NARRATOR: Myra Brown is only 12 years old when
her older cousin, Jerry Lee, shakes up her life.
MYRA: We were all mesmerized.
You knew something great was coming out of this.
NARRATOR: And he rocks the rest of the world.
♪ Goodness gracious great balls of fire ♪
NARRATOR: It's the birth of rock and roll
and the beginning of a roller coaster for Myra.
MYRA: Jerry would kiss me.
I mean it was nice, but I was confused.
LINDA: I think Jerry Lee was a predator,
and Myra was an easy mark for him.
MYRA: Jerry was so possessive of me.
He did not want me to look another man in the eye.
ABIGAIL: He had a terrible temper,
and then you combine it with amphetamines and booze --
it's like pouring lighter fuel on a fire.
MYRA: When the good times came back for Jerry's career,
things went to hell quickly.
[distant shouting]
[distant sobbing]
[theme music playing]
MYRA: My family moved to Memphis, Tennessee,
when I was five years old,
and I cried all the way there,
because I wanted to stay with my mamaw.
NARRATOR: It's 1949, and Myra Brown is saying
goodbye to her extended family in rural Louisiana.
My daddy got a job as a lineman in Memphis.
Memphis, they say, is this sort of
gateway into the deep South.
It really became this meeting point
between white and black music,
between country and early sort of rockabilly hillbilly music
and African-American music, gospel, and R&B.
And the focal point for Memphis music at
that time is Sam Phillips and Sun Records.
NARRATOR: Myra's dad, JW, is a bass player,
and he's quick to discover that
Memphis is an epicenter for a new kind of music,
rock and roll.
Sam Phillips brought together
many of the musicians from the South
to create this new sound.
He is the one who discovered
Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash
Sun Records --
it's the birthplace of rock and roll.
NARRATOR: When JW suffers a serious electrical accident at work,
he gets a large settlement.
It's the catalyst for a career change.
MYRA: My daddy said, "I'm gonna go
"to Louisiana and find my cousin Jerry
"and see if he'll come to Memphis,
and we'll put together a band."
He said, "I've heard how great he is on the piano,
how talented he is."
NARRATOR: Only 21 years old,
Jerry Lee Lewis has already been married twice,
the first time when he was 16.
In the South, people got married young,
they started having kids really young,
and then they had a lot of them.
That's the story of the Lewis family.
NARRATOR: Jerry Lee now lives with his second wife,
Jane, in Faraday, Louisiana.
Daddy found Jerry working at
a little dive called the Wagon Wheel.
Daddy went over and introduced himself and said,
"I would like for you to stay at my house as my guest.
"I'll take you to Sun Records,
"introduce you to Sam Phillips,
and let's see about getting a contract."
[phone ringing]
The phone rings, and I'm this 12-year-old kid.
The man says, "Can I speak to JW?
I need to get directions to your house."
Jerry came in, and he was wearing a red plaid shirt.
He had a haircut that was way
too short, because his ears stuck out,
and he just looked like nothing special.
[piano playing]
But then he started playing the piano
and immediately got my attention.
It was like we were all mesmerized, because
he was just so good on the piano.
My opinion changed drastically of him.
His haircut didn't matter anymore.
I was three years old when he moved into our house,
and they practiced in the living room
for a while, and his hands were so fast.
It was just like they were in double motion.
It was like he had four hands.
It was just hard to believe that he could play it
like that.
The man was a great musician.
MYRA: Then daddy took Jerry to
Sun Records and had him audition,
and that's how it all began.
His first record was "End of the Road" and "Crazy Arms."
One day in the studio, my daddy said to him,
"Jerry, play that shakin' song,"
because when they were traveling and doing shows,
Jerry would do that song, and the audience would just react
like crazy, and that was "Whole Lotta Shakin'."
And the first time Sam heard it, it was like, this is...
it, you know?
NARRATOR: Myra has just turned 13 when her dad and Jerry fly to
New York with their band to make their debut on live
national television.
Mom and I were at home watching television,
and you knew something great was coming out of this.
["Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" plays]
[crowd cheering]
♪ Come on over baby Whole lotta shakin' goin' on ♪
MYRA: And I guess seeing him on Steve Allen's show,
he rose in my mind, you know, to a higher level.
ALAN: It is safe to say that the overwhelming majority of
the network TV viewing audience
would never have seen anything like Jerry Lee Lewis
before in their lives.
♪ Ah, shake baby ♪
♪ You can shake one time for me ♪
ALAN: For a young girl growing up in the South,
just the notion that you would know somebody who would be on
television was almost beyond imagination.
MYRA: I was 13 years old.
He became a little God in my mind and in a lot of
people's mind at that time.
When Whole Lotta Shakin' hit,
they went up to $10,000 a show, and this is in the fifties.
That's a lot of money.
Clearly, Steve Allen got a kick out of him.
Very soon after, he booked him to come back on.
Mr. Commotion himself, Jerry Lee Lewis, here he is!
So to get a second bite at that apple, national television,
that was a big deal.
♪ Goodness gracious great balls of fire ♪
[playing piano]
NARRATOR: As Jerry's fame skyrockets,
his marriage falls apart.
MYRA: He knew what time school let out,
and he would go up there.
He'd say, "Hey, you wanna go get some ice cream?"
And I -- he always knew I wanted to go get ice cream.
Jerry and I, we would go to
a movie after dinner or something like that.
I thought he was being nice to a kid.
I thought it was...
[sighs] that kind of thing,
you know, like pat the kid on top of the head or something.
I was idolizing Jerry
and looking up to him and thinking he's this great
big star.
What I didn't know was that he was falling in love with me.
LINDA: Myra's parents had no idea
that Jerry Lee was wooing their daughter.
They knew the two had fun together,
they knew they were friends,
but it truly didn't occur to them
that this older man would
try to have a relationship with their child.
MYRA: You know, after supper or something,
we'd drive up to the A&W or whatever it is,
and Jerry would kiss me.
At first, I, you know, I didn't know what to think
about that -- I mean, it was nice, but I was confused.
I was like...
I'm 13 years old.
So it really messes with your mind.
You don't understand what's going on,
but you don't want it to stop either, because it's --
it was -- it was -- you liked it.
But that's how our relationship was.
LINDA: Jerry never asked Myra to get married per se.
He got the marriage license by taking this older friend --
I think she was in her twenties, as well --
to the courthouse and having her sign
Myra's name to the license.
Nobody questioned it.
Apparently they didn't ask for ID back in those days.
MYRA: And Jerry came back home.
He said, "Come outside, I wanna show you something."
So he pulled this paper out,
and I looked at it, and it said marriage license,
and I looked at it, and I said,
"You mean we're married?"
And he said, "No, no, no, no, no, we're not married.
We're gonna get married."
And I said, "What?"
And he caught me by my arm,
and he turned me around, and he said, "Myra,
"I love you,
and I want to marry you."
And...
I think I just
melted, you know, I think it just --
and I told him, and I said, "I love you, too."
I said, "But I'm -- I'm still too young.
This is crazy."
LINDA: I think Jerry Lee was a predator.
He wanted somebody he could mold into whoever he wanted.
Myra was a good, dutiful girl,
and so she was an easy mark for him.
NARRATOR: December 12th, 1957, marks a crazy new chapter
in 13-year-old Myra Brown's life.
We were having supper.
Jerry said, "Myra, you wanna go to a movie?"
And I said, "Yeah, sure."
When we got in the car, and Jerry headed toward Mississippi,
and I'm going,
"Is there a movie theater out this way?"
And he said, "No, we're going to get married."
He had found this pastor or whoever
it was that was gonna marry us.
And I think I was in a coma.
I think I was -- my eyes were like -- like this.
And I got out of the car.
I had on the red dress
that I wore to school that day, and, um...
we walked in this little chapel.
I don't remember getting married,
but I know it happened.
And then these two little old ladies started throwing
rice at us and all this kind of stuff.
And I'm still like a deer caught in headlights.
