Lifestyle
A judge blocks the foreclosure sale of Elvis' Graceland, after his heir alleges fraud
Elvis Presley pictured with then-girlfriend Yvonne Lime at his home Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee around 1957.
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Elvis Presley pictured with then-girlfriend Yvonne Lime at his home Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee around 1957.
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A judge in Tennessee has blocked a foreclosure sale of Elvis Presley’s Graceland compound, after his granddaughter sued to stop it.
A company called Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC advertised that such a sale would take place on Thursday, saying the trust that controls Graceland owed the property as collateral after failing to repay a 2018 loan taken out by Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’ only child.
Actress Danielle Riley Keough, who goes by Riley, became the owner of the Memphis property after her mother’s death in January 2023. She alleged in a lawsuit earlier this month that Naussany Investments not only forged documents, but doesn’t actually exist.
The 61-page complaint says that in September 2023, the company “presented documents purporting to show that Lisa Marie Presley had borrowed $3.8 million from Naussany Investments and gave a deed of trust encumbering Graceland as security.”
But Keough says Presley never borrowed money from or gave a deed of trust — for Graceland or any other property — to Naussany Investments, alleging “these documents are fraudulent.” Moreover, the lawsuit argues that Naussany Investments “is not a real entity” at all.
“Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC appears to be a false entity created for the purpose of defrauding the Promenade Trust, the heirs of Lisa Marie Presley, or any purchaser of Graceland at a non-judicial sale,” it reads.
Shelby County Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins sided with Keough after a hearing on Wednesday.
The Associated Press reports that he issued a temporary injunction to block the sale, essentially extending a restraining order he had placed on Naussany Investments last week.
Jenkins said in court that it would be prudent to delay any foreclosure sale of Graceland, given its prominence.
“The public interest is best served, particularly here in Shelby County, for Graceland is a part of this community, well loved by this community and, indeed, around the world,” Jenkins said, according to NBC News.
The 14-acre compound is a popular tourist destination as well as the final resting place of several of Keough’s family members, including Elvis and his parents, as well as her own mother and brother.
Jenkins also said that Keough will likely succeed in her lawsuit, “provided that you prove the fraud that has been alleged.”
Keough was not present on Wednesday, and her lawyers declined to comment on ongoing litigation. Naussany Investments did not have representation in court, according to multiple media outlets.
Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE), the company that manages the late singer’s estate, told NPR via email that “there will be no foreclosure.”
“As the court has now made clear, there was no validity to the claims,” it said. “Graceland will continue to operate as it has for the past 42 years, ensuring that Elvis fans from around the world can continue to have a best in class experience when visiting his iconic home.”
Keough is accusing the company of forging documents
Riley Keough, pictured at the Met Gala earlier this month, is fighting a foreclosure sale of Graceland.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
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Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
Riley Keough, pictured at the Met Gala earlier this month, is fighting a foreclosure sale of Graceland.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
The lawsuit names as defendants both the LLC and Kurt Naussany, whom it says has acted on the company’s behalf by sending Keough’s lawyers “numerous emails seeking to collect the purported $3.8 million debt and threatening to conduct a non-judicial sale of Graceland.”
Emails NPR sent to several addresses linked to the company have not been returned, and a Naussany phone number listed in the legal filing is out of service.
Adding to the intrigue, Kurt Naussany told NBC News via email that “he left the firm in 2015 and should not be named in the filing” — though one of the exhibits attached to the complaint shows a signed email he purportedly sent in 2023.
A lawyer for Keough told NPR he could not comment on pending litigation. EPE said in an emailed statement that any outside claims to the Graceland property “are fraudulent.”
“There is no foreclosure sale,” it said. “Simply put, the counter lawsuit [that] has been filed is to stop the fraud.”
Priscilla Presley — Elvis’ ex-wife and Lisa Marie’s mother — also refuted claims of a foreclosure sale on her social media accounts on Monday. She shared a picture of the front of the Graceland mansion, covered by animated red text reading: “It’s a scam!”
The lawsuit alleges that the documents purporting to show the loan and deed of trust at issue are “forgeries.”
“While the documents bear signatures that look like the signatures of Lisa Marie Presley, Lisa Marie Presley did not in fact sign the documents,” it says.
And it points to two clues that further suggest they are fake.
The documents were supposedly acknowledged before a notary public — an officer appointed by the state to witness such transactions — named Kimberly Philbrick in Duval County, Fla., in May 2018, according to the lawsuit.
