Elvis Presley's Death: Anniversary Spotlights Similarities With Michael Jackson

Aug. 16, 2009 — -- Thirty-two years ago today, Ginger Alden -- then a 21-year-old model with dark eyes, long auburn hair and a wide smile -- awoke from a nap and, not immediately seeing her fiancee, knocked on his bathroom door.

Opening the door, she found the man who seven months earlier had proposed marriage dead from an overdose -- Elvis Presley.

It was just after 1:30 p.m. on Aug. 16, 1977. The book that Elvis had taken into the bathroom four hours earlier, "The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus," lay opened at his feet. He was 42.

By 4:30 that afternoon, Elvis' father, Vernon Presley, stood on the steps of the singer's Memphis mansion, Graceland, and told the world: "My son is dead."

"I remember an overwhelming sense of sadness, disbelief and feeling as if Graceland had also died," Alden, now Ginger Leyser, told ABC News.com in an e-mail. "It was a complete, complete shock. Elvis was in a great mood and looking forward to going back on tour."

"He had earlier told me that he had been off too long," she wrote. "We had discussed wedding plans in the early morning hours after we went to the dentist. It was impossible to me that there would be a world and he not be there. That day a huge emptiness filled Graceland, Memphis, the world and my heart. It was an indescribable personal feeling of loss."

The anniversary of Elvis' death comes as the world continues to mourn his pop music successor, Michael Jackson.

For decades, comparisons have been made between Elvis -- the so-called King of Rock -- and Jackson -- the self-anointed King of Pop. And now their deaths share eerie similarities.

Both Jackson and Elvis' lives unfurled with similar progression. Born into working-class families, they were musical innovators whose success bridged cultures and generations, and whose fame made them prisoners in their own homes.

But their deaths have an even eerier congruence. With their best days behind them, each planned a concert tour to redefine their legacies. Before getting the chance, however, they each died quietly in their gilded cages from an overdose of powerful prescription drugs.