Now, we've gone down there and gotten married
and turned around and came right back,
and we were probably gone less than an hour.
The next morning, I got up, and I pulled my marriage
license out, and I left them laying out on the nightstand.
And, um...
my mother's maid found 'em.
And she handed
my daddy the marriage license.
And, of course, he took one look at it,
and my daddy went and got his gun,
and he said,
"I'm gonna go kill that son of a bitch."
He got in the car and took off,
and Jerry was up at Sun Records at that time.
Mama called Sam Phillips and said,
"J's on the way, and he's got a gun.
Is Jerry still there?"
And Sam turned around, and he looked at Jerry, and he said,
"Get in your car, and get out of Memphis."
So Jerry took off.
Daddy drives up, barrels through the front door,
and says, "Where is that son of a bitch?"
And Sam sits daddy down and tells him, "We can't
"interfere in this life decision that's been made
without you."
And he said, "It looks to me like they love each other,
"and if we charge him, he's going to prison
for a long time."
MYRA: Daddy calms down,
and he goes back home, and he tells mom,
"We really don't have any choices,
"because it's done,
"and we're gonna have to hope for the best
and learn to live with it."
NARRATOR: It's against the law for married women
to go to school in Tennessee.
So 13-year-old Myra joins Jerry out on tour.
MYRA: I didn't have a suitcase.
The only thing I had was this round doll case
that I had gotten at a Christmas or two before.
And it was like a hat box, shaped like a hat box,
and that's what I put my stuff in.
NARRATOR: The next time JW sees Jerry
is on stage at a gig in New York.
Jerry goes over to daddy, and he says,
"I love Myra. I'll take care of her."
[piano playing]
The music starts playing,
and it's accepted, it's forgotten.
We went out and bought a little house.
Actually, we bought the first house that had
a for sale sign on it, because we needed a house right away.
I learned how to cook, and I learned how to vacuum.
I had to become the adult.
Jerry did two things.
He played music, and he loved me.
He came home, he brought all
the money to me, dumped it in my lap.
It was a cash business, and Myra was in charge
of taking the bags full of cash
from his live performances to the bank.
You really are talking about shopping
bags with dollar bills in them.
The notion that she was a central piece of keeping
the Jerry Lee Lewis business going
as a young teenager, as a girl, is pretty wild.
NARRATOR: The first few months of 1958 tick by,
and Jerry's star continues to rise.
MYRA: It was a time that had never happened before,
never will happen again.
And the reaction of the public and the audience that made me
kind of gasp, like,
look at how these people are just going berserk about him.
There for a while, he was the top dog,
'cause they had the top songs in the world.
Out of all of these figures,
these kings of rock and roll,
Elvis was a brilliant performer.
He was cute.
He had this sort of angel face,
but Jerry Lee Lewis could play the piano better than anyone
that was a part of this whole Sun Records crew.
And Jerry Lee Lewis was fun, and fun was
a huge part of the birth of rock and roll.
MAN: Private Elvis Presley makes this a VIP event,
but the rock and roll star, wearing medals for carbine,
pistol, and tank gunnery marksmanship
is modest as can be.
NARRATOR: When Elvis is drafted into the Army,
Jerry Lee is poised to become the new king of rock and roll.
And then they booked a big tour for Jerry
in Europe in May of '58.
ALAN: Elvis never went to England.
Elvis never performed off of United States soil.
So for one of those first generation rock and rollers to
make that trip and go over to England was a big deal.
NARRATOR: The tour will be a surefire success
if Jerry will heed the advice of
Sam Phillips and not do one thing.
Don't bring Myra on tour with you, don't bring her to London,
and he ignored all of that good advice.
His ego, I think, stood in the way.
He just thought he was untouchable.
I didn't even know that Jerry had been warned,
and he said to them,
"Either she goes or I don't."
And I think Jerry intimidated him and said,
"Don't you talk to her. Leave my wife alone."
NARRATOR: Myra, her brother, Rusty, and their mom,
Lois, accompany the band to England.
RUSTY: When we got there,
you know, they were standing at the airport,
and, you know, people just wanted to see everybody,
you know, because we were the biggest celebrities
there was at that time.
