Elvis Presley had many close relationships throughout his career. The strongest of all his personal relationships , by far, was that he had with his mother Gladys, as described below. In a newspaper interview with The Memphis Press Scimitar , Elvis himself was open about the close relationship to his mother. According to Elaine Dundy , "it was agony for her to leave her child even for a moment with anyone else, to let anyone else touch Elvis.
I couldn't go down to the creek with the other kids. During Presley's rising career, Gladys became despairing, depressed and lonely and began to neglect her health.
She put on weight and began to drink every day. She had wanted Elvis to succeed, "but not so that he would be apart from her. The hysteria of the crowd frightened her. At that time, Elvis was in Fort Hood , Texas now Fort Cavazos , to fulfill his military obligations, but he got emergency leave to see her, and a special plane was chartered to bring him home on August Gladys died on August Presley's early experiences being teased by his classmates for being a "mama's boy" had a deep influence on his clumsy advances to girls.
He didn't have any friends as a teen. Beginning in his early teens, Presley embarked upon the "indefatigable pursuit of girls," but was totally rebuffed. At school, anyone wishing to provoke a little girl to tears of rage had only to chalk "Elvis loves -" and then the girl's name on the blackboard when the teacher was out of the room. His first true sweetheart was the fifteen-year-old Dixie Locke Emmons, whom the singer dated steadily after graduating from Humes and during his Sun Records time.
While still a rising star, Presley also had a relationship with June Juanico, who is said to have been the only girl his mother ever approved of, but according to Juanico's own words, she "never had sex with Presley. However, since the singer's death, many claims to relationships have been made by women who were no more than acquaintances or had short affairs which were exaggerated for personal gain. Between and , when his stardom began to rise, Presley became the subject of adulation and adoration by young Hollywood starlets such as Natalie Wood , Judy Tyler , Shelley Fabares , and Connie Stevens.
