Elvis Took a Blow to the Ego When 1 Co-Star Rejected His Romantic Advances
Mary Tyler Moore once called herself the only one of Elvis Presley’s leading ladies who didn’t sleep with him, but the singer reportedly struck out with more than one co-star. Elvis worked with actor Shelley Fabares on three films and reportedly pursued her across all of them. His bodyguards said it came as a major blow to Elvis’ ego when Fabares continually rejected him.
Elvis pursued a co-star who turned him down
After Elvis left the army in 1960, he began making movies at a relentless pace. While he was in a relationship with Priscilla Presley during this period, he still pursued many of his co-stars.
“It pretty much followed the same pattern,” bodyguard Red West said in the book Elvis: What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “Priscilla was in Memphis, Elvis dated his leading lady and I, as usual, ended up in the movie getting knocked on my a**.”
Fabares broke up this pattern for Elvis. They starred in the film Girl Happy together in 1965, Spinout in 1966, and Clambake in 1967.
“He would be trying to promote her all day on location, but she just wasn’t interested,” bodyguard Sonny West said. “She was going with Lou Adler, the man who went on to become a big record producer. It was a blow to Elvis’s ego that he couldn’t get to her, but she was very faithful.”
When Fabares married Adler, Elvis joked that it was because she had been close to welcoming his advances.
“When she did marry Lou a little later, Elvis said, ‘She had to go and get married because she knew she wouldn’t be able to go through another movie resisting me,’” Sonny said. “It really was an ego thing with him.”
He pursued her as they shot more than one film
Sonny West said that Elvis’ pursuit of Fabares did not cease after they shot Girl Happy.
“She did three pictures with him,” West told Elvis Australia. “He went after her from the first picture. He thought she was adorable: she was petite like he liked. But she said to him, ‘I’m dating someone,’ and she said it was serious so he backed off. But that chemistry was still there. So anyway, the next picture he went after her again.”
Their relationship never went much further than on-set chemistry.
Elvis’ co-star unknowingly caused a major fight between Elvis and Priscilla Presley
While Elvis and Fabares never had an affair, Priscilla Presley worried about their relationship. After Priscilla casually suggested setting up a lunch with Fabares, Elvis grew cagey and denied the request. When she asked him if he had anything to hide about his relationship with Fabares, Elvis exploded.
“I don’t have a goddamn thing to hide,” he told her, per her book Elvis and Me. “You’re getting a little too aggressive and demanding. It might be a good idea if you visited your parents for a while.”
Elvis began throwing Priscilla’s clothes into a suitcase and shouted for a member of his entourage to book her a flight out of Memphis. Priscilla went as far as stepping out the door with her bag before Elvis said he hadn’t been serious.
“I was relieved and happy to be back in his arms,” she wrote. “Anything he’d have said would have made sense to me in that moment. What I didn’t realize until later was that this was Elvis’s technique of keeping me under control.”
