Elvis Left ‘Streams’ of Lovers Behind Him Everywhere He Went
When Elvis Presley’s career took off in 1956, his love life did too. He was a charming, good-looking superstar and people flocked to him everywhere he went. According to Elvis’ friend and bodyguard, the singer had multiple flings as he was traveling between cities to perform. His bodyguards said he was so charismatic that hardly anyone was immune to his advances.
Elvis Presley’s bodyguard said he left lovers behind everywhere he visited
As Elvis’ career gained traction, he traveled between cities for concerts. His bodyguard, Red West, said everything happened so fast that it was difficult to adjust.
“We never seemed to have time to absorb it all,” West said in the book Elvis: What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “We were all busier than a one-legged man in an a**-kicking contest. We were hitting town after town in very quick succession.”
As they traveled, they met fans, many of whom were women who were very interested in Elvis. West vulgarly claimed that Elvis had multiple flings.
“About then Elvis really started plowing through the broads,” he said. “Every town was a different broad. Sometimes one in the afternoon and then one in the night. He was really taking off. He just left streams of gals behind him.”
Many of Elvis’ lovers were his co-stars
Elvis continued to have flings with other women when he was in long-term relationships. He met many of his romantic partners, like Ann-Margret Olsson, on film sets.
“I was his last leading lady,” his Change of Habit co-star Mary Tyler Moore told Ability Magazine. “And it was funny because not that many years after the film was finished, he was quoted as saying, ‘I’ve slept with every one of my leading ladies except one.’ I don’t want to bust anyone’s cover, but I know who the one is.”
His relationship with Olsson was so notorious that some tabloids reported he had proposed to her.
“We both felt a current, an electricity that went straight through us,” she wrote in her book Ann-Margret: My Story (via The New York Times). “It would become a force we couldn’t control.”
His bodyguard said he was incredibly charming
Elvis’ celebrity status helped his chances with potential romantic partners. According to his bodyguard Dave Hebler, though, Elvis was so charming that he would have won people over even without fame.
“This guy didn’t have to give me the time of day. But somehow he had that charm, or maybe it was a knack, of making me feel important at a time when it was important for me personally to be made to feel important,” Hebler said. “Perhaps, now, I see it clearer, but there is no getting away from it. I had never met — before or since — never read of, nor heard of, any man who could so totally disarm you with charm, generosity and what appeared to be spontaneous love, as could Elvis Presley. Today they use the word charisma. Well, Presley had it to spare in truckloads.”