The notarial acknowledgment on one of the documents includes language saying it was acknowledged before the notary “by means of ( ) physical presence or ( ) online notarization,” with the option to check either. But online notarization — and therefore, the language mentioning it — wasn’t authorized in Florida until 2020.
Secondly, Philbrick herself says she did not notarize either of the documents. She swore as much in an affidavit signed earlier this month, which was submitted alongside the complaint.
“I have never met Lisa Marie Presley, nor have I ever notarized a document signed by Lisa Marie Presley,” she wrote. “I do not know why my signature appears on this document.”
Another attachment shows Naussany Investment’s notice of the foreclosure sale, published online on May 12, on the grounds that the loan using Graceland as collateral was not repaid.
It said it would hold public auction outside the Shelby County Courthouse at 11 a.m. on May 23, and sell the property to the “highest and best bidder for cash.”
Keough, arguing that the company has “no right whatsoever” to conduct the sale, asked the court to issue an injunction permanently blocking the sale and declare that the note and deed of trust are fraudulent (and therefore unenforceable).
Last week, the judge issued a restraining order that prohibits the company, defendant Kurt Naussany “or any party acting in concert with either of them” from conducting a sale ahead of Wednesday’s hearing.
Elvis’ home base is now a major tourist draw
Visitors line up to enter the Graceland mansion in 2017, 40 years after Elvis’ death.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
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Visitors line up to enter the Graceland mansion in 2017, 40 years after Elvis’ death.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Graceland started as part of a cattle farm. Elvis bought the grounds and existing mansion for $102,500 in March 1957. Its worth was estimated between $400 million and $500 million as of 2020.
Elvis moved in later in 1957, after he finished filming “Jailhouse Rock.” He would go on to expand the mansion to 17,552 square feet, adding fixtures like the kidney-shaped swimming pool and sheet music-styled gates.
Graceland remained his home base for the next two decades, until he died there in August 1977.
The estate then went to Elvis’ dad, Vernon Presley, and subsequently to Lisa Marie upon her 25th birthday in 1993. Keough officially became the owner in August 2023, after a months-long legal dispute with her grandmother over her mother’s will.
Graceland has been open to the public since 1982, and has expanded over the years to include a hotel, several museums, restaurants and an entertainment complex, among other attractions.
It employs hundreds of workers and draws upwards of 500,000 visitors annually, according to the venue, which calls itself the “most famous home in America after the White House.”
Graceland joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006, becoming the first rock-n-roll site to be named to both lists.
Lifestyle
Nature needs a little help in the inventive Pixar movie ‘Hoppers’ : Pop Culture Happy Hour
Piper Curda as Mabel in Hoppers.
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In Disney and Pixar’s delightful new film Hoppers, a young woman (Piper Curda) learns a beloved glade is under threat from the town’s slimy mayor (Jon Hamm). But luckily, she discovers that her college professor has developed technology that can let her live as one of the critters she loves – by allowing her mind to “hop” into an animatronic beaver. And it just might just allow her to help save the glade from serious risk of destruction.
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Kim Kardashian
never denied rare hermés bag for north west …
It Never Happened!!!
Published
Kim Kardashian is not the celebrity who got turned away trying to buy a rare Hermès bag for her daughter, despite a viral claim suggesting otherwise … TMZ has learned.
Sources familiar with the situation tell TMZ … the story circulating online that Kim once attempted to purchase a coveted Mini Kelly bag for her daughter North West and was rejected simply never happened.
We’re told Kim has maintained a very friendly relationship with the luxury brand for years but not through the channels described in the report.
According to our sources, Kim has a very friendly relationship with the brand and has only used the same contact for over ten years in Paris and not the press office.
The sources also shut down the central claim behind the rumor telling us Kim did not request a bag for North, nor did she visit any Hermes store recently or get turned down.
We’re told those close to the situation are particularly bothered by the story because it involves a child. One source said, “They find it very disturbing that anyone would make up stories about a child for clicks.”
The claim appears in journalist Amy Odell’s “Back Row” newsletter, which cited a former employee of the Beverly Hills Hermès boutique who alleged Kim and Kanye West once tried to purchase a black Mini Kelly bag for North but were denied.
The ultra-rare alligator Mini Kelly is one of the most coveted Hermès bags on the market and can fetch more than $75,000 on resale.
In 2013, historian Rhae Lynn Barnes was researching blackface in America when she encountered a stumbling block at the Library of Congress: Various primary sources on the subject were listed as “missing on shelf.”
