he became locally a a big star. mighty

Elvis loved hamburgers as everybody well knows and basically with cheeseburgers, you know, that was

the luxury of having the the extra thing on the the condiment on your hamburger and everything.

So when he became rich and everything despite the fact that he could get caviar and pheasant under

glass and everything, he never lost that affinity for the cheeseburgers that he that he had and that

he didn't have as a child and he would pick out on them. I've been traveling over miles,

even through the valley, too. I've been traveling in day. I've been running all the way, baby,

trying to get to you. Feels pretty good. It all happened so fast till I don't know. Uh afraid

to wake up. Afraid to be a dream. You know, I've been traveling night and day. I've been running

all the way, baby, trying to get to you. When I read your loving letter, then my heart be to sing

between us. Well, Ellis came in here and he came in at night.

He had on overalls and a jumper and a cap. No one knew him. He ate hamburgers,

mustard, pickle, and onion. Order of fries, and a milkshake.

Hi, this is Elvis Presley. I guess the first thing people want to know

is why I can't stand still when I'm singing. Some people tap their feet,

some people snap their fingers, and some people just sway back and forth.

I just sort of do them all together. I guess singing rhythm and blues really knocks it out.

In the summer of 1956, when I was a cub reporter for the Memphis Press Seminar,

uh, one of the senior reporters on the paper, Elton Whizzenhunt, asked me if I would accompany

him to the home of a singer who was very, very popular with girls. and he said, "I need a girl

to tell me why this man is so popular." I want to do. Well, we uh went into a middle class section

of Memphis with new homes, new ranch style homes. I looked to my left and I saw all these Cadillacs,

which was quite unusual in that neighborhood. And the door was opened by a black maid who was

dressed in a uniform. and she introduced herself and said, "I'm Alberta. Please come on in." But

Elvis is having his dinner. It was obviously more important to him than talking to the press.

We could hear uh low voice saying, "Pass me some more of that gravy. Give me some of that bread."

Glattis was very chubby then. And um probably she loved standing at the

stove and making him these peanut butter and banana sandwiches that were fried in butter.

If food is love, that's what Glattis was serving him. And I think she probably

had a few herself as she was giving them to Elvis. Certainly loved it.

He liked that country living and they always wanted a kind of like a big plantation and

that's what it really was. Uh they wanted animals. Uh as I look back on it now,

it was almost like the Beverly Hillbillies because there was this big mansion here in White Haven and

there was horses and donkeys and chickens and we even had a pig there for a while and uh I got very

close to the pig and then one day I asked where he was and my stepfather said, "We're eating him."

He had a situation where literally uh everybody was at his back and call and so as a consequence

we had a staff of of cooks that on a continual basis took care of everything. So you didn't

have to really I mean he call down and get something anytime he wanted. It was like his

own short order house. It was his house and it was his and so he could do anything he wanted to.

My name is Mary Jenkins and I was Elvis Presley's Cook. I was the Graceland for 26 years. The first

day I seen him, I called him Mr. Elvis. And I that's all I ever called him. But lots

of people tell me now. I said, "I never seen nobody to cook as quick as you can." I said,

"If you hadn't worked for Elvis Presley, you you would have cooked as quick as I can." He wanted

it brought up there right away. He would sit out in the den sometime and eat and then he eat at

the dining room table, but most time upstairs in the bed. We carry trays up there to the bed.

Move up. Move up. Move up. Come on. We need We need to move up, too. We need cover.

What's wrong with me? I met you like a man on a fuzzy tree. My friends say wild as [ __ ] I'm in

love. I'm all shook up. Got drafted. Conscription. The end of everything. Stopped it all. Now,

breakfast foods. Being a food service specialist, one important meal that you all going to have to

learn to deal with is breakfast food. The soldiers are depending on you at food service specialist

to ensure that they get a wellbalanced, nutritious, and satisfying breakfast meal.

Standardization and that's the most important part of your armed force

recipe card is to ensure standardization. And the same thing like friends who at McDonald's,

Burger King, if you were to get a Whopper at Burger King here at uh Portley in Virginia,

if you were to go to California, shouldn't you get the um Whopper taste the same? Okay. All right.

