Photo credit: Janet Donovan
“I was six years old. I’m sitting at the breakfast table one morning, and I, out of the blue, blurted out, ‘Momma and Daddy, when I grow up,’ – because Momma and Daddy is what we called our parents – ‘Momma and Daddy, when I grow up I’m going to marry Elvis Presley,'” Linda Thompson told Hollywood on the Potomac at a book party in her honor at Cafe Milano in Georgetown hosted by Franco Nuschese with co-hosts Susan Hurley and Kelly Wade.. “My Momma and Daddy started laughing and they said, ‘Well, honey, by the time you’re old enough to get married he’ll be an old man.’ I said, ‘Well I don’t care. He’ll still be singing Hound Dog’ and he was. He wasn’t an old man. I mean, he was just 16 years older than I.”
Linda Thompson and Franco Nuschese
Award-winning songwriter Linda Thompson breaks her silence in A Little Thing Called Life, sharing the extraordinary story of her life, career, and epic romances with two of the most celebrated, yet enigmatic, modern American superstars—Elvis Presley and Bruce Jenner.
“For the last forty years, award-winning songwriter Linda Thompson has quietly led one of the most remarkable lives in show business. The longtime live-in love of Elvis Presley, Linda first emerged into the limelight during the 1970s when the former beauty pageant queen caught the eye of the King. Their chance late-night encounter at a movie theater was the stuff of legend, and it marked the beginning of a whirlwind that would stretch across decades, leading to a marriage with Bruce Jenner, motherhood, and more drama than she ever could have imagined.” Publisher’s notes.
Linda Thompson
We asked her what her first memory of childhood was. The ice cream truck pulling up? Did you spill something on the floor? What do you remember?
“I remember spilling some paint when I was in the second grade and I was horrified that I had sullied someone’s artwork, I was very embarrassed. I remember that’s the first time being just really so embarrassed that I could feel my face flush. I would have to say that my most cognizant memory, the most deeply embedded memory as a child was honestly just kind of looking up to the sky. You know, always being fascinated by clouds, and stars, and the sun and the moon, and having loftier thoughts than on this earth…..not being so rooted to the earth. I love flowers, I love nature but I felt that that kind of all ran together so I think I started off really having a poet’s eye and a poet’s mind….being so present in the moment and observing fragrance, and flowers, texture, and sounds.”
Q: “What did your parents do that encouraged that?”
A: “I don’t know that they did a lot to encourage it, to be honest. I mean I think that that’s something that is born within you. I think that we all start off with proclivities, propensities towards certain aspirations, towards certain talents. My mother was a singer, she was very musical. She played piano, she sang. Her sisters were the harmonizing five, so we would get together every Christmas and sing gospel songs. Every family gathering we would all sing southern gospel songs so that was very much a big part of my upbringing…..just harmonizing. That kind of translates into other areas of your life when you’re able to harmonize with people in more ways than music.”
Jack Davies, Linda Thompson, Kay Kendall and Susan Hurley
We asked her about life with her children Brandon and Brody Jenner. “They’re my life. I’ve been so inordinately proud of them because they grew up without Bruce in their lives. He started his transition in 1985 when he came to me, this impossibly masculine man, world’s greatest athlete – you know, muscles, and unstudied, and just the biggest jock you can imagine – came to me and said, ‘I identify as a woman.’ After six months of therapy I realized this is who he is and so I divorced him. We remained friends for five years while he was going through his initial transition. He was around during that time, the first five years, then he remarried. As I guess sometimes happens, when he remarried he forgot that he had two other families. There was Burt and Casey from his first wife, who are still very much a part of my life. They were just at my house for Thanksgiving. They’re there every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Chrystie, his first wife, and I call each other ex-wives in law so we’re still very much family and I’m really close to his first two kids. He got remarried and I guess his dance card got really full. I don’t excuse it but I forgive it, and especially given the circumstances, the inner turmoil that he was struggling with.”
“That’s one of the themes of the book, it’s forgiveness,” Thompson explained. “It’s not even for the offender, or the person that you’ve perceived has offended you, or someone you love; it’s for yourself. I tried to impart that and imbue that in my children that your gift to yourself is your perspective on life and your ability to forgive and move on. It’s got nothing to do with you when someone ignores you or someone is unkind to you. It says more about them than it says about you so move past it, and wish them well, and step away from the vehicle, basically. He got remarried and stopped the transition. He just didn’t have time for Brandon and Brody, I guess. Rather than imbue them with bitterness, and anger, and vitriol toward their dad I tried to say, ‘Your dad was a world class athlete athletically, physically. Emotionally you have to view him in a wheelchair.’ I mean they’ll never get those years back. There’s no hallmark memories. I wanted what was best for them, always, and I felt like what was best for them would have been to have been made to feel that they were absolutely wanted and would get a birthday call, or a Christmas card or something. That’s what I really wanted for them. I gave them 100% love. My kids would say, ‘Mom, you don’t have to show up at every game. You don’t have to be there all the time.’ I said,’I’m selfish. I’m doing it for myself as well as for you. This is a memory that I want. It’s not just for you. I’m happy to do it for you, but really it’s for me too. Nothing I’d rather be than your mom, you know?’ Because I was a writer and an actress I took them on the set with me when I did Hee Haw. They would travel with me to Nashville twice a year when I did that show. [At that time] I was able to accommodate my schedule to theirs.”
Jack Davies, Linda Thompson and Kay Kendall
Things you may not know about Linda Thompson:
“She began her career as a lyricist with the Kenny Rogers single Our Perfect Song from his 1985 album The Heart of the Matter. Thompson collaborated with composer Richard Marx on Josh Groban’s first hit record, To Where You Are, with composer Steve Dorff on the Celine Dion hit Miracle, with Andreas Carlsson for “Drowning” by the Backstreet Boys, and composer David Foster on several compositions, including “No Explanation” for the 1990 film Pretty Woman, and “I Have Nothing” for 1992 motion picture, The Bodyguard, for which they were nominated both for the Academy Award for Best Song in 1993 and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television in 1994, and “Grown Up Christmas List” In 1999, Linda Thompson, Clint Eastwood & Carole Bayer Sager wrote Why Should I Care for the 1999 film True Crime. In 2011, Thompson, Foster and Jackie Evancho collaborated on the title track for Evancho’s album Dream With Me.Thompson and Foster received the 2003 Emmy for Outstanding Music and Lyrics for “Aren’t They All Our Children” for the “The Concert for World Children’s Day,” which aired November 14, 2002.” Via Wikipedia
That’s prolific and we wondered why we were less aware of her songwriting career. ” Well, when I was dating Elvis,” she told us. “I used to write love sonnets to him and he wanted to put the poetry to music and record it. In my naivete I said, ‘Oh no, honey, this is personal between us,’ because so much of our life was public. What an idiot I was.” But she did save them and “I get credit and I get royalties and all that. You know, to your point, you said it was something that you said you didn’t know about me. That’s one reason I wanted to put my song lyrics between each chapter.”
