The King had an unquenchable appetite for food, drugs, lavishing expensive gifts to friends and – not surprisingly – women and sex, especially sex with virgins.

Elvis’ aides fed him a steady stream of women in a juggling act that became a perfected revolving door routine, a new book discloses.

Elvis’s sex secrets are disclosed in a riveting new book, Elvis Presley: A Southern Life, by Joel Williamson published by Oxford University Press. 

He concocted a variety of stories to get women to agree to spend the night with him – which sometimes was no more than just being motherly and comforting him because he didn’t want to be alone.

But his skills as a lover were often demeaned by his conquests. Actress Cybill Shepard confessed that she had a brief affair with him in Memphis in the summer of 1972 and the sex was highly overrated.

Scroll down for video 

+22

Young love: Priscilla Beaulieu was 14 when she met Elvis Presley when he was in the Army in Germany. They married in Vegas in 1967

+22

Sex before marriage: That first night with Elvis, ‘he made love to her in every way short of penetration. It was as if Priscilla’s virginity was another thing that Elvis strangely and sorely needed to maintain’

+22

Icing on the cake:  Priscilla and Elvis played nurse and patient games

+22

I’m too sexy: Stationed on an army base in Germany near the Czech border in December 1958, beautiful young girls sought out Elvis’s company and his bed

Williamson, a Lineberger Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at the University of North Carolina, is the author of a number of landmark works on Southern culture and a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

When Elvis stepped out on the public stage in the mid-1950s with his first hit song, Heartbreak Hotel, he became the subject of unprecedented lust and sexual desire by young women.

Coming from the rural south, Memphis, Tennessee, the screaming, fainting women were a mystery to him, but still thrilling.

He loved being loved and he took advantage of the swell of female sexual desire for him up until his death in 1977 at age forty-two.

‘Elvis was skillful in the wooing process. When he wanted, he could make a girl – an audience of one – feel that she was the only one in the whole world for him’, writes the author.

Stationed on an army base in Germany near the Czech border in December 1958, beautiful young girls sought out Elvis’s company and his bed.

A 14-year old Priscilla Beaulieu, whose father was an officer in the U.S. Air Force and stationed nearby in Weisbaden, was hanging around the Eagle Club, the local military canteen, when she was spotted by Currie Grant, an airman first class in the Air Force and the club’s assistant manager.

She wanted to meet Elvis and Currie was willing to set that up. 

+22

Madonna: The birth of Lisa Marie changed the dynamic of his relationship with Priscilla

+22

Broken family: The marriage was over in 1968, but they both doted on their precious daughter

That first night with Elvis, ‘he made love to her in every way short of penetration. It was as if Priscilla’s virginity was another thing that Elvis strangely and sorely needed to maintain’.

She stayed in his bed those six months he was in Germany.

‘He taught her how to make love in various ways short of full intercourse’…and wrote in her book, Elvis and Me, that she begged for the consummation of his love but he refused.

 There had been a river of sex before, now there was a flood.

‘He worked his art of foreplay without penetration. In lovemaking, as in entertaining, Elvis’ outstanding talent was oral.’

But Priscilla wasn’t the only one in his bed. There was the beautiful 19-year old German, Elisabeth Stefaniak, who was his private secretary –  and an assurance that he would not have to sleep alone since she also lived in the house.

When Elvis’ mother Gladys died in 1958 his craving for companionship in bed became stronger,. says Williamson.

‘There had been a river of sex before, now there was a flood.’

From 1958 until his death in 1977, he always needed a woman or girl in bed.

‘His sexual appetite was very, very strong’, said Lamar Fike, who lived in several of Elvis’s houses.

‘The touching and the feeling and the patting and everything else meant more to Elvis than the actual act’.

‘I guess Elvis was the King of Foreplay.’

+22

O mama: When Elvis’ mother Gladys died in 1958 his craving for companionship in bed became stronger, says author Williamson

+22

Elvis and his parents Vernon and Gladys in the mid 1950s

When he left Germany and the arms of Elisabeth Stefaniak, he stepped into the embrace of local beauty queen, Anita Wood, back in Memphis.

And he also took up with a trio of 14-year-old girls who were game ‘for pillow fights, tickling, kissing and cuddling’ — and wrestling all together with the 22-year-old, 180-pound Presley.

When Anita learned of all the other women and found a letter from Priscilla begging Elvis to bring her over from Germany for a visit, she ended the relationship.

The virginal Anita was out, the virginal Priscilla was in.

Priscilla and Elvis played nurse and patient games –  handling and probing each other’s bodies.

‘At times, Elvis introduced another girl into the sex scene in his bedroom. In this play, Elvis had Priscilla and the girl pretend to make love while he watched, filmed, and sometimes joined in.’

