Elvis: - The Icon That Loved Me

by Suzanna Leigh

(Suzanna Leigh was the only British actress ever to appear opposite Elvis in his long film career. Yet she was far more than a colleague - years later, the pair still saw each other as brother and sister. Her, she recalls their remarkable bond to Glenys Roberts.)

On the 25th anniversary of Elvis' death, I will be in his old hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. It is a complete coincidence - or is it? When I arranged a book tour of the U.S. to promote my new autobiography, didn't know what date I would be setting out. Now it seems to have been prearranged by a benevolent destiny. Elvis and I always did have something psychic going for us and I came to believe early on in our friendship that we must have known each other in another life. On the day he died, 16th August 1977, I went to bed very early in London and woke up in the middle of the night in a large, luminous white space. Standing before me was Elvis, also in white - the slim, young, gorgeous Elvis I'd known when we first met in 1966. He smiled at me and told me he had something to tell me. Then he said: "I've been sick baby, but I'm in no pain now. It's all over now. Tell them all I love them." Then he said he had to go and then melted into the whiteness. I finally realised I was dreaming when I was woken up by the telephone ringing. "Suzanna Leigh? This is CBS News in New York. Could you give us your reaction to the death of Elvis Presley?"
I first met Elvis in Hawaii, on the set of "*Paradise, Hawaiian Style". I'd been cast opposite him, the only English girl who ever acted with him. I was sitting down memorising my lines when suddenly someone said, "Excuse me. Ma'am, would you like a cup of tea?" Without looking up I said, "No thank you, I don't drink tea". Then something made me glance in the direction of the voice and I saw Elvis' profile. When his eyes met mine and held them for a moment, it was as though we both recognised each other as members of the same club. Elvis had offered me tea because he knew I was English. "Well, actually", I said, "I don't normally drink tea, but I'd love a cup". It broke the ice and we were Soon chatting together. Elvis often said he liked me because I didn't try to push myself on him. Instead, we just enjoyed ourselves. We had such tremendous fun when we started working together that we could hardly keep a straight face and were always exploding into fits of the giggles. You can still see him laughing in the finished film, even though he wasn't supposed to be. When we'd finished work for the day, he would follow me into my trailer, saying he wanted to talk about England. He'd gleaned a very strange impression of the place from some showgirls he'd met in Las Vegas.* I tried to set him right. I told him how the Countess of Rosse's butler had greeted me at the end of a ball with the words "*Your chariot awaits". From then on he referred to his limousines as chariots. He was fascinated about the Royal Family* and their security arrangements, and that led me to tell him all about the visits I used to make to Morocco and how their royal family used peacocks for security because they screamed when they saw strangers and were thought to be symbols of eternal life. Shortly after this, I told him I thought I'd known him in another incarnation. He used to tease me about it, saying, "Say that again, baby". "Don't call me baby", I snapped. "Sure thing, baby", he replied. After that, we became very close. I told him he was more important to me than a boyfriend and he told me I was the sister he never had. He was enormously protective of me in all sorts of ways. One day, when I spotted another blonde on the set I said petulantly, "I thought I was the only blonde in this picture.", "You are," he said "She'll be wearing a black wig tomorrow." "*Cruel, but necessary," I replied, and it became our catchphrase*.
Off-stage we spent a lot of time together. I called him "EP", which he liked, and he called me "Baby", which I didn't, but I no longer reacted. It was just a brother teasing his little sister. Whenever I got in a mood, he would sing for me, "*Oh Suzanna, now don't you cry for me", which always cheered me up. He would also tell me stories about his poverty-stricken childhood* in Mississippi and how he hated wearing jeans, but they were the only things that didn't wear out. He used to say, "We were dirt poor but the one thing we weren't short of was love; Momma made sure of that" I was especially touched when he said that his mother Gladys would have loved me. Elvis, who was always looking for spiritual guidance, used to say I had been sent to him by God. We both believed we had guardian angels. I used to tell him how mine had appeared to me when I was miserable at my English boarding school, and he told me how his had taken his twin brother Jesse away when he was born to look after him. I hated the memories of my boarding school and the nuns, and Elvis used to interrupt all my stories and say everything was all right-because now he was here to look after me. It was true, too. I did everything he said, including finishing my affair with actor Richard Harris because he was a married man. Elvis and I gave each other so much. I told him about all the books I was reading and he used to ask for copies. I gave him "*The Prophet" by "Kalil Gibran" and a book about the deposed King of Scotland. Elvis was always reading because he'd never had a formal education. And Elvis remembered everything he read, but he didn't want other people to think he was too smart and used to hide his books away when visitors came to his trailer. He had a huge etymology dictionary* with which he used to check out the meaning of words, and a book about numerology, and another one about Eastern religions. He also used to talk about converting to Judaism "We've got to cover all angles," he used to say. In other things, he was very rigid. He used to call men "*Sir" and women "Ma'am", as a matter of course, just as his mother had taught him. And he believed in revenge. "Good Karma"; he called it. "If anyone betrays you or lets you down, cut them off like they no longer exist," he would say. "The only reason you don't kill them is there is a law against it. Cruel but necessary." He could be ruthless with women when he wanted to get rid of them, including his lover, Ann-Margret, whom he had really loved until she announced to the world they were going steady. He flipped and broke off the affair. The one person you could say no ill about was his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. I had a difficult relationship with the Colonel, but whatever he did, Elvis would say, "If it hadn't been for him, I would still be driving a truck." Our friendship continued back in Los Angeles* when the film was finished. I was living in the famous Chateau Marmont and he was living with his then girlfriend Priscilla and his aides in Bel Air. But he often discussed with me the things that were on his mind, like whether or not he should meet The Beatles. Finally, I persuaded him to invite them to his home, but it wasn't a great success. He thought that their political beliefs were subversive and they were a bad influence on young Americans. Although we weren't lovers, I turned down a lot of men for Elvis' sake, including Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty. He was furious when Steve McQueen got me stoned without asking whether or not I'd smoked dope before. Elvis did sweep me into his arms once and kissed me passionately in front of the photographers because he thought it would do my career good. And he kissed me again sincerely when I left for a holiday back home in England. "See you in February," he said as we vowed to meet again on his next film, "Easy Come, Easy Go". In fact, we never met again, but that's another story. The next time I saw him was in my dream on the night he died. And I had the most curious experience when I finally visited Graceland in Memphis for the first time, four years ago. He had put a life-size peacock on either side of the Music Room where he had lain during his funeral service; all because I told him that peacocks were the symbols of eternal life.