Anybody have a chance to taste some cream beef? Yes, sir. Yeah. Cream beef has been around in the

army for a long time. A very long time. Matter of fact, some of you may know it as uh uh SOS,

and we won't go into what the SOS, but it's been around. All right. And matter of fact,

I would be surprised if some of the soldiers from long time ago, such as uh maybe one of

your favorites, rock and roll Elvis Presley, he probably too enjoyed eating cream beef. All right.

That's the cream beef. Don't that look yummy? Fit for fit for a king. Our king here

like a volcano that's hot. I'm proud to see that she's

my butter cup. I'm in love. I'm all shook up. M

yeah. I'm all shook up.

That was Did you like some food over there outside of the armies when you

would go out? You know, did you like that kind of food? I never went out. So,

you never ate out in a restaurant? I never I never ate in a restaurant the

entire time I was in Germany. It's funny. I either ate in the mess hall or at home.

I suppose the the biggest thing of all is the fact that I I did make it.

I made it just like everybody. I mean, I tried to play it straight, you know,

like everybody else. All in all, it's been a pretty good experience, you know.

Okay, we'll have started. This is This is not part of the questioning,

but uh did you get the black eyed peas when you got home? I haven't eaten anything yet. Haven't

eaten anything? No, I just been looking around more or less since I've been back.

Maybe I didn't treat you

quite as good as I should have.

Maybe I didn't love you

quite as often as I could have.

He was an only child who was shepherded literally all his life and um it took a big

underpinning out from under him. Really really it wasn't good. He never really got over it.

We know your family status has changed since you went in service. Are you going to keep Graceland?

Do you have plans of moving away from Memphis or what? No, sir. I have no plans for leaving us.

That morning when I walked into the dining room, I spoke. I said, "Good morning." He said,

"Good morning." I said, "What we going to have for breakfast this morning?" He said,

"Fried peanut butter and banana sandwich." And I looked at him. I said, "What?" He said,

"Fried peanut butter and banana sandwich." I said, "I never heard of it.

The first time I went in,

fixed the sandwich and put it on the tree and brought it back. That wasn't right.

His father was sitting there and he said, "Mary, I'm going with you and help you and

let's see maybe both of us can get it right." I said, "Okay." And uh he said,

"Let's toast the bread first." So we toast the bread and then spread the peanut butter on and

sliced the bananas and put on and uh put them into the skillet and kept turning them with the spatula

and turn them till they got heated all the way through. Then I take them and cut them put them on

the platter and taking them back to me and he said that's what I want. That's right. And then smile

scatter. Yeah, he was uh that was Elvis's pet monkey. He uh he'd create madness around that

house because he was always chasing the women, looking up the skirts, pinching their butt,

and uh he'd sit at the table with us and eat sometimes. And he had pretty good table manners.

Well, he drink milk and he would eat bread and we'd give him lettuce and he would eat

most anything you carry out there to him. And I never did go inside cuz he one girl went in there

to feed him and he jumped on her and got her down and another girl I wouldn't go in there still but

one of the other girls worked there went in there and got him off of her. No, I was afraid of him.

I'm thinking in terms of I'd like to do a little more of a serious role, you know, because

uh my ambition is to progress as an actor which takes a long time, a lot of experience. I was you

there in that elegant restaurant. What is the pest resistance? Ah, something delectable to be sure.

something French, something ultimate in cuisine. Well, Elvis was not a person who went out to eat.

Even up to uh the time he died, he didn't he just didn't do it. He just didn't, you know,

he didn't want to go through the trauma of it and he just didn't want to, you know,

uh go out and go through the whole routine. In the south, you ate a lot of sandwiches

and cornbread and these and you always ate with your hands. I mean, because, you know,

he would eat even tomatoes. He would eat with his hands because he was used to doing it. Uh

he never cut them up. You know, I remember when he started eating steaks, we'd have to cut his steak

up cuz he had never cut a steak up. He didn't know how to do it. It's the taste that tells.

Well, Los Angeles, Hollywood, um there's a snobbery attached to restaurants. There's

a snobbery attached to dining out. And of course, you know, we eat with a knife and

fork. But since he, I guess, grew up without using utensils, um, knives, forks, spoons,

um, he might have had to have been kind of, um, taught to adjust to that. But I think that if he

had had the right sort of mentors, if he'd had people that would have said, you know, Elvis,

we've got to open up your your world here. Everything doesn't have to be,

you know, peanut butter and banana and jelly sandwiches. Uh, boiled okra. Let's have,

you know, a a lovely fililet of soul. Do soul flown over from from Dover in England.