The press was gonna come on
the plane and see Jerry and interview him.
So I got off, and I'm walking around in the airport, and a man
comes up to me, and he says,
"Who are you miss?
You got off that plane, didn't you?"
And I said, "I'm not anybody."
He said, "Well, who are you?"
And I said, "I'm Jerry's wife."
And the, the guy asked me how old I was, and I said, "I'm 15."
I figured I could lie a little bit.
His face lit up like a Christmas tree,
and he took off.
I had no idea I was talking to a reporter.
And I'm clueless
that there could be a problem.
I wish that somebody would have said if
people find out Jerry's married to a kid...
it ain't gonna be pretty.
Myra -- you're -- you're a bomb.
NARRATOR: It's May 1958,
and the news of 13-year-old Myra Lewis's marriage
to Jerry Lee is about to erupt in the British press.
Initially, Jerry's British fans give him a warm reception.
MYRA: They were at the airport, they were out in the streets,
they were in the lobby.
People loved Jerry so much,
they were hanging out of
the hotel windows all around our hotel.
NARRATOR: But the tone abruptly changes the following day.
ABIGAIL: The reporter followed up, figured out Myra was 13,
figured out she was his cousin, and that Jerry Lee Lewis wasn't
actually even divorced from his second wife.
Yeah, this was a bombshell.
MYRA: The next morning,
the news media said, "Jerry Lee Lewis
is here with his child bride Myra."
He's a pedophile. He's a bigamist.
He's a liar and a fraud.
There's a call to boycott the shows, and very quickly,
Jerry Lee finds himself playing to half-empty theaters
where people are heckling and booing him.
And they went after Jerry Lee, they went after Myra, and she
was in the car with her mother and her little brother,
the paparazzi surrounded the car,
and they were shaking it so violently,
they thought the car was gonna be turned over.
RUSTY: And Scotland Yard came to the hotel
and told us, "We can't guarantee your safety."
ABIGAIL: They end up coming back to America, where they hoped
it would blow over, but nothing blew over.
Why did you leave?
Well, uh, I don't answer those questions, sir.
My manager might knock my head off or something.
That one event
turned our life upside down
and changed the direction of everything.
Nobody wanted to be a part of this.
Were you there, Mrs. Lewis?
I was there, but I wasn't at the show.
Oh, you weren't at the show.
Did you notice anything like that,
that sort of reception?
No, it was a very good reception, I thought.
He went from making thousands of dollars
a night down to making a few hundred dollars a night.
I felt guilty because of it.
I didn't make it happen, but I didn't stop it from happening.
And I could have,
because I was the one who let the cat out of the bag.
After they came back, and after his divorce was finalized,
he remarried Myra so that there was no question
that this was a marriage in good standing,
but the damage was done.
MYRA: It destroyed a man's career,
but it didn't destroy our marriage.
If anything, it made us stronger,
because we were attacked.
We don't care what the world says or does.
We just love each other.
NARRATOR: Soon, Myra is overjoyed
to learn that she's pregnant.
MYRA: I always loved children.
What I had wanted all my life
was a house, a home, and a baby.
NARRATOR: But a few months into her pregnancy,
Myra is forced to leave her home.
Jerry wasn't having the income that he had, and he was the sole
supporter of his mother,
father, and two sisters, so...
my house got shut down, not theirs.
And I had to go live with them
in Ferriday, Louisiana.
It was not comfortable, because they resented
the fact that Jerry married me.
It was not a fun situation to
live in the house with those people.
One day, Jerry walked into the room,
and he reached down, and he picked up
my typewriter, and he held it above his head
like he was gonna slam it down on me,
and I looked up at him, and it's like...
what happened?
And he threw it on the floor,
[grunting noise]
and he said, one of his sisters,
Linda Gale, told me that she was with you the other day,
and y'all were driving down the road, and you were smoking
a cigarette and flirting with a sailor.
Neither one was true.
The only reason she would tell him
that was to make him mad at me.