They photographed themselves in a variety of poses and scenes with a Polaroid camera and stored the pictures in a silver suitcase.

With Elvis off making films in Hollywood and Priscilla back at Graceland, Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s manager, decided the pair should marry. Christmas 1966, Elvis proposed and they were hitched in Vegas the following May 1967.

A year later, the marriage was over. Elvis rejected Priscilla after the birth of Lisa Marie and refused to sleep with her anymore.

Presley had not wanted to marry Priscilla and told Lamar Fike that he ‘didn’t pull out in time’. In the seventh month of her pregnancy, he suggested a ‘trial separation’ in the deteriorating marriage. Seeing her shock, he dropped the subject.

+22

F rated: Actress Cybill Shepherd confessed that she had a brief affair with him in Memphis in the summer of 1972 and the sex was highly overrated.

+22

Lacking lover:  ‘He was a great kisser and very sweet, but not the stud she had expected,’ writes the author

+22

Splendor: Natalie Wood, the Oscar-nominated star of Rebel Without A Cause, met Presley when she was 18 and he was 21

Priscilla tried to seduce him with a black negligee and cuddling but it had no effect. 

She had tried to upgrade his taste level and redesign his Palm Springs house where they honeymooned.

But his poor boy’s version of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion was good enough for him and the steady reservoir of showgirls that included one lesbian who all came for a romp with the King.

His wife Priscilla – and for that matter his girlfriends – were not invited. It was strictly for the dancers who were invited to swim naked in the pool and then join the guys in the many bedrooms.

 He had always demanded that his bodyguards and anyone else shield him from a bullet with their body.

Priscilla had tried to settle into his Beverly Hills house and proposed no more two-way mirrors or sex parties but that wasn’t going to happen.

In August 1970, a triangle of beautiful young women came along. Two were 25-year old self-proclaimed virgins – ‘an impossible dream for Elvis who was obsessed with virginity’ – and the other, hardly a virgin.

One of the virgins Joyce Bove worked for the House Armed Services Committee on Capital Hill and flew out to Vegas to take a break in August 1969.

Spotted by an Elvis greeter, she ended up in his suite for a private dinner but did not spend the night. Elvis pursued her back in Washington but she knew he was married and believed adultery a sin.

Joyce finally accepted the invite a year later – arriving right after Elvis had received a death threat -that he was going to be killed on stage while performing.

He had always demanded that his bodyguards and anyone else shield him from a bullet with their body. He believed the threat and said goodbye to everyone before the show.

An anxious Elvis  performed with a pistol in each boot and was relieved it was a hoax.

Alone with him in his hotel suite,Joyce saw this was not the sensitive, gentle man she met a year ago. She wanted to know if they had a future.

Elvis raged and did not want to explain anything except to say he and Priscilla had an open marriage. 

+22

Innocent: Linda Thompson, Miss Tennessee in 1972, was the next virgin to come along that Elvis hoped to ‘train to his taste sexually’

+22

Linda moved into Graceland and they had a private language with each other in their tiny private world

+22

Linda Thompson and Dr. George Nichopoulos (right), the doctor who proscribed Elvis’ shocking 19,000 pills

Joyce slammed the door on her way out.

The following day, Elvis slept with Barbara Leigh before Priscilla arrived.

Barbara Leigh, was a dark-haired twenty-three year old starlet, Elvis met when he was playing at the International Hotel in Vegas

Kathy Westmoreland was the next virgin he had on the line. She was a 25-year old soprano who had joined his show.

When he approached her, put his arm around her and kissed her, she confessed she was a virgin. Music to his ears.

 He was a great kisser and very sweet, but not the stud she had expected. She ascribed the difficulty to the drugs he was taking it was hard for him to be a natural man

On Cybill Shepherd’s affair

They were soon sleeping together. Initially there was no sex but that soon changed.

Television and recording commitments took Kathy to Los Angeles, and Barbara Leigh moved back into Elvis’ bed.

‘He was a great kisser and very sweet, but not the stud she had expected. She ascribed the difficulty to the drugs he was taking it was hard for him to be a natural man.’ Leigh soon departed.

Kathy came back and the relationship quickly fizzled – after she lost her virginity.

By the fall of 1970, Elvis’ obsession with guns reached fever pitch. In three days alone, he bought $20,000 worth of guns in one store.

He had an arsenal that included a .357 magnum, a gold-plated .45 automatic pistol, a .22 caliber Savage revolver, a pocket-sized Derringer, an AK-47 carbine and a Thompson sub-machine gun.

Along with the guns, he became obsessed with military commanders. He went to the White House and wormed his way into meeting President Nixon.

Wearing his lengthy Edwardian jacket draped around his shoulders and purple tunic underneath with his hairy chest exposed, he looked like he had stepped out of a horror movie or was wearing a Halloween costume.

