Linda Thompson revisits the loves of her life in her upcoming memoir, “A Little Thing Called Life.”
The blond bombshell details her four-and-a-half-year romance with Elvis Presley, her five-year marriage to Bruce Jenner (who is now known as Caitlyn) and her 14-year marriage to David Foster.
According to an excerpt of the book in People, Thompson endured a rough but passionate romance with Presley beginning when she was 22 years old. But his drug addiction ultimately drove a wedge between them.
“One day he asked me to accompany him to the dentist, where he had a filling done,” writes 66-year-old Thompson. “Then the dentist left the room and Elivis opened the cabinet and took out gigantic jars of pills. He began talking handfuls of pills and stuffing them into random pockets. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
As Thompson says she discovered, Presley was stealing Seconal, a sleeping medication. She began to closely follow his habits of using drugs to sleep, wake up and even increase his energy on stage.
She dramatically recalls delivering a life-saving shot of Ritalin to the star one night after he nearly overdosed on Placidyl, another sleeping drug. But that wasn’t all. Presley famously battled his weight and was once placed in a medically induced coma for two weeks so he wouldn’t eat, Thompson says.
In 1976, he died at 42 some eight months after their split. His 9-year-old daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, called Thompson with the gripping news.
Three years later, she would try her hand at love once more, this time giving her heart to the famed Olympian then known as Bruce Jenner. “Bruce was famous, but not ‘Elvis famous,’” she describes. “He was confident and lighthearted. Comfortable in his own skin. Or so it seemed.”
Thompson says their romance began to fade after Jenner confessed desires to live life as a woman. She says the final straw in their strained marriage came when she visited the athlete in Manhattan one weekend.
“I knocked on the door with hopeful anticipation that my marriage might be rekindled on this trip,” she says. “Bruce opened the door dressed as Caitlyn. Full wig. Makeup. Heels. A feminine dress adorning his muscular body. And a big smile on his red lips. I crumbled right there and burst into tears.”
For years she kept Jenner’s secret — even hiding the details from their sons Brandon and Brody Jenner, who both questioned their mother after seeing their father with breasts.
Today, Thompson is proud of her ex-husband, now 66. “Caitlyn seems so much happier and freer in her feminine self,” she says. “I sometimes find it surreal to look into her perfectly made-up, beautiful brown eyes, while remembering the masculine gorgeous man who fathered my sons. That admission is just me being real. I completely accept, respect, and support Caitlyn, but I must admit, I sometimes miss Bruce.”
“A Little Thing Called Life” hits stores on Aug. 23.