Actress on Elvis Presley

“I want to celebrate his life. He was so gifted, I just cherish his memory, his generosity, and he was so private, like I am. He knew about honour, and respect, and was so considerate, and his manners, and the way he was so civilized. And as an entertainer he will never be repeated. I wanted him to know all that, and