[distant baby fussing]
NARRATOR: But all is forgiven when Myra gives birth
to a baby boy on February 27th, 1959.
LINDA: Myra had Stevie when she was 14 years old,
and she was thrilled.
She knew she was pretty young to be having one,
but still, it was what she always wanted.
MYRA: Oh, he was precious.
He was a sweet baby.
He was a smart baby.
Jerry wanted to name him after Steve Allen
for giving him his first break on nationwide television.
NARRATOR: Myra is over the moon when they move back to Memphis
and her mom, dad, and brother get to meet her baby boy.
It was great, because it was like I had a little brother,
you know, because I was with him all the time,
and, you know, and she was a great mama.
NARRATOR: In 1960, the Lewises learn that Elvis has
returned to Memphis from his stint in the Army,
and just like Jerry, Elvis has
fallen in love with a teenage girl.
Presley was in love with Priscilla when
he was 24 and she was 14.
Luckily for him, he had Jerry Lee Lewis's example.
ALAN: Clearly Elvis's team learned from the disaster
of Jerry Lee and Myra and entered into
the relationship with Priscilla in a very different way,
waited much longer on the marriage.
Priscilla Presley was beautiful and glamorous
and did her hair and her makeup
and was in the public eye.
Jerry Lee didn't want Myra
to be anything like Priscilla Presley.
Myra was only to belong to him.
He didn't want other men to be attracted to Myra in any way.
Jerry Lee wanted Myra to be invisible.
I couldn't wear shorts.
We had a swimming pool, and he didn't want
me going swimming when there was other men out there.
It was so uncalled for.
NARRATOR: Only 17 years old, Myra submits to Jerry's
demands and embraces her role as wife and mother.
But nothing prepares her for what happens
on Easter Sunday, 1962.
LINDA: Myra was at home with her three-year-old son, Stevie,
her father-in-law, Elmo,
and Jerry's uncle, George, and she was going to cook dinner
and she was asking Elmo what he wanted,
and he was listing some things and said, "Well,
we better go inside and make a list."
So she asked Uncle George, "Would you watch Stevie?"
And he said, "Sure."
And so she and Elmo went inside,
and she wrote a grocery list.
They went back outside.
And Uncle George was there, and Stevie wasn't.
And I said, "Uncle George, where'd Stevie go?"
He said, "He went in the house with you.
Well, didn't he go in the house with you?"
Ran in the house to look for him.
I came back out.
There was this...
he'd been played with a hose,
and, uh, he'd been pulling it, and...
I followed the hose around the house,
and I looked, and the hose was in the swimming pool,
and the water was rippling,
and I started screaming.
[distant scream]
NARRATOR: Myra Lewis is 17 years old when
her three-year-old son drowns in a tragic accident.
Myra remembers almost nothing between the incident at
the pool and the funeral.
What she remembers is Jerry Lee
picking her up off of Stevie's grave.
She was lying on his grave and wouldn't leave,
because she wouldn't leave her child alone.
MYRA: I, uh...
was so heartbroken over losing Stevie.
I mean, it was the most God's awful thing
could happen to any human on this earth.
There were times when she didn't want to go on,
she didn't know if she could live without her baby, without
her child, and then she got pregnant again,
and it was with the birth of Phoebe
that she realized she had to stay alive.
She just unbroke my heart.
You know, she made me proud and happy to have
a child again in my arms that I could hold and kiss
and gave me back something that I had lost.
It was a --
a welcoming,
wonderful thing that happened.
NARRATOR: In 1964, the Beatles conquer America
and transform the sound of rock and roll.
By this time, unable to repeat his success on the charts,
Jerry Lee has left Sun Records.
At home, he becomes increasingly controlling.
LINDA: No matter what she did to try to please him,
it was never enough.
Nothing was ever good enough.
It ripped my self-esteem away from me.
One night, Jerry was coming home,
but I didn't know he was coming home that night.
He said, "I'm hungry.
You got to fix me something to eat."
Okay -- well, a neighbor had made some
spaghetti sauce for me,
and I walked by him, and he said,
"This don't taste like your spaghetti."
