Pauline Nicholson, 76, Cooked Elvis’s Favorites

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The New York Sun

W. Pauline Nicholson, one of Elvis Presley’s cooks, who along with Mary Langston prepared the King’s favorite peanut butter and fried banana sandwiches, has died of cancer. She was 76.


In addition to cooking, Nicholson also worked as his housekeeper and sometimes looked after a young Lisa Marie Presley.


She continued cooking for the Presley family after Elvis died, including last Christmas, when Lisa Marie and her mother, Priscilla, came to Memphis and requested Nicholson cook for them.


“Elvis was like a son to her, to hear her talk about it,” said Nicholson’s daughter, Roslyn Guest.


Langston, who died in 2000, also cooked for the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll for 14 years and continued working for his family for 12 years after he died in 1977.


Both women in numerous reports claim to have made a number of the famous peanut butter and banana sandwiches.


Nicholson was featured in the movie “This Is Elvis,” and loved to talk about her time with the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, whom she called Mr. P.


“We hated it when Elvis Week came,” said her son, Ossie Nicholson Jr. “She relived her time with him. She would say that’s my ‘white son.’ “


Nicholson was introduced to Elvis in the mid-1960s by a neighbor, Cleo Smith, who knew she was a good cook, Ossie Nicholson Jr. said.


Elvis would sometimes talk with Nicholson in the kitchen at Graceland, and when he learned in 1974 her husband, Ossie Sr., was laid off, he hired him as a guard.


Five days before she died on Thursday, a hospitalized Nicholson stopped eating and drinking and wouldn’t respond to relatives. But that changed when Priscilla Presley called her and told her to eat and drink, Ossie Nicholson Jr. said.


“That just lit her face up to learn how much she loved her and cared for her. She ate that day,” he said.


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