NOVEMBER 8, 1963 – Having heard Priscilla Presley was with her fiancée Elvis in Los Angeles

NOVEMBER 8, 1963 – Having heard Priscilla Presley was with her fiancée Elvis in Los Angeles, and reportedly attempting to beat her to the altar, actress and “Viva Las Vegas” co-star Ann-Margret was quoted in the LA press as being “in love” with Elvis and ruminating marriage with him. Priscilla, on the Colonel’s advice, was sent back to Memphis to avoid controversy, but not before she threw a vase across the room, screaming that the expatriate (born as Ann-Margret Olsson in Valsjöbyn, Jämtland, Sweden) should “keep her ass in Sweden where she belongs”.
Elvis and Ann-Margret first met on July 9, 1963 at Radio Recorders studios in Hollywood. He was 28, she was 22. Both were on top of the world. For the first time Elvis and the Colonel had agreed to have a leading lady starring with Elvis in a film. The meeting between them was well planned by the publicity department for the upcoming film “Viva Las Vegas.” Director George Sidney, who himself was pretty keen on Ann-Margret, introduced the two stars to each other at the MGM studios. Both were formally dressed, Elvis in a suit and tie, Ann-Margret in double-buttoned white turtleneck, her hair up. 
In her 1994 autobiography, Ann-Margret recalled her introduction to Elvis: “Except for a piano, the MGM soundstage where Elvis and I met was empty. In the background, a few of his guys hung around observing their boss, a ritual I would soon come to expect. Under the watchful gaze of director George Sidney, a studio photographer snapped shots of what the film company executives figured would be a historic moment. “‘Elvis Presley, I’d like you to meet a wonderful young lady, Ann-Margret,’ said George Sidney. ‘Ann-Margret, this is Elvis Presley.’ The significance was lost on Elvis and me. I reached out my hand and he shook it gently. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ we said at the same time, which made us laugh and broke the ice.” They said a few polite phrases. A photographer took some shots, then it was over.

They met again on July 11th to work together. The place was Radio Recorders Studio on 7000 Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. Elvis had the days before recorded six of the songs for the film, now it was time for a couple of duets with Ann-Margret: “The Lady Loves Me” and “You’re The Boss.” 
She recalled the event: “From day one, when we gathered around the piano to run through the film’s songs, Elvis and I knew that it was going to be serious. That day, we discovered two things about each other. Once the music started, neither of us could stand still. Music ignited a fiery pent-up passion inside Elvis and inside me. It was an odd, embarrassing, funny, inspiring, and wonderful sensation. We looked at each other move and saw virtual mirror images. When Elvis thrust his pelvis, mine slammed forward too. When his shoulder dropped, I was down there with him. When he whirled, I was already on my heel. ‘It’s uncanny,’ I said. He grinned. Whatever it was, Elvis liked it and so did I.” 
Three days later the cast and crew traveled to Las Vegas, where they checked in at the Sahara Hotel. On July 15 local filming began in the city and continued until July 26. After a weekend move back to Los Angeles, filming resumed at MGM studios and ran through August into the first week of September.
Ann-Margret could tell the partnership was working. “I’m sure that the producers knew that the fast-paced, boy-meets-girl musical would certainly be improved if the chemistry between Lucky and Rusty were right. Initially, Elvis and I might’ve admitted that the only heat between us came from the hot desert sun. But others saw sparks from the start.” Soon it became obvious to all.
There was a great publicity campaign about the romance between Elvis and Ann-Margret during the 1963 filming of “Viva Las Vegas” and the following weeks, which helped to increase the popularity of the young Hollywood beauty. An AP correspondent wrote, “They hold hands. They disappear into his dressing room between shots. They lunch together in seclusion.” It was Elvis’ 14th film, while Ann-Margret’s career was just starting to explode. Her previous film “Bye Bye Birdie” had been released just three months before she reported for work on “Viva Las Vegas,” and it made her an instant star. (“Birdie” cast member Dick Van Dyke said a more fitting title for the movie would have been “The Ann-Margret Story”). 

As they worked together, Ann-Margret says they discovered many things they had in common. In addition to the music, they shared a passion for motorcycles, a love of family, a desire for privacy, a devotion to God, and late night talks. Early during filming, Elvis asked her to go out with him and the guys to see a show in Las Vegas. “It was an innocent, friendly date,” she remembered. “I was used to having my parents accompany me on dates, so Elvis’s entourage wasn’t a problem. His guys always treated me wonderfully.”
In return, Elvis’s buddies always felt comfortable when she was around. “She made his life a little easier because she understood him and didn’t make any demands on him,” Elvis’s cousin Billy Smith recalled. “She even understood his need for us. Priscilla never understood that.” Elvis friend Marty Lacker added, “Ann genuinely liked people, and she liked every one of us. She wasn’t intimidated or threatened by us. I think she also respected us. We used to have a lot of fun with her. She had a terrific sense of humor. We called her ‘Rusty’ because that was her name in the movie and because of her red hair.”
As Elvis became more comfortable with Ann-Margret, however, they began to spend more time alone. “I knew I’d crossed into a certain uncharted territory when Elvis asked to be alone with me, but later the frequency with which it happened made me happy. It meant Elvis truly trusted me.” During their private time together, Elvis opened up to her, perhaps more than he ever had with any other person in his life. She felt she came to know his heart intimately: “Like everyone else, Elvis had dreams and desires, hopes and hurts, wants and weaknesses. He didn’t reveal this vulnerable side until everyone had disappeared, until those private moments when we were alone, after darkness had blanketed the city and we’d parked somewhere up in the hills and could look down upon the sprawl of LA or up at the stars.”