Back at the hotel in Washington, Joyce Bova was there and willingly gave up her virginity this night only to discover ‘he was not a tiger in bed after all’.

+22

Blue Hawaii: Ginger Alden, here with Elvis on their last holiday together to Hawaii,  woke up on the day he died at Graceland and Elvis was not in bed.She got dressed, put on her makeup and did her hair and then knocked on the bathroom door.  She entered to find him ‘kneeling on the floor like a Muslim in prayer’

+22

Last love: To Elvis, Ginger Alden wasn’t young but she looked virginal and he was on board to help her family out financially

When she learned she was pregnant, Elvis told her that motherhood was sacred and sex between them would stop if she had the baby. She had an abortion and never told him.

He asked her to move into Graceland but she refused.

Priscilla arrived in Memphis to announce she was no longer in love with him and was separating. She traveled to Vegas to see her new sweetheart, karate champion Mike Stone.

Elvis flew into a jealous rage.

‘He grabbed me and forcefully made love to me’, she wrote in her book. ‘It was uncomfortable and unlike any other time he’d ever made love to me before.’

+22

President Richard Nixon met with Elvis on December 21, 1970 at the White House. Wearing his lengthy Edwardian jacket draped around his shoulders and purple tunic underneath with his hairy chest exposed, he looked like he had stepped out of a horror movie or was wearing a Halloween costume

‘This is how a real man makes love to his woman’, he told her.

‘Thus, the love affair between Elvis and Priscilla ended, ignominiously, with spousal rape,’ writes the author.

Now all of Elvis’ women were gone and he was clueless how they could desert him.

In the summer of 1972, actress Cybill Shepherd, once Miss Shelby County before pursuing an acting career in Hollywood, slept with the King while visiting Memphis.

Years later, she confessed ‘she had taken the macho out of Elvis’. But his lovemaking ‘was not very macho anyway’.

Linda Thompson, Miss Tennessee in the Miss USA contest of 1972, was the next virgin to come along that Elvis hoped to ‘train to his taste sexually’.

She moved into Graceland and they had a private language with each other in their tiny private world.

+22

Bejeweled: The King of Rock and Roll wearing his extraordinary Aloha jumpsuit.

She dug food out of his mouth when he fell asleep while eating. When he stopped breathing, she called the doctor. She was mother, sister, wife, lover and nurse. But she couldn’t change his drug habits. She finally departed when she could no longer accept all the other women.

With his spending out of control once again, Elvis had his father, Vernon, fire three of his devoted bodyguards after mayhem-generated lawsuits started bleeding him financially.

The bodyguards were getting into macho style fights in their zeal to protect Elvis and became a real threat to the physical safety of others and well as Elvis’s pocketbook.

It was going to cost Elvis a lot of money to pay lawyers and settle the suits. He instructed his father to fire Red West, Sonny West and Dave Hebler.

Shocked and now out of a job with no severance, Red West decided to write a book and expose the dark side of the King. He got a book advance of $125,000.

Elvis was able to get a copy of the book proposal that detailed his ‘perverted sexual appetites, especially between girls and young women, his drug addiction, his fits of violence’.

Livid, he thought of using Frank Sinatra’s Mafia connections to put all three men six feet under. He abandoned that idea and offered each man $50,000. There were no takers.

The book was published in August 1977 depicting Elvis as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who was ‘brooding, violent, obsessed with death. Strung out. Sexually driven’.

+22

Sad farewell: Priscilla and Lisa Marie at Elvis’ funeral in Memphis

Stories inside revealed: Elvis once threw a pool cue at a girl who interrupted a pool game and severely injured her breast.

He seduced a 17-year-old fan and she almost overdosed in his Palm Springs house. She suffered permanent brain damage but wouldn’t sue out of loyalty to Elvis.

There were many episodes written about him molesting and debauching very young girls, ‘engaging young girls to perform for him by mud wrestling in white panties, spying on couples have sex in one of his Hollywood houses by installing a two-way mirror in a bathroom’.

He watched women undressing in the pool house.

 He seduced a seventeen-year old fan and she almost overdosed in his Palm Springs house.

Elvis dreaded the bodyguards’ book but salvation for him came along in the form of Ginger Alden, a twenty-year old Memphian beauty queen he met in 1976.

‘I think I’m in love’, Elvis declared.

Maybe he could reinvent himself with marriage and a family with this girl.

Ginger was first runner-up in the Miss Tennessee – Miss Universe contest in 1976. She was the reigning Miss Mid-South Fair and had been Miss Traffic Safety.

After high school she was a salesgirl at a clothing store.

When Ginger was procured to meet Elvis, he also brought along Ginger’s older sister, Terry, the reigning Miss Tennessee – Miss American. She was the one handlers thought would connect with Elvis.

