Who wasn’t appalled to learn of Roman Polanski‘s sexual violation of Samantha Geimer in March 1977, when she was only 13? One presumes the moral outrage would be just as strong if Geimer had been 14 or 15. And yet rock stars enjoying sexual intimacy with way-too-young teenagers was par for the course in the mid to late ’50s, certainly as far as Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley were concerned.
Baz Luhrman never touched this aspect of Presley’s private life in Elvis, of course, but Alanna Nash‘s “Baby, Let’s Play House“, a seemingly credible, well-written 2009 book, reports that the sexually insecure Presley was totally into “cherries,” as he called them — girls who were barely pubescent.
Presley was apparently more into erotic fiddling around than becoming an actual Pablo Picasso-like conquistador. But carnal knowledge is carnal knowledge.
A 14 year-old named Frances Forbes and two girlfriends (Gloria Mowel, Heidi Heissen) participated in “pajama parties” with Presley, the book says. “Elvis didn’t pay any attention to me [when I was 13], but when I was 14, he noticed me,’ Forbes says. “14 was a magical age with Elvis. It really was.”
Presley was immediately sexual, however, with his future wife Priscilla, who was 14 when they met in Germany, when Presley was serving in the Army. Presley manager Colonel Tom Parker claimed that their relationship with chaste until Priscilla came of age….bullshit, says Nash.
In 1960 Presley reportedly fiddled around with Sandy Ferra, the 14-year-old daughter of the owner of the Cross Bow nightclub in L.A.’s Panorama City. In 1974, when Presley was 39, he took up with 14-year-old Reeca Smith.
