Viva Las Vegas: Elvis stars in 1964 teaser with Ann-Margret
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The decades may pass but our love for Elvis never dims. all eyes are back on him this week with the home entertainment release of Baz Luhrmann’s biopic, as well as the start of Elvis Week at Graceland. The King famously flirted (and often more) with his numerous female co-stars, but none had the same impact on him as Ann-Margret. On the screen she held her own, demanding as much attention as him and receiving equal billing – unheard of in Elvis vehicles. The Swedish-American beauty later described their extraordinary connection as being “mirror images”. When a bewildered Elvis struggled to understand her extraordinary effect on him, one of the Memphis Mafia bluntly told him “she’s the female you.”
Ann-Margret described how their connection was irresistible from the moment they met: “We both felt a current, an electricity that went straight through us. It would become a force we couldn’t control…
“Little did we know we shared a devil within. We were quiet, polite, careful. But I knew what was going to happen once we got to know each other. Elvis did, too.”
She said that Elvis wanted to marry her: “his wish was that we could stay together.”
Back at Graceland, Priscilla was increasingly suspicious and furious back at Graceland and threw a vase at the wall after hearing the rumours.
Ann-Margret was already an acclaimed singer and dancer by the time she was cast in 1964’s Viva Las Vegas, having caused a worldwide sensation in the 1963 film Bye, Bye, Birdie.
She said: “We experienced music in the same visceral way. 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.”
Away from the film set their chemistry was just as explosive.
They would play in front of Elvis’s entourage, cat-dancing across the floor, putting on sexy voices with Elvis teasing, “You’ve got me running,” and Ann-Margret replying, “You’ve got me hiding.”
Elvis called her Thumper (which she would use as a code name when she called Graceland) and she called him EP.
They shared a love of riding powerful motorbikes and daredevil Ann-Margret continued her passion for decades, even after she broke three ribs in an accident in 2000.
But it wasn’t just fun and games, they also consoled each other when John F Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
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