The only threat to their relationship during the Viva Las Vegas shoot was their egos. Ann-Margret admitted she had one, and no one would deny Elvis did as well. A case in point is the favoritism director George Sidney allegedly gave Ann-Margret during filming. Elvis cronies Red West, Lamar Fike, Joe Esposito, and Sonny West have all accused Sidney of giving Ann-Margret favorable camera angles at Elvis’s expense. According to Red West, after viewing the daily rushes, Elvis would “complain bitterly to us that the SOB was trying to cut him out of the picture.” Reportedly, Elvis’s complaints were passed on to Colonel Parker, who took Sidney to task. According to Presley biographer Peter Guralnick, the Colonel confronted the producers, reminding them that this was an “Elvis Presley picture.” He didn’t buy MGM’s argument that featuring Ann-Margret would draw a wider audience to the film. Guralnick even reported that Parker used his power to pull from the film two of the three duets recorded by the two stars.
If Elvis let some professional jealousy show in the camera angle controversy, it didn’t spill over into his personal relationship with Ann-Margret. By all accounts, that developed quickly into full-blown love affair. “Elvis’s affair with Ann-Margret was not just an affair,” declared Lamar Fike. “He was really in love with her. It got hot and heavy.” Marty Lacker added, “Neither one of them was married, and they really cared a lot about each other… and Priscilla was back at Graceland.” For her part, in her book Ann-Margret avoided passionate details of her relationship with Elvis, instead focusing on the motorcycle rides and other adventures they shared as close friends.

Still, it’s apparent their intimate relationship continued long after filming on “Viva Las Vegas” had been concluded. In his book, Jerry Schilling reported seeing Ann-Margret enter Elvis’s California home late at night in the fall of 1964 with her own key and make her way up to Elvis’s bedroom. Marty Lacker claims, “She used to write him letters and sign them ‘Bunny’ or ‘Thumper.’ And she’d call Graceland and use the same code.” And Ann-Margret admitted in her book that, “Elvis knew I loved pink and had commissioned a round, pink bed in a moment of tenderness.”
Inevitably, though, at least to Ann-Margret it seemed, their love affair had to end as she explained in her autobiography: “There were other factors in Elvis’s life that forced him apart from me, and I understood them. Elvis had always been honest with me, but still it was a confusing situation. We continued to see each other periodically, until we had dated for almost a year. Then everything halted. We knew the relationship had to end, that Elvis had to fulfill his commitment.” That commitment was marrying Priscilla in Las Vegas on May 1, 1967. Ann-Margret made a similar commitment a week later, when she married actor Roger Smith in the same city.
For the remaining 10 years of Elvis’s life, he and Ann-Margret remained good and loyal friends. When she made her first appearance on the Las Vegas stage in June 1967, Elvis sent her a guitar-shaped floral arrangement. He continued the practice for all of her Las Vegas openings for the rest of his life. When Elvis opened at the International Hotel on July 31, 1969, Ann-Margret was in the audience, according to Lamar Fike. Throughout the seventies, both would attend the other’s Las Vegas shows when possible and visit with each other afterwards.

In the seventies, both would struggle with drug dependencies. While Elvis abused prescription medications, Ann-Margret fought alcohol addiction. “I reached a point where my days and nights blended into one continuous, foggy state of inebriation,” she explained. “I’d drink a fifth of scotch, pass out, wake up, drink some more, and pass out again. I suffered periods that I couldn’t remember.”
Ann-Margret overcame her addiction; Elvis did not. In early 1977 she heard rumors about Elvis’s poor health. When Joe Esposito came to her show at the Tropicana in Las Vegas, she asked him how Elvis was doing. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “Everything’s fine. There’re a few problems, but we’re taking care of them.”
When she opened at the Hilton on August 15, 1977, for the first time in 10 years, there was no flower arrangement or telegram from Elvis. The next morning a phone call from Graceland brought the devastating news. Joe Esposito explained it was going to be a madhouse in Memphis for the funeral and advised her not to come. “We’re coming,” she told him. When she arrived at Graceland, she and Vernon embraced. “There was so much to say, to recount,” she recalled, “but instead, we cried.” Vernon said softly, “He was so proud of you.” Ann-Margret attended Elvis’ funeral, and three months later Elvis’s father and Colonel Parker asked her to host a two-hour Elvis NBC tribute, “Memories of Elvis.” She described it as one of the most “difficult, wrenching jobs” she had ever undertaken.
In early 1979, on hearing that Vernon Presley was seriously ill, Ann-Margret flew to Memphis to visit him. “We had a good visit, laughing and crying and trading stories,” she recalled. “He told me how much he missed his son, and I said that I missed him, too.” To comfort him, she occasionally called Vernon during the months leading up to his death on June 26, 1979.
Lacker, one of Elvis’s best men at his wedding, once wrote, “If Elvis had ended up with Thumper, this whole story might have wound up differently.” Could Ann-Margret have saved Elvis from himself when no one else could? It’s a moot question. Even at the peak of their love affair, both of them knew it could never last.

[wp_ad_camp_2]