Introduction
INSIDE GRACELAND: The $10 Tooth and the Storm It Sparked
It started with a tooth. A tiny, innocent moment between a father and daughter that spiraled into something far more revealing—about love, pride, and the emotional fault lines that still ran deep at Graceland. One sleepy night in the mid-1970s, little Lisa Marie Presley lost a tooth and excitedly told her daddy. Elvis, ever the doting father, slipped a crisp $10 bill under her pillow as a surprise from the “tooth fairy.” To Lisa, it was magic. To Elvis, it was just a simple gesture of love. But to Priscilla, it was something else entirely.
The next morning, Lisa picked up the phone and called her mother. What was supposed to be a sweet story of childhood wonder turned into a flashpoint. Priscilla, hearing the amount, was stunned. Ten dollars? She felt it was too much—a symbol of excess and indulgence that clashed with the values she tried to instill in their daughter. She called Graceland, and what followed was a quiet thunderstorm of words exchanged behind closed doors, but echoing through the mansion walls.
Elvis’s cousin Billy Smith was there. As the last living member of the original Memphis Mafia, he remembers the look on Elvis’s face as the call ended—not fury, but frustration. “She doesn’t understand,” Elvis muttered. “This is how I show her I care.” For Elvis, money was never just money—it was a way to give Lisa a life he never had. For Priscilla, love meant setting boundaries, keeping Lisa grounded.
Neither parent was wrong. But both were hurt.
That moment—over a $10 bill and a baby tooth—exposed a deeper truth. Even after the divorce, Elvis and Priscilla were still wrestling with how to co-parent, how to love the same child in different ways. For Lisa, it was another lesson in the complicated language of love spoken by two icons. And for fans, it was a rare glimpse behind the myth of Elvis—a reminder that even the King, in the quiet corners of his life, struggled like the rest of us.