Both girls appeared as though they were there to interview for a job and Ginger spoke very little.

When Terry challenged Elvis to an arm wrestling match and easily won, she was out of the race.

To Elvis, Ginger wasn’t young but she looked virginal and he was on board to help her family out financially.

It wasn’t long before she segued to his bed.

+22

Home sweet home: The King died at Graceland in Memphis

+22

Elvis Presley’s gravestone at Graceland

The problem with Elvis’ plan for this re-invented life was Ginger herself who had a will of her own and was bewildered by the bizarre world of the guys around Elvis, the heavy drugs, and the seclusion.

She loved going to bars and clubs, dancing and flirting with guys with great bodies.

She wasn’t up for Elvis’s demands that she always perform and be waiting for him in his bed. His charm turned to anger when she wanted to leave.

On one occasion, as she got into her car, Elvis fired shots over her head. She didn’t stop. Another time, he had an aide let the air out of her tires. He threatened to lock the gates of Graceland to keep her in.

He cooled her club desires by helping her mother out financially and sent in one of his lawyers to secure the divorce from Ginger’s father. He paid for a swimming pool and landscaping for her mother and after his death, she came after the estate for the money she claimed Elvis promised to pay off her mortgage.

Mrs. Alden won in the lower court, but lost in the appeals court.

When daughter Lisa Marie was brought to Graceland to hang with Daddy, she loved to ride a golf cart down to the gate and sign autographs for the fans, ‘F*** you, Lisa Marie Presley’. 

She was seven.

 His tongue was protruding and he had bitten it. She raised his eyelid. His eyeball was blood red, no sign of any white.

The woman in Elvis’ bed was the one who discovered him dead on August 16, 1977. It was Ginger’s final act.

In the early morning hours of August 16, 1977, Elvis had a stash of codeine pills in case he had dental pain.

He also called Dr. Nichopolos, his steady drug supplier and received six doses of Dilaudid, a narcotic pain reliever.

Ginger woke up at 8 a.m. as he was heading into the bathroom and told him not to fall asleep on the john.

By 8:30, he called down to the kitchen from the bathroom for a third hit.

Ginger woke up again around 2 p.m. and Elvis was not in bed.

She got dressed, put on her makeup and did her hair – and then wondered where Elvis was.

She knocked on the bathroom door. No answer, so she entered to find him ‘kneeling on the floor like a Muslim in prayer’. His face was almost buried in the three-inch pile of the dark red rug.

‘His tongue was protruding and he had bitten it. She raised his eyelid. His eyeball was blood red, no sign of any white at all, and it was staring lifelessly’.

‘Then she reached for the intercom by the toilet and called the kitchen’.

Al Strada, a bodyguard, valet and wardrobe person rushed up along with Elvis good pal Joe Esposito.

The two men turned Elvis over on his back.

‘Grotesquely, the arms and legs remained frozen, crouching upside down. With difficulty they forced Elvis’ limbs straight.

‘He was wearing gold silk pajamas. The bottoms were down about his legs.’

The body was several feet from the toilet indicating he had crawled there.

Unable to open his jaws to see if anything was blocking his air passages, they had to knock out his front teeth.

Ginger helped press Elvis’ chest.

+22

Pathologists performing the autopsy discovered five feet of Elvis’ lower colon was distended and blocked with chalky, whitish fecal matter. He had not moved his bowels for some time, a process that occurs with the excessive use of ‘downers’.

The emergency call came into the Memphis Fire Station No. 29 at 2:33 p.m. on August 16, 1977.

Charles Crosby and Ulysses Jones were the two EMTs sent out. This was Ulysses’ turn to ride with the patient.

‘At first sight, Jones didn’t recognize Elvis.’

He was on his back, pajama top open, bottoms below his knees. ‘Rolls of fat girded his belly. He was very dark, almost black. Jones thought that he might have been a black man’.

Around his bloated neck, was a very large gold medallion. His skin was dark blue from the shoulders up.

‘A young man was pressing Elvis’ chest rhythmically, while a middle-aged woman gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation’.

‘It took five men to lift the body onto the stretcher. He must have weighed 250 lbs’.

There was no pulse. ‘Elvis was cold, unusually cold.’ Jones said.

Court proceedings four years later established that Dr. Nichopolos had written prescriptions for Elvis for at least 8,805 pills, tablets, vials and injectables in the seven and a half months alone preceding his death from January 1, 1977 to August 16, 1977.

The count was 19,012 going back to January 1975.

‘The drugs included uppers, downers, powerful pain killers Dilaudid, Quaalude, Percodan, Demerol and cocaine hydrochloride in quantities more appropriate for those terminally ill with cancer’.

‘Dr. Nick, like Elvis’ other physicians, had been seduced by the frothy glitter of show business.’