And I said, "Bonnie made it and gave it to me,"
and he said, "What?"
And he picked his tray up and threw it at me.
NARRATOR: Jerry's bad behavior continues,
even when he starts making a comeback in a new genre in
the 1960s.
♪ Who's gonna play this old piano ♪
♪ After I'm not here ♪
ALAN: He never returns as a rock and roll star,
but eventually moves into a much more straight ahead
country style.
ABIGAIL: When country music kind of became outlaw country
and was more sort of open to rebellious figures,
they welcomed Jerry Lee Lewis.
I started playing with him a lot and then went full time
with him later on, you know, after I got out of high school.
NARRATOR: When "Another Place, Another Time" shoots up
the country charts in 1968,
Jerry's career is on the ascent.
Jerry went from a little bit of success to more success
to really being
one of the most successful recording artists in
the country music community
by sort of the end of the sixties.
NARRATOR: Jerry's second chance at fame is not enough
to right his failing marriage.
MYRA: When the good times came back for Jerry's career,
things went to hell quickly.
Jerry would turn into Jekyll and Hyde.
Mid-afternoon, when Jerry was gone and gonna play a show
that night, I talked to him,
and he'd say things like, "Hey, babe, what you doing?"
Da da da da da. We'd just chit chat.
You know, normal -- after the show,
I could get a phone call from him.
Who the hell do you think you are telling
me that I shouldn't drink liquor or something like this?
The next morning, Jerry would wake up and call me and say,
"Hey, babe, what you doing?"
Jekyll and Hyde.
Jerry Lee, while he was on the road began taking drugs,
and Myra noticed a drastic difference in him.
He would just be totally out of control, accusing her of
cheating on him while he was out of town,
which was totally not Myra.
He had no evidence whatsoever.
He was just high on drugs.
ABIGAIL: I would imagine Myra
feeling completely overwhelmed and confused.
These were prescription pills, you know,
they were sort of like performance enhancers.
They were marketed from doctors.
There wasn't the knowledge that we have today.
He became a raw nerve, yelling, screaming.
I mean, Jerry Lee Lewis had
a terrible temper and a lot of conflict.
But you take all of that, and then
you combine it with amphetamines and booze
and sleeplessness,
it's like pouring lighter fuel on a fire.
Yeah, he slapped me. Yeah, he did.
That's what he would do to people.
He'd slap him in the face.
But when he slapped me, I would end up
on the floor because the force was too harsh.
[phone ringing]
NARRATOR: Then, 12 years into her marriage,
Myra gets a phone call that will ultimately destroy
the relationship.
Jerry Lee has been living a double life.
MYRA: I just fell apart.
I just...
I couldn't take another day of it.
[distant sobbing]
NARRATOR: In 1970, Myra Lewis gets a phone call
that shatters her belief in Jerry Lee.
MYRA: The anonymous phone call was that
Jerry had been seeing other women and just picking up
women on the road,
and it was something that had been ongoing for many years.
In fact, he had started cheating on her
only 11 months after they first got married.
[church bells ringing]
NARRATOR: Myra is devastated.
She runs down to her local church to seek solace.
MYRA: I knelt down at the altar, and I was crying so hard
that I was not even able to say a word,
but that was the moment of knowing, without a doubt,
that this was not the man I was gonna
spend my life with.
This was not what I bargained for.
I think maybe in my heart,
I knew that it wasn't reasonable that a man goes out
and plays music and drinks and takes drugs
and there's women throwing themselves at him.
It's not reasonable to think he's not
gonna take advantage of that.
But I could,
because he told me he didn't,
and when I realized that
it was a lie, and it had been a lie for a very long time,
I knew there was no going back.
NARRATOR: Jerry is out of town.
By the time he gets home,
Myra and Phoebe have moved in with JW and Lois.
[phone ringing]
MYRA: Jerry was continuously calling me,
wanting me to come back to him and all this kind of stuff.
And I went over to the house to get something,
and I went in, and I was in the den,
and I heard somebody going, "Get her out the window."
