Elvis and Me

It took 37 years, but Presley’s best-selling autobiography has finally become an unabridged audiobook with the 77-year-old actress reading her own story in a strong, expressive, and seductive voice that sounds exactly as she did three decades ago on TV’s Dallas. This memoir of her 18-year relationship with Elvis Presley was pretty juicy reading back in 1985, and her story still packs a punch. She met the swivel-hipped singer when she was 14. Early on, she saw his daily prescription drug use: sedatives to fight his insomnia, amphetamines to combat his grogginess, and (encouraged by his movie studio) diet pills to keep weight off. They wed in 1967 when she was 21. “Over the years,” she says, “he became my father, my husband, and very nearly my god.” Both were prone to jealousy and numerous affairs. She tells and reads her tale with compassion for her ex-husband (who died at age 42 in 1977) and mourns the numerous reasons their marriage failed.