-In The Press - Elvis Presley - Paternity Suit

DVD / Book Review taken from the magazine No. 134 by the German "Elvis Club Berlin"

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Review by Nadine Steffens - Translation by Nadine Schwenk

Elvis Presley - Paternity Suit

At the end of 2006 Praytome Publishing released its latest product.
This time it was not a book like "Born To Rock", nor a DVD like "Behind The Image".
It was a premiere, because this time it was a combination of a book and a DVD.

Paternity Suit is not a common DVD either, or a book with a lot of pictures and very tense stories. Praytome Publishing reveals background information on a topic which was totally ignored until now.
It is about the paternity suit Elvis was confronted with in 1970. I never would have thought, that it is possible to do a complete book - or in this case even a complete book and a DVD - on this topic. I was wrong.

The whole case lasted for more than 6 years in Elvis's life and was not such a small thing as most people thought. To write down the complete story of the book, would be too much. Shortly about the content:
In 1970 a young woman named Patricia Parker visited the Elvis Opening Night on January 26th. She somehow managed it to go backstage and get a picture with Elvis. This picture was later the only evidence, the two of them ever met.

According to her statement Elvis invited her to his suite and seduced her, shortly after that she noticed that she was pregnant. During the seventh month of her pregnancy she assigned the famous lawyer Paul Caruso to her case. This should be the beginning of a 6 year fight if Elvis was the bodily father of the child or not.

A lot of background information is mentioned here for the first time, as for example, that they ambushed Elvis shortly before his concert on November 14th 1970, to serve him the court papers. I also didn't know that after Patricia Parker Elvis only allowed photos with his fans, when one of his bodyguards stood in the background. This was a safety measure , so nobody could later claim she was alone with Elvis and to avoid further freeloaders. But these are not the only things you learn in this DVD. If you think back and see the lots of covers of the yellow press you can understand why Elvis talked so bad about the press (TV gossip magazine) in the famous Desert Storm concert. He made it public so that certain persons (maids among others) who had spread rumors about him, noticed that he was very well aware of it. Knowing that, I see this concerts differently than before.

What fascinates me about the book is that everything that is written in it is proved with court documents and/or pictures. Blood tests, polygraph tests, even the envolvement of a former NBC employee, who had worked on the 68 Comeback Special, you get everything and it is no fiction.

Praytome Publishing managed it once more to do a detailed research and to come up with results based on facts, instead of repeating the common lies and rumors, as it is unfortunately done so often. I am amazed of the professionalism and the will to report about facts instead of legends. In addition you get great candids (the famous hidden camera pictures) and never before heard audio comments of Elvis himself.
The book is correspondingly thick and the quality of the paper is outstanding. No fingerprints remain on the pages. The combination is very succesful. What I also liked was the fact that the DVD included for the first time German subtitles. This is important for this kind of material, because not everybody can speak English. I would recommend this combination to every fan who is interested in Elvis as a private person. In my opinion it belongs to the household of every fan. To the ones saying "I'm only interested in the musician" : this case has also accompanied Elvis on stage.

And last but not least: I have also friends that are not Elvis fans. They have watched the DVD as interested as I did. So it is not only for die-hard fans.








© 2007 by Elvis Club Berlin

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