He didn't He wouldn't eat fish. He always hated he would not eat fish

at all. He hated fish and he just didn't like it. Didn't like the smell of fish.

long distance information. Give me Tennessee. Help me find the party.

I went I went out to Los Angeles. He called me and told me, he said,

"Mayor, I want you to catch the first thing coming this way." He was unhappy with it,

but he couldn't do no better cuz them people out there really can't cook.

The constant thing with Elvis was no change. He always stayed the same. He was this way,

he stayed that way. He didn't like change.

If he wanted them in the morning when he woke up, I would have to fix them.

If he wanted them at 2:00 in the morning, I would have to still fix some fun. Whenever

he get a taste for him, he'd call down and that's what he wanted. Well, well,

yeah. I imagine that hoped to make him heavy because he wanted them real rich.

Oh, this what makes you decide to go back to doing live concerts? I just missed it. I I I

missed the uh the closeness of a of an audience of a live audience. So, just as soon as I got

out of the movie contracts, I started to do live performances again. My duty was a personal aid,

but my job was to make sure that the food was there when he wanted it, cooked the way he

wanted it, and that room service was open 24 hours a day. He just said, "Billy, you know, the input's

got to be just as great as the output." But what he meant by that was since he's working so hard,

he should be able to eat just like everybody else, you know, to keep up his strength to do these

shows. And that was his rational for, you know, eating the way he did. You're the devil in the

sky.

He had a tremendous appetite. As you get older,

your metabolism slows down. So, I'm sure it was harder to lose the weight.

I'm Dr. George Nicopolis. I was I was his doctor for approximately 10 12 years.

One of the things that that I kind of felt responsible for uh was his u his weight gain

and and trying to figure out ways to for him to exercise and lose weight,

which he really wasn't interested in most of the time. And having him on the road,

we could control his food better than we could at home

cuz they had him on a strict diet. One time had food coming in from uh California for him. And

uh sometime he would eat it and sometime he wouldn't. He said that's the only thing he

got any enjoyment out of was eating and he wanted to eat whatever he wanted he wanted

without a doubt that uh when you grew up like that without things and when you came

into money in particular with Elvis's sake where he had millions of dollars

he never all the way to the time he died he never got overindulging the

things that he was denied as a child and uh I think he did overcompensate a

Elvis's whole life was built on a lot of boredom, you know, and uh we didn't have

anything to do. One morning I called him and he was in the bedroom. He just he said,

"What do you want to do?" I said, "I have no idea what sounds good." I said,

"Why don't we go to Denver?" He said, "Well, let's go." I said, "Fine." And there's a restaurant

there that you know that I said, "Look, there's a restaurant there that fix great peanut butter,

banana, jelly sandwiches. They make them a long loaf and they're cater to the plane.

I'm Buck Scott and this is my wife Cindy. And uh Elvis helped make us famous for a moment

uh by coming to uh Denver on one occasion and having

22 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches delivered to his plane on the runway.

It's called Fool's Gold on the menu and it was his favorite sandwich. There's somewhere in the

neighborhood of 42,000 calories in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Most of them fat.

Surprised us when he came up, had the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,

and turned around and flew back. He was planning on going on tour, so there was

some conversation about getting in shape and doing whatever he had to do to to get there.

Peanut butter and jelly wasn't one of the things that that we would recommend anyway. You know,

weight is, which I think I'm a qualified expert on. Weight is one of the situations

where all of a sudden you're heavy. It doesn't you don't turn and say, "Oh,

I'm getting heavy." All of a sudden you are. And so you try to deal with the best way you can. You

can ignore it and hope to God it goes away and it doesn't or you can try to do something about it.

Lamar fights. Lamar fights. He weighed about 350

lbs but he had that operation and taking part of his stomach.

Last time I seen him he's about your side.

He decided that we weren't doing any good with his diet in Memphis. So, he wanted to go to

Vegas and try a diet out there. And I think this diet was um nothing but papaya juice.

His dream was that he could uh that the doctor could put him to sleep for two or three weeks

and he would wake up after he's been on this formula and he would have lost 20 pounds.

And as it turned out, this this formula,

the juice, was so high in calories, he'd gained weight out there.

I'd say the last time I went to Vegas, it would been almost two months before since

I'd seen him. And it was like a big change. I mean, he it was a lot bigger. I mean,

when I walked in the room, it was almost like I didn't know who he was. Elvis was,

you know, what's happening? You know, and it was just like the show must go on.

We at 1298 Madison, the Western Steak House and Lounge in Memphis,

Tennessee. My famous customer was Elvis Presley. No, nobody ever called him. He always had on some

kind of hat or cap or sun shades and you'd never know it was him if you didn't know it was Elvis.

We held a talent contest one time and uh he was just happened to be here that

night. There was just one night that he was here. A lot of people come in and you

know for the talent contest that nobody ever knew that was the eldest in here.

Of

course, my husband can talk me into anything. And he said, "Elders,

would you get up and sing for us?" And he said, "Yeah, I'll get up there and mess the whole show

up." And just laughed about it, you know. And um so when he got up, I thought, "Oh my god,

what we going to do now if they find out it's Elvis?" And time goes by so slowly

and time can do so much. Are you still mine? Nobody ever said a word. Gave him a few claws,

you know, when he got through singing.

That was about it. But you didn't win. No, it came in third place.

Codin, morphine, methylone, dasopam, eththenamate, ethlorinol, amoarbital,

pentobarbatl, maparodine, amitryptalene, norripalene, phenol toxelamine.

When people are consuming lots of drugs, they often don't eat very well and it's

particularly true of stimulants such as cocaine and empmphetamine. On the other hand,

we know that Elvis, even under the impact of lots of stimulant drugs, continued to eat

large amounts of food, his weight never dropped, which is common among big-time drug users. So,

uh, although Elvis's appetite may have been depressed, it didn't stop his consummatory

behavior. Apparently, a normal person, you'll sit there and eat, and when your stomach gets full,

you can feel it. But if you're under such so much medication that you can't feel pain,

you you'll keep eating until you burst almost. And you know that's not very good for you.

He had a a congenital mega colon, which means that the colon enlarges because it doesn't have

proper nerve supply to propulse the the food through and it just gets bigger and bigger and

bigger. He was sort of a borderline diabetic. So, we had that to work with plus high blood pressure.

How many of you have dreamed of spending quality time alone with Elvis Presley? And

how many of you have dreamed of lathering his coffee for him, putting in the cream and sugar

and stirring it for him? And how many of you have dreamed of giving him a back rub? And I just want

to tell you ladies right now that I have lived your dream because I've done it all. In 1975,

he was the patient at Baptist Hospital. And when I walked in the room that morning about 5:00 and

he smiled at me and spoke to me, then I knew he was always going to be a part of my life.

Well, um, Elvis liked banana pudding and he asked me one night if I knew how to

make it and I said, "Sure, everybody knows how to make banana pudding."

So, I took the banana pudding upstairs and we had our coffee. And then when he was ready to eat,

I said, "Are you ready for breakfast?" And he said, "I'm ready for banana pudding.

He didn't even ask me if I wanted any. I mean, he ate it all.

The next night, we went through the same routine again, and he ate every bite. I mean,

I didn't even get a lick of it. He ate every bite of it.

That's it. Banana pudding. Anyone?

When he was in the hospital, he would call me to bring him in dipping foods.

And one day he called me and told me, he says, "Mayor say they have me on a diet and I want

you to slip me some hot dogs with kraut on them and slip wrap them up and slip them in to me and

tell tell them some clothes that you bringing me up here." So I went on in with the bag in

my hand and hand it to him and he looked at me and smiled. He said, "Mary, we can get by him,

can't we?" I said, "Yeah, we sure can." and he opened that bag up and went to working on them

hot dogs and crowd. He was very receptive to suggestions even when he was in the hospital.

He ordered food very well. U we had a dietitian that would come up and see him and see what he

would eat. And he ate vegetables. You know, I read these books where all Elvis ever did

was eat junk food. But I have never ever at any point see him overindulge in anything.

I mean, he was going in there so he could get away from some of this food and stuff

that he'd been eating and we were sneaking it up to him, you know? I mean, cuz he'd get on me

if I if I come up and I didn't have a sack full of cheeseburgers or something. You didn't bring

me anything. I'll remember that when bonus time comes around. Wait a minute. I'll be right back.

He just got finished eating a barbecue pizza and he said, "Billy, that was pretty good.

I'd like to have another one." And I looked over at him, really just kidding with him and I said,

"Where you going to put it?" And uh he said, "Well, you're fired." Actually,

it tastes better than it sounds. It's uh it's your basic pizza with uh for instead of pizza sauce,

we put barbecue sauce, cheese, but on top we put uh barbecue pork.

And there you have the barbecue pizza just like Elvis used to eat it. This is the house

that Elvis bought for me. He bought it in 1974 and he came and picked the house out for me.

And I liked it and he liked it. So he said, "Well, Mary, this is your house if you like

it." I told him I loved it. It was really nice. What can we do now? He was just a sweet person.

You've seen the pictures of Elvis with the coveralls on and in his

room at the foot of his bed there was a big poster and it was this picture.

He pointed this out to me and he said, "Miss Coch, I always keep this here

because I don't ever want to forget where I came from." You will forget that day.

He got on collard greens one time there and we had to fix them greens for him every day.

He wanted collard greens, cornbread and collard greens both night and day. And I

always believe people come full circle and I saw it. It rattled me. It bothered me that I

mean if if you use food as a thing that you know beginning and end it that really bothered me.

I always use the term as an omen, but he just didn't ring right when

for for you know 20 some odd years he never touched it. He deteriorated quite rapidly.

You can't ingest all he ingested and not deteriorate rapidly. So caught up with him.

The week before he died, we were really got him on a strict diet of mostly nothing but

Jell-O made with Neutrie. So that he had really almost been on a starvation diet for a week.

The last thing was that cheeseburg cheeseburgers uh say night cuz Sunday night and Monday night he

didn't eat anything. I said, "You're not going to eat anything for me before I go." He said,

"Mm, I ain't hungry. I just want to rest." And I said, "Well, okay then. Night night and I'll

see y'all tomorrow." He called me Maywe. He said, "Well, okay, Maywe. I'll see you

tomorrow. And that's the last time I seen him alive. That was 5 minutes to 2 in the morning.

Elvis Presley died here about 3:30 this afternoon. He had been found in his bathroom unconscious,

was brought to the hospital by ambulance, and Elvis was declared dead at 3:30.

I'm Dan Warlick and in 1977, I was the chief investigator for the medical examiner's office

in Memphis in Tennessee. Uh, Mr. Presley underwent his terminal event while he was on the commode and

in fact his colon was impacted with a clay-like substance which would have made it uh difficult if

not impossible to have a bowel movement and there is known to medical science a phenomena called a

val salva maneuver in which impressing the abdomen or pressing very hard against uh the bowel you can

compress the aorta and cause a cardiac standstill. So that is a possible cause of his death.

I was the one that took the sheet off of him. I

looked at him and I looked right into the face of Elvis Presley.

We had three men that picked him up. So it took three of us. It was a It was a big load. Normally

we we send two men on a call to pick up a body. This time we sent three because we did not know

how big Elvis would be. We did need three men. We did not need to use but one mattress. So we took

one of the m the top mattress out and laid him on the bottom mattress. And he was so large that he

filled up the casket and you could see him. Uh that's the way we had him lying in a viewable

state. We took the other mattress and cut it up into three sections and made pillars out of it.

Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go.

You have made my life complete and I love you so.

Love me tender, love me true all my dreams. I really think that Elvis staged his own death

because of the fame. I think he wanted to get away from the fame. um he doesn't drink anymore and he

doesn't do a lot of pills or anything like that and I think he had to get away from those people

that were surrounding me tender love me alone I did meet Edward Presley February March and April

of 1989 in Hawaii he was so heavy I said to him why do why do you want to eat all that meat look

at me and I had such a thin waist at the time and he did wear the dark glasses. He said, "I

suggest you wear glasses, too, even though people will not recognize you." Love me. Older. I mean,

of course, like I said, I didn't recognize him at first. He was very He's quite gray. Well,

he's vegetarian. Uh, and I'm a meat eater, and I was like trying to,

you know, throw beans together and and I fish, so I was I, you know, would try to

give him fish. He wouldn't eat fish. You love me tender. Love me dear. Tell me you are mine.

I'll be yours through all the years till the end of time.

Then one night I was sitting there about 1:00 and uh he came down the steps and stood right

there beside of me. He said, "Mary, I want to stay with you." And I told him,

I said, "Well, you're welcome to stay in my house, Mr. Elvis. You know that."

And I looked up at him and he kind of smiled a little bit and he vanished away. And I