Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis, wasn’t only his. His grandmother lived there too.
Her name was Minnie Mae Presley, and she was the mother of Elvis’s dad, Vernon. Elvis called her “Dodger.” She was a down-to-earth country woman, and she cooked Elvis’s favorite meals, so the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll had his grandma’s cooking right there under his own roof.
But Elvis wasn’t always home. Sometimes he was on the road, and sometimes he was out in California making movies. When he left, Graceland got a lot quieter, and Dodger was no longer a young woman.
These real photos of Elvis with his grandmother show the two of them side by side, and they make it easy to see why he wanted her near him.
Elvis and his grandmother Dodger together
So who kept Dodger company while Elvis was gone?
It was Anita Wood, Elvis’s girlfriend at the time.
Anita was a young Memphis singer with a TV career of her own. As a teenager she won a 1954 youth talent contest at the Mid-South Fair, and she worked on a local TV show called “Top 10 Dance Party” with Wink Martindale. She met Elvis in 1957, and he called her his “No. 1 Girl.”
You might expect a young singer with her own show to spend her free nights out on the town. Anita spent a lot of hers with Elvis’s grandmother.
Years later, she talked about those Graceland nights with interviewer David Adams for the website Elvis Australia.
“I stayed with her when he was traveling and when he was in California,” Anita said.
And the two of them had a routine. “She loved soap operas,” Anita said of Dodger.
Those were the daytime TV dramas, and Dodger was a fan. Anita didn’t head off to a guest room down the hall, either.
“I would stay in the room with her and spend the night in the bed with her and talk for ages,” she said.
That’s a sweet picture. A young TV singer and an old country grandmother, tucked in together at Graceland, chatting long into the night. And Dodger did plenty of the talking.
“She told me many tales, old tales,” Anita remembered.
This next clip looks back at Graceland through Anita’s memories of the place, from someone who spent those nights there.
Anita Wood remembers Graceland
While Elvis was out on the road or on a movie set, back home his grandmother and his girlfriend were up late swapping stories.
Anita summed it up simply. “Elvis loved his grandmother and I loved his grandmother.”
If you’d like to see more of Dodger, this photo tribute gathers real pictures of Minnie Mae, the grandmother who shared her room and her old stories with the young woman who kept her company.
Photos of Minnie Mae “Dodger” Presley
Graceland has plenty of big stories. This is a small one, about two women who kept each other company in one bedroom while Elvis was far from home.