Every family has a story like this one. Dad or Grandpa shows up with a present that is way too big for a little kid, and Mom takes one look and puts her foot down.
In the Presley house, Dad happened to be Elvis.
Priscilla Presley told the story herself in 2005, when she and her daughter, Lisa Marie, sat down together with Oprah Winfrey on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Lisa Marie was a singer in her own right by then, with her second album, “Now What,” coming out that April. But the conversation kept drifting back to what it was like to grow up as Elvis’s daughter, and to raise her.
And Priscilla remembered the coat.
Lisa Marie was born Feb. 1, 1968. Somewhere around her 5th birthday, Elvis gave her a real mink coat. Priscilla was not even completely sure of the occasion. She hedged it with an “I think” when she told Oprah about it.
Here is exactly what she said happened next.
“I think he gave it to her for her birthday and I said, You’re not wearing this. This is not for you. You’re 5 years old. You’re not wearing a mink coat.”
That settled things with Lisa Marie. Then it was Elvis’s turn.
“So I called him up and I said, ‘What are you doing?'” Priscilla told Oprah. In her view the gift was “just too much.”
It is hard not to smile at that. Here is one of the most famous men on the planet getting a phone call from his child’s mom, the same call plenty of fathers have gotten after a trip to the toy store.
When Priscilla explained it, she went straight to where Elvis came from. He grew up poor, and he wanted to give his little girl the things he never had. Priscilla also worried about how it would look, and she did not want Lisa Marie raised like a privileged child.
So two loving parents wanted the same thing for their daughter. They just had different ideas about how to get there.
The warmth between them comes through on that show. Priscilla said of her daughter, “she’s really lovable.”
Lisa Marie, for her part, had a funny way of describing how different the two of them were. She joked that “she’s got a china shop and I’m the bull that comes in.”
That is probably as good a summary of the mink coat moment as you will find. Elvis brought in the big, over-the-top gesture, and Priscilla was the one guarding the china.
And honestly, most moms reading this have said some version of “You’re not wearing that” at least once. Priscilla just got to say it about a mink, to a 5-year-old, with Elvis on the other end of the phone.
