Elvis Was Obsessed With 1 Co-Star, but She ‘Wasn’t the Least Bit Interested in Him’
Elvis Presley began to act in films in 1956 and would go on to fall for a significant number of his co-stars. He reportedly claimed that he slept with all his leading ladies but one. He struck out with his first co-star, though. While Elvis adored her, she wanted nothing romantic to do with him.
Elvis fell for a co-star on the set of his first movie
In 1956, Elvis made his film debut in Love Me Tender. He acted alongside Debra Paget, who transfixed Elvis. His bodyguard, Sonny West, even believed that Elvis tried to model Priscilla Presley after Paget.
“If you look at her in those earlier pictures, you will see she had a decided likeness to Priscilla Presley, whom he was soon to meet,” Sonny West said in the book Elvis: What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “She had black hair. When Elvis first met Priscilla he got her to dye her hair black. I think it’s significant that his mother had black hair, too.”
Elvis and Paget bonded on set, but his feelings for her went further than friendship. He had a passionate crush on her and reportedly even proposed to her. Paget did not reciprocate the feeling.
“I guess the way it went was that Debra really thought Elvis was just a nice handsome kid,” Sonny West said. “She wasn’t the least bit interested in him.”
Another one of Elvis’ co-stars had no interest in him
Elvis’ final leading lady also did not fall for his charm. Mary Tyler Moore, with whom he starred in Change of Habit, discovered that Elvis had a shy crush on her.
“[Elvis] confessed right from the start that he’d had a crush on me since The Dick Van Dyke Show,” Moore wrote, per Express.
He seemed timid and starstruck around her. While she liked him, she said he wasn’t her type.
“I was his last leading lady,” she 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.”
Priscilla Presley grew exhausted of the affairs he had with other actors
Elvis had not yet met Priscilla Presley while he was chasing Paget. They were a couple, however, for many of the other films Elvis shot. Often, Elvis would be away on set while Priscilla read gossip columns detailing his flirtations with his co-stars. This grew taxing after a while. Priscilla finally snapped when she read that Elvis had proposed to his Viva Las Vegas co-star Ann-Margret.
“I picked up a flower vase and hurled it across the room, shattering it against the wall,” she wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “‘I hate her!’ I shouted. ‘Why doesn’t she keep her a** in Sweden where she belongs?’”
Though Elvis continually denied these rumors, he told Priscilla he wanted a partner who would understand that things like this could happen.