Jerry was in our bedroom with a girl in his bed, and I walked
in there and said,
"Oh, yeah, you miss me and you love me
"and you want me back, right?
"And this is what you're doing,
laying in my bed with another woman?"
So, I mean, I'd been gone two or three days.
LINDA: He begged her to come back, but...
she wasn't falling for it.
RUSTY: And that's when she got that apartment,
and I went over and stayed while she was
staying there and they was getting their divorce.
Um, I was asleep, and I heard glass break,
[distant glass shattering]
and I ran down the stairs,
[glass shattering]
and it was Jerry.
He was trying to come through the window.
Jerry saw me, and I said, "What do you think you're doing?"
He said, "I just need to talk to Myra."
I said, "You don't talk to her coming through the window."
I was married at 13, divorced at 26.
Half of my life was spent with Jerry.
LINDA: The leaving, of course, was hard.
She had no education.
She wasn't gonna have any money,
because Jerry Lee didn't manage money well,
and whatever they had, it was spent whenever he made it.
She did get some child support
as long as she would go beg for it.
Jerry did see Phoebe on a regular basis.
Myra always felt absolutely certain that keeping that
relationship between
the father and daughter was an important thing to do.
NARRATOR: Myra relocates to Atlanta, Georgia,
but as she starts to rebuild her life,
Jerry's starts to unravel.
He is arrested for driving under the influence
several times.
I was taking a lot of pills at the time, you know.
Nobody had mentioned it to me.
I didn't know that I was in that bad a shape.
NARRATOR: Jerry has numerous weapons violations
and accidentally shoots his bass player while drunk.
Just a couple of months after shooting his bass player,
Jerry Lee shows up drunk and belligerent at Graceland,
smashes his -- his car into the front gates.
He is yelling for Elvis to come down and pulls out his gun
and starts firing that and then is hauled in
and arrested for that.
That was the next example of chaos.
MYRA: That was kind of around the same time
when I decided to go into real estate.
I'm here by myself. I've got a child to raise.
What do I want to do?
LINDA: She went back to school, got her GED,
she then got her real estate license,
and eventually her broker's license.
Myra was very successful in real estate in
Atlanta, Georgia.
MYRA: I was in the President's Club every year.
I was a million-dollar producer,
and I loved every second of it.
LINDA: She worked for Richard Williams.
She was an agent in his firm.
He was a divorced man, and she admired him immensely.
And after four years, one day, he asked her to lunch,
and the sparks flew apparently, because they ended up
getting married.
MYRA: Richard Williams and I were married
on June 1984.
He's a gentleman.
He's kind, he'll do anything in the world for me.
He vacuums.
I have somebody I can take care of
and somebody that I know is gonna take care of me.
And it took a long time to get to it all.
But it -- it's been -- it's been what I want.
NARRATOR: After Myra's marriage to Richard,
most news of Jerry continues to be troubling.
ALAN: There are a series of marriages,
many of which just end in terrible and tragic
or suspect circumstances.
One wife dies under very sketchy circumstances
that, as reporters investigate,
points toward his guilt and culpability in her death.
And none of this is ever in any
serious way investigated or explored
by the authorities.
Really and sincerely, I would like to say one more time,
what a great honor it is to be back in London, England!
I feel like this is home to me, you know.
Oh, this is where I first came over
and I brought my little 13-year-old cousin with me.
Remember that? [laughs]
ABIGAIL: He was widely celebrated.
He was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in the first class.
Jerry Lee also was very distinct within
that first generation of rock and roll.
First of all, he stayed alive longer than the rest of them.
But Jerry Lee Lewis was also in a class of his own
when it came to bad behavior.
But then what's behind that is this remarkable woman
who took something from that, who took something beyond just
being scarred by it and, you know,
was able to turn her life into something else.
I mean, there's been so many blessings
and so many good things and so much
good, good, good spread through our life that...
[sighs]
you got to focus on that.
I'm happy with myself right now.
I'm happy with what I've got.
I've learned some tremendous lessons about life,
and if I had to do it all over again,
I'd probably do it all over again.