Barnes spoke to one of the librarians, and explained that she was writing a history of minstrel shows and white supremacy. Barnes says the librarian admitted that, in 1987, she had personally hidden some of these books because she feared the material would be used by the Ku Klux Klan.
“Once [the librarian] understood the research I was doing … a few hours later, she came up with a cart packed to the brim with all of the material that I had been hoping to see,” Barnes says.
In her new book Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment, Barnes traces the origin of minstrel shows, performances in which an actor portrays an exaggerated and racist depiction of Black, often formerly enslaved, people.
Barnes says minstrel became so popular in the 1800s that the stars began publishing “step-by-step guides” explaining how amateurs could create their own shows. By the end of the century, amateur minstrel performances became one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the U.S. Many groups, including fraternal orders, PTAs, police and firemen’s associations and soldiers on military bases, put on their own shows.
During the Great Depression, Barnes notes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration sought to “preserve American heritage” by promoting blackface. As part of the effort, she says, the government distributed lists of “top minstrel plays that they recommended to schools, to local charities, to colleges.” Roosevelt was such a fan of minstrel shows that he co-wrote a script, to be performed by children with polio.
Barnes credits the civil rights era and especially mothers with helping de-popularize blackface in the 1970s, first in schools and then in the larger culture. “They successfully get the shows out of school curriculum piece by piece. And by 1970, most of these publishing houses are going under because of the incredible work of Black and white mothers who worked with them,” she says.
Interview highlights
Stein’s makeup company created multiple shades of blackface for performers in amateur minstrel shows.
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On commercial blackface makeup that replaced shoe polish and burnt cork
It’s an entire commercial empire. So Stein’s makeup was one of the largest. They were a theatrical makeup company. And you’ll actually find today when you go into Halloween stores that a lot of these blackface makeup companies still exist today for Halloween costume makeup and also for clown makeup. …
Burnt cork was incredibly difficult to get off of your face. You’re essentially taking fire ash and then mixing it with shoe polish or some sort of shiny ingredients, and so it was incredibly hard to get it off. So when Stein and these other cosmetic companies begin to create the tubes … that did come in 29 colors and you could pick which bizarre racial calculus you wanted to represent, they would come off with cold cream or makeup remover and that was one of their selling points — now it’s easy to take off.
On Stephen Foster‘s songs for minstrel shows, like “Oh Susannah!”
What’s interesting about those songs is they are romanticizing the relationship between an enslaved person and their enslaver. And so when we have commentary, even from the president now, who recently said slavery wasn’t so bad, well, slavery was horrific, but if you were raised on a diet of Stephen Foster music, and going to minstrel shows, you can somewhat understand how somebody at the time could easily be led to believe that slavery was a grand old party because that’s what it was supposed to be telling you. It’s pro-slavery propaganda.
On the slogan “Make America Great Again” originating from early 20th-century minstrel shows
“Make America Great Again” or “This Is Our Country” or “Take Back Our Country” are all slogans and songs that were very common in minstrel shows. And so a lot of minstrel shows reinterpreted slavery in a fantastical way, that the Civil War ended and that in these minstrel shows there was Black rule and that everything America held dear was desecrated. And so this [blackface] “Zip” character … sometimes he’s named “Rastus” — he has different names that he goes by — runs for office, political office, becomes president, and he’s the first Black president and the first thing he does is he takes away America’s guns. Sound familiar? And so a lot of these terms that you could perhaps say [are] dog whistles in white of supremacy are taken line for line from these minstrel shows.
On not censoring this history
Historians right now are in somewhat of a culture war in that it is our patriotic duty as American citizens and as patriots to help make sure that the American public has access to our history in all of its complexity. And the truth is that you can’t understand the victories and the triumphs without understanding how far Americans had to push. And I think that’s especially true of blackface. When we didn’t adequately understand how long blackface was a mainstay in American culture. Because many historians believe that it had died out by 1900, when in fact it only accelerates and increases up through the 1970s. And so if you just say, “Oh, it just died out. It was no longer in fashion,” then what you’re losing is the incredible, dangerous, and brave work of thousands of Black and white mothers across the United States in the 1950s and the 1960s, of students who stood up during Jim Crow America and said, “This is not OK. We are humans. We deserve dignity. And we want you to understand our history.” …
I think these are the hard conversations Americans actually want to have. And I think America is completely ready for those hard conversations and moving forward.
Anna Bauman and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.
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