Word: soden
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...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 study on using Graceland as a tourist attraction and concluded that...
...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, suggested that the heirs of dead celebrities had few, if any, claims. Soden and Presley lobbied hard for legislation, and in 1984 the state of Tennessee passed a bill supporting EPE's interests...
With laws, of course, come litigation--so much of it in this case that EPE quickly became known as the Darth Vader of the merchandising-licensing business. "All we want," says Soden, "is to run our business and not have every little schlocky guy around ripping off Elvis and putting his face on edible underwear and all kinds of things that demean the long-term value of what we've got." One of these cases went all the way to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which in an oft-cited landmark 1991 case involving a British retailer named Elvisly...
...Swiss may not have invented the word chutzpah, but they've certainly brought new meaning to it. RICHARD MORSE Bad Soden, Germany...
Visitors almost did not get to see Graceland at all. By 1981, four years after Elvis died, taxes, security and upkeep cost some $400,000 a year. But, says Soden, "you couldn't just plunk down a FOR SALE sign out front. There are people buried up there." Also, Priscilla Presley, Elvis' ex-wife, did not want to part with the home. Although she divorced Elvis in 1973, Priscilla is the mother of his only child and heir, Lisa Marie, 20, and remains an executor of his estate. She gave the go-ahead to turn Graceland into an Elvis museum...