Elvis Presley: Ginger Alden's lover and protector

A new study shows that men only have to believe they’ve bested another man in competition to get raised testosterone levels and an inflated sense of their own value as a sexual prospect. Scientists found that this hormonal and psychological shift made men more inclined to approach new potential partners. The research team measured hormone levels in men in their twenties, as well as self-perceived attractiveness and confidence in approaching women. Unbeknownst to participants, the competitions in the study were rigged to randomly declare the winner, regardless of who was better. While previous studies have shown that winning can affect male hormones, it was not known whether this was down to the efforts it takes to win or the belief that one is victorious. The latest study, led by biological anthropologists from the University of Cambridge and published in the journal Human Nature, reveals that just being convinced you have won, or indeed lost, is enough to cause male hormonal fluctuations that can influence sexual behaviour. Researchers say this is an example of “plasticity”: the body adapting without altering genetic make-up to suit a change in circumstance. In this case a perceived change in social status, due to the men believing they have defeated a rival. The body attempts to take advantage of this apparent status improvement by inducing chemical and consequently behavioural changes that promote a “short-term” approach to reproductive success, say the researchers. Longman points out that in many animal populations, male social hierarchies correspond with reproductive success, and social status is determined by competition between males. The men who believed they had won received an average testosterone increase of 4.92%, while those convinced they had lost dropped by an average of 7.24%. Overall, men who thought they were winners had testosterone levels 14.46% higher their deflated opponents. The men who felt like winners had a ‘self-perceived mate value’ that was 6.53% higher, on average, than their rivals, and were 11.29% more likely to approach attractive women in an effort to instigate sexual relations. Source: www.cam.ac.uk

In death, the allure of Elvis's legendary life and career grew even larger. Unlike celebrities of today, he had kept his private life private, creating an enthralling air of mystery. Elvis and Ginger is a testament that Elvis’s last days were not filled with the torment and misery of a drug filled haze. While there’s no doubt he was struggling with a prescription drug dependency that caused wild mood swings and shortened his life; he was still trying to live life and have fun. With Ginger Alden, he seemed to be seeking refuge in his southern origins and a longing for a stable home life. Elvis requests that Ginger join him on his tours, whisking her away in private suites, and sitting her backstage where he can see her during his shows. Elvis becomes her "mentor, lover, and protector" while emerges from Alden's memoir as an eccentric, jealous, and needy person. Alden writes from the point of view of young woman in awe of her fiance, yet it’s obvious that she was mature beyond her 21 years. Of course he bestowed her with generous gifts including a credit card to use as she pleased. In her own words, Ginger details their whirlwind romance—from first kiss to his stunning proposal of marriage. Above it all, Ginger rescues Elvis from the hearsay, rumors, and tabloid speculations of his final year by shedding a frank yet personal light by revealing the man behind the myth—complicated, romantic, fallible, and human. Fewer than nine months after they meet, she finds Elvis sprawled on the floor of his bathroom, breathing his final breaths. Source: www.bookbub.com

Billy Smith (1995): “I think Ginger was the first woman he’d run across other than Priscilla who rejected him. You could tell they were having problems. Sometimes she wouldn’t come up for a few days, and he’d get all agitated and sullen and say, ‘Where is she, man? Why don’t she stay here?’ That made him more controlling and paranoid than ever, complaining that Ginger didn't realize he needed her at his side.” ‘He always needed a woman in bed’, said Lamar Fike. ‘The touching and the feeling and everything else meant more to Elvis than the actual sex act. I guess Elvis was the King of Foreplay.’ Elvis gave Ginger a gold bracelet with “Elvis” spelled out on it in diamonds. “Now everyone will know you belong to me,” Elvis asserted. Dr. Max Shapiro, a Beverly Hills dentist who treated both Elvis and Ginger while they were vacationing in Palm Springs, substantiated that their engagement was sincere. “I can verify Ginger’s story,” he stated in 1979. “Elvis told me he loved Ginger very much and that he had asked her to marry him. They were engaged.” He added, “Elvis knew I had invented an artificial heart, and the last thing he ever said to me was, ‘Max, please make one for me and make one for Ginger.'” By August 1977, Ginger says they were discussing the details of their wedding day. Elvis said: “I would like certain people there, public officials and friends. I don’t want this wedding to be a three-ring circus. The limousines should be inches longer than a normal-length limo and in blue. I’ve thought about your gown. The dress should have a high collar and I would like it to have small rosebuds with gold threads through it.” 

Most accusations against Ginger Alden amount to a stream of vague phrases, such as “it seems,” “she might have known,” “we think,” “we guess,” “she probably figured”... And that’s the weakness of all the criticism leveled at Ginger Alden by Billy Smith and his fellow “down-home boys,” Lamar Fike, Marty Lacker, and Joe Esposito. None of them provide any credible evidence to support their negative opinions about the relationship between Elvis and Ginger. It’s time to assess the credibility of the characters on stage during the closing scenes of Elvis Presley’s life. There’s no reason to trust the accounts of any of the guys posing as Elvis’s friends in those final months. The person who was the closest to Elvis during that time was Ginger Alden. Her book “Elvis and Ginger” supports her account of those final days with dates, details, and controlled emotion. Her book is by far the best existing narrative of the final nine months of Presley’s life, leading up to his death.

Elvis told Ginger of his troubles with his entourage. “There’s gonna be changes around here.” When Elvis fell on the stairs coming off stage in Milwaukee, he told Ginger, “People just aren’t doing their jobs. I’m getting rid of Dick, Joe, and whole lot more.” Later, when Elvis told Ginger he felt lonely at Graceland, she reminded him of all the people he had around him. “They’re not my friends,” he responded. “Do you think if it weren’t for their paychecks, they’d still be around?” Elvis nearly always wanted Ginger by his side. He insisted that she stop seeing anyone else, even going so far as to hand her a telephone and asking her to call the boyfriend she had been dating and end their relationship. It was just one of many examples Ginger gives of Elvis's controlling nature. Her resistance then and at other times caused Elvis to have angry outbursts. Elvis may have been trying to bring Ginger more under his spell with an endless stream of expensive gifts. In addition to the already mentioned diamond ID bracelet, the amount of jewelry he gave her in nine months time was staggering. 

There were the rings: a gold and diamond cluster ring, one with sapphires and diamonds, another set in rubies and diamonds, another diamond cluster ring, and the engagement ring with a huge center diamond surrounded by six smaller ones. Then there were the necklaces: a diamond and emerald one, a couple more diamond necklaces, another with TLC spelled out in diamonds, and then what Ginger described as the “most singular piece of jewelry I’d ever seen: his own large ram’s head necklace in gold, inlaid with diamonds and emeralds.” Elvis also gave Ginger three new cars, mink coats, design clothing, and her own credit card. Ginger saw only benevolence in Elvis’s serial gift giving. “He saw himself as someone who was in a position to enhance other people’s lives by bringing beauty into it,” she concluded. “He thought that would make them happy.” However, when Ginger refused to immediately call her boyfriend to end their relationship, Elvis grabbed a bottle of Gatorade and thrown it against the wall. “It troubled me that Elvis had flown off the handle like that,” she recalls, but then she adds a naïve rationalization for it. “As odd as this sounds, it also made me feel good to think that Elvis was really that serious about us.” Weeks later a “deafening bang” awoke Ginger one morning at Graceland. “I bolted upright and saw Elvis standing at the foot of the bed, holding a 57 Magnum pistol in his hand. I risked a glance behind me and saw a bullet hole in the wall above the headboard. I looked back at Elvis, trying to wrap my mind around the idea that he really had just shot a hole in the wall. By way of explanation, Elvis said he had asked for yogurt and I hadn’t responded. ‘It was an attention getter,’ he said.” Although she professed to be “in shock”, Ginger accepted his apology, sensing “on a deep level, that Elvis honestly was sorry.” It wasn’t the last time she’d hear gunfire at Graceland. A running toilet in his bathroom so irritated Elvis, that he “blasted it to smithereens” with what Ginger called a “machine gun.”

That time, Ginger’s shock turned to anger, she says, and she fled Graceland and ran home to be comforted by her mother. She soon went back to a contrite Elvis, though. While Elvis and Ginger were vacationing in Hawaii in March 1977, Elvis’s anger resulted in him doing what Ginger called the “inconceivable.” It started with an argument between the two because Ginger felt Elvis had been drinking too much juice. When she left the room while Elvis was still talking, he pursued her into an adjoining room and slapped her. “No one ever walks out on me when I’m talking,” he said. “The dark mood had transformed Elvis into someone I didn’t recognize,” Ginger observed. Still, she forgave him. “I could tell by his voice that Elvis was deeply remorseful for having struck me.” Ginger says that in the nine months she was with Elvis, she never saw him sitting at a table to eat. Elvis had isolated himself in his bedroom, that is where he and Ginger were served their meals. Early on in their relationship, Ginger spoke briefly with Priscilla on the phone. “See that he eats right,” Priscilla told her, but Ginger learned that was easier said than done. “I was concerned about his health. When it came to mealtimes, Elvis and I enjoyed eating similar things such as hamburgers, steak, and omelets. I hoped to move us toward a healthier diet, but I just didn’t know how because he was used to getting what he wanted.” Eventually, she thought he was showing “more awareness of his diet.” He was drinking a lot of water and eating less yogurt. But she made that observation on August 15, 1977. It was too late to reverse decades of poor eating habits.

Elvis had popularized the peanut butter and banana sandwich. “When I told his bodyguard Sam Thompson (Linda Thompson's brother) that I had eaten fried shrimps for dinner, he said “I can’t believe you ate that in front of him.” One afternoon, Elvis was asleep and I decided to visit his paternal grandmother Minnie Mae Presley on my own. Right away, Minnie Mae’s conversation turned to her grandson. “I’m so proud of Elvis,” she said. “You know, Gladys was a strong mother. She worried about Elvis.” Minnie Mae told me that Gladys used to cook fish in the house all day and that’s why he hated fish now. It was nice talking with Elvis's grandma. She was sweet, opinionated, and funny. Best of all, she seemed as eager for me to marry Elvis as I was. Minnie Mae told me that she loved me and hoped Elvis and I would have a little boy. “I was tired of seeing that blond stuff come down the stairs,” she said. I wasn’t sure who she was talking about, but Minnie Mae Presley was the first person to really make me feel like part of the family.”

Early on, though, she says she trusted Dr. Nichopoulos to monitor Elvis’s health. Later she began to attribute Elvis’s bad mood swings to the “prescribed medication” he’d been taking. She finally summoned up the nerve to confront him about those medications. “One morning, as Elvis called for Tish to bring him medication, I told him, ‘Elvis, you don’t really need that.’ He looked at me and shook his head. ‘You don’t understand,’ he replied. ‘I need it.’ I wondered if Elvis had built up an immunity to whatever medication he’d been taking on a regular basis, and that’s why he needed an increase in dosage. I wondered if this medication could be harmful to Elvis in the long run. A few times, it seemed clear to me that it had affected his mood and behavior in negative ways.” According to Dr. Nick: “Elvis felt Ginger was the one. I had always thought that if Elvis could work out his relationship with her, everything else would fall in place. Despite their turbulent relationship, Elvis asked her to marry him. Maybe he was just ready for marriage this time.” The peril of an accidental overdose became clear to her one day when a phone call sent her rushing over to Graceland. “In the middle of the night, Elvis called me at home. I suspected he was phoning me from Las Vegas. From his heavy sounding voice, it sounded like he’d taken some sleep medication. “I miss you,” he said. “I miss you, too,” I told him. We spoke briefly, said we loved each other, then said good night. My heart sank as we hung up.

The following afternoon, someone called from Graceland to say Elvis was ill. This concerned me and I was on edge. I rushed over, and when I entered Elvis’s bedroom, I was greeted by the sight of Elvis lying in bed on his side, facing me with his eyes closed and hooked up to an IV. Scared, my heart sank again. I had never seen Elvis like this before. Charlie, Billy, and a few others were standing around. Dr. Nichopoulos was sitting in a chair. “What happened?” I asked. Charlie told me that Elvis had gone to Las Vegas and taken too much medication. It crushed me to see him like this. Everyone stood about the room, quiet. Gradually, Dr. Nichopoulos and the guys began slowly exiting the room. I lay down beside Elvis. I stared up at the ceiling, brokenhearted, and my eyes welled up. Suddenly, I felt Elvis move on the bed beside me. I looked over as he began rolling over onto his back. Turning his head my way, Elvis slowly opened his eyes. He didn’t say a word, but with an unsteady hand, he took his finger and wiped a tear from my eye. The questions swirled in my mind as confusion and anger blurred my vision. All I could think about, over and over again, was how could his people have let this happen? In retrospect, I can’t help but feel that Elvis’s plunge into that kind of extreme depression for those few days was exacerbated by Elvis’s knowledge of the scathingly negative book coming out, written by his former bodyguards Dave Hebler and Red and Sonny West.” Source: www.elvis-history-blog.com