Elvis Presley Snuck Into the Delivery Room of a Stranger Giving Birth
Elvis Presley was so famous that nearly every stranger he saw knew who he was. While this level of celebrity could be suffocating, Elvis also used it to his advantage. Once, while in the hospital, Elvis decided to slip into a stranger’s room while she was giving birth. The experience was incredibly confusing for the woman.
Elvis Presley visited a stranger in the hospital
In 1974, Elvis reunited with ex-girlfriend Linda Thompson. He accompanied her to the hospital to visit her brother and sister-in-law, who had just had a baby. Elvis quickly grew bored with the visit and decided he wanted to go to the labor room. He slipped on a surgical mask to hide his identity, but, given his level of fame, it didn’t work.
“There was a lady there in labor, and Elvis came up to her and put his hand on her tummy and said, ‘How are you feeling honey?’” Thompson said, per the book Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick. “She said, ‘Oh my God, you look like Elvis Presley.’ He said, ‘I am Elvis Presley.’”
Thompson said it seemed that the woman felt she had hallucinated the whole interaction.
Elvis Presley seemed more comfortable with a stranger giving birth than he did with his wife
Elvis was excited to slip into the labor room, but he had definite issues with women who had given birth. Priscilla Presley recalled him telling her that he wasn’t sure he could sleep with a woman who’d had a child. She noticed a definite difference in his behavior toward her once she became a mother.
Several months after giving birth, Priscilla wrote that she felt embarrassed about their intimacy.
“I embarrassed myself last night,” she wrote in her diary, per her book Elvis and Me. “I wore a black negligee, laid as close to Elvis as I could while he read. I guess it was because, I knew what I wanted and was making it obvious. I kissed his hand, then each finger, then his neck and face. But I waited too long. His sleeping pills had taken effect. Another lonely night.”
Priscilla explained that she began to feel insecure about her sexuality.
He liked using his fame to sneak into places
Elvis snuck into more places than just hospital wards. He used his fame to go wherever he wanted, including his local morgue. Priscilla explained that Elvis “used his fame as his passkey” to visit the place after hours.
“It was eerie walking through the halls and viewing each room,” Priscilla wrote. “They were still, solemn, dimly lit. I clutched at Elvis’ hand. At first I didn’t want to look, but he assured me the bodies were at peace and that once I looked, it wouldn’t be so bad.”
Priscilla became upset when they saw the body of an infant, but Elvis told her it was good for her.
“You have to see things like this sometimes,” he said. “This is the cold hard fact — reality. When you look at a body, you realize how temporary it all is, how it could end in a matter of minutes.”
