Word: presleys
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...certainly be told and told again in the coming weeks, the story of what happened after his death is both more unfamiliar and nearly as compelling, at least from a fiduciary point of view. Its unlikely heroine turns out to be none other than Elvis' "child bride," Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, who divorced him in 1973 but took over EPE six years later as trustee for their young daughter Lisa Marie. (EPE was and is the operating arm of the trust that owns the Presley estate.) At the time, the company's principal asset was dead, his shockingly modest estate...
...estate was heading toward the red when Priscilla took over. There were the taxes and maintenance on Graceland, salaries for hangers-on and family members, the looming depredations of the IRS. By the early '80s, Priscilla, now both trustee for the Presley estate and president of EPE, had recruited her own money manager, a Kansas City, Mo., businessman named Jack Soden, and the two of them set about figuring out what to do with the estate. The most obvious move, which they explored, would have been to sell off Graceland; one potential buyer, the city of Memphis, did a feasibility...
With money flowing in from Graceland, EPE could afford to turn its attention to a thornier problem: controlling Elvis' name and likeness. Earnest collectors of Elvisabilia remember the late '70s and early '80s as a woeful time when shoddy gewgaws--Elvis toenail clippers, vials of "Elvis Presley's Sweat"--were sold with impunity and by companies that paid no licensing fees to EPE. At issue was what is known as "rights of descendability of publicity"--legalese for the ability of a famous person to control the use of his or her name and likeness. Existing law, while not entirely clear...
...managed to back off everyone from the Thomas Cook travel agency (trinkets for Memphis tours) to the state of Mississippi (Elvis-shaped flower arrangements) to fan clubs in Kuala Lumpur to the Federal Government of the U.S. (in a dispute over licensing the popular 1993 Elvis stamp). The Presley cases remain the legal precedent most often cited when other stars' estates attempt to lay cease-and-desist orders on "infringers," making EPE a hero to many a Hollywood...
...company's rousing growth has meant that Lisa Marie Presley has personally made tens of millions. In 1993, when she turned 25, with cash rolling in from Graceland and some 100 well-heeled Elvis licensees, she quite wisely reappointed her mother as trustee of the estate. Besides facilitating her brief marriage to Michael Jackson, Lisa Marie's majority has freed EPE to take greater risks; thus the real estate deals and coming clubs and casinos. Even in Elvisworld, however, there is such a thing as excess. Priscilla turns up her nose at the notion that Elvis clubs might some...