Linda Thompson Article

This article came from Claudia's Presley Page

A lot of people have asked about the girls who shared the final years of Elvis`life, Vernon Presley said:"Of them all, I think Linda Thompson was the best for him." Only recently has the shock of his sudden death worn off enough for Linda to talk about their life together, to share her memories of their magic nights with all the women who had to love El from a distance. Her story begins when she was a little girl growing up in Memphis who idolized him and often wondered what Elvis was really like! Then, one unbelievable night in 1971, she got her chance to find out. And she was no longer a breathless teenager, but a lovely beauty queen, the 21-year-old Miss Tennessee. Someone asked if she`d like to meet Elvis at a movie theater he`d rented for the night. She was "awed and thrilled" when he was introduced and remembers, "When the movie started he came and sat next to me and started getting a little friendly-you know, the old yawn and streched of the arm behind the seat!"

"He was very manly, very powerful, and he would put you in your place if you needed it. But he was every woman`s dream in every way." Linda Thompson Believe it or not, Linda made it clear she wasn`t interested! She thought El was still married. Then he told her he and Priscilla had been seperated for six months. "You should`ve married a local girl," was Linda`s immediate response. "There`s something about Southern people-they`re more affectionate, family oriented." For the next five years, she proved exactly that to the man she loved. "We were together almost 24 hours a day", she says. "He was a super-romantic - he showers you with gifts and little loving gestures and pet names." The gifts included Cadillacs, jewels, even nearby houses for Linda and her parents (though she seldom used the house until their breakup). "The cars and the gifts are the least of the things to remember him by. He would say to me often, `These are only things. They`re unimportant.`He was right,"Linda says, showing off the gift she cherishes most-a cute rag doll named Patty Alice that Elvis bought her on a trip to Vegas two years before he died.

"He needed and wanted more love than anyone I`ve ever met." Linda

The pet names were a big part of their relationship, too. He called her Precious, or Ariadne, after a 3-year-old girl in one of his movies, "Follow that dream". Her nicknames for him were Button, or Bunting (as in baby blanket), or even Pablum! It was indicative of their relationship. "We were little children with each other", Linda remembers wistfully. "We literally talked like babies and that`s how we thought of each other, like babies."

"Once Elvis touched your life, you were never quite the same." Linda

Unlike babies, however, life in Elvis`13-acre, 18-room pink palace was a topsy-turvy, day-for-night arrangement. The routine at Graceland began after dark, for Elvis lived at night, and it was at night that Linda spent her magic moments with him. "I saw him mostly in his pajamas", she says, looking back on their life together.
Vehement in her denials of the drug rumors that emerged after his death, she recalls their life at Graceland as slow-paced, quiet and relaxed. "We always keep a pot of coffee brewing and cooked roast ready at all times," she revealed in a 1975 interview. "Elvis reads a lot and listens to recordings and we love to watch football."
Other activities that whiled away the nights at Graceland were equally low.key. "We would show films in the downstairs projection room and watch TV a lot. We had friends in to discuss spiritual things-Elvis belonged to a Self-Realization church. We read the Bible to each other and wrestled with each other and sang together."
But like Priscilla before her, life at Graceland began to smother Linda. "There was no interaction with outside people," she says. "The hours were totally reversed-up all night, asleep in the day." And though their nights together were magical, because of the love they felt for one another, the sense of being innocent children free from the outside world, there were problems that managed to interude into the magical world they created. Living only at night cut Linda off from friends, family, everyone who wasn`t a part of life at Graceland. " I did that for five years, thinking, he`ll change, but he never did, " she says regretfully. And, she admits, she was always honest with her about his nights away from Graceland-when he saw other women, while insisting that she be faithful. "He needed that, the interaction of sitting down and talking and getting feedback," she says, looking back. "He needed and wanted more love than anyone I`ve ever met. I lived with that as long as I could."
About eight months before his death, she says, "Neither of us wanted to part, but it was time." Though she is still young and beautiful, she insists, " I`ll never, ever, love anyone like I loved Elvis." She has her regrets now, and admits that "Sometimes I wish I hadn`t left Graceland. That I could have been there with him those last months if I had known."
The magic turned out to be a dream, but it is a dream Linda will never forget. And one that she will never entirely lose, either. In a touching revelation, she says that Priscilla spoke to her after El`s funeral, The two grieving women who had loved the King "both agreed", Linda says, "that once Elvis touched your life you were never quiet the same."

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