“I’m so happy to be here,” Jackson told the audience. Then he looked at Presley, who was smiling but looking nervous. “And think about it, no one expected this to last.”
Jackson then removed his sunglasses, leaned over and kissed Presley. The four-second kiss produced some of the loudest cheers of the night from the crowd and dominated media headlines around the world. increase.
They were the biggest items in show business. And Presley hated it.
“He knew I didn’t like it,” she said. Oprah Winfrey about the infamous kiss in a 2010 interview after Jackson died in 2009. His hands were blue after we got off the stage. … I squeezed it tightly. …But as his wife, I needed to do something like that.
A memorable moment in pop culture nearly 30 years ago is one of many that followed Presley’s life.Presley died Just hours after Presley was rushed from his home in Calabasas, Calif. to the hospital, his mother, Priscilla, announced his death in a statement.The cause of death was not disclosed.
Decades before they were married, Presley and Jackson met in Las Vegas in 1974 at one of the Jackson family’s shows at the MGM Grand.Michael Jackson: Magic, Madness, Full Story, 1958-2009Presley, then 6, was a big fan of the Jacksons, especially Michael, then 16.
“I always liked him,” Presley recalled of Jackson in his 2009 book. “Michael was fascinated by his talent. I never wanted to know more about him.”
The two met again a few years later in the early 1990s at a private dinner hosted by their mutual friend in Los Angeles, artist Brett Livingstone Strong. Her husband, Danny Keough, had produced a handful of songs for her, but she had little confidence in herself as an artist and was compared to her legendary father. Taraborrelli wrote that he was afraid of
That changed when Jackson listened to her tape and told Presley that she had “real talent.” Strong recalled in her 2009 book that as the two were leaving the party, Jackson gave Presley a piercing look and remarked: Think about it, girl
From there, the two talked so much on the phone that Presley felt like he was seeing a whole other side of Jackson. Thanks to Trump, they met at Trump Tower in New York. brag later, “I’ve known this secret for a long time.” Less than a month after divorcing Keough in 1994, Jackson proposed over the phone. Presley and Jackson got married in a private ceremony in the Dominican Republic.
Months earlier, Jackson had reached an out-of-court settlement of child abuse allegations, but his attorney said he had not pleaded guilty. According to Taraborrelli’s book, I felt I could do it. Part of that was letting the world know that her marriage to Jackson was no publicity stunt. meant.
“My married name is Mrs. Lisa Marie Presley Jackson,” she said in a statement to the media after the ceremony. I understand and support him and we are both looking forward to raising a family.”
As the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards were about to begin, an announcer inside Radio City Music Hall turned the awards show into a wedding reception, introducing the newlyweds to the public for the first time. . Michael jackson! “
Salli Frattini, who has directed the MTV Video Music and Movie Awards show for nearly 20 years, recalls: entertainment weekly In 2002, to the “surprise” of MTV staff, Presley and Jackson acted on a producer’s idea to lead the show.
“We came to them with the whole concept [including the kiss], but I’m sure Michael ad-libbed,” said the producer. “We took them to a private door and locked them in a private area. I did.”
Newspapers around the world led coverage of the awards ceremony with Kiss, and critics had a field day with what they witnessed. Philadelphia Inquirer, Jackson was “as inhuman as ever in a black military jacket”, while Presley looked “relatively normal in a two-piece sexy dress”.of new york daily news Presley wrote that he “looked terribly embarrassed”.and the daily telegraph In England, Jackson alleged that he forced Presley into “grotesque displays of public affection”.
The paper’s Tony Parsons said, “Few happily married men feel the urge to kiss their spouse in front of an audience, especially an audience of 250 million.” Michael Jackson is either very in love or very hopeless.”
Presley filed for divorce from Jackson in 1996, citing irreconcilable differences, but for years after the marriage ended, she and Jackson considered reconciling. So Jackson asked Presley if he still loved him. Presley admitted to Winfrey years later that she had shut herself out of harboring feelings for Jackson, and her answer made him cry, she said. said.
“It’s part of the problem with my love life,” she once said of marriage. [my father]and no one could compare.
But they always had that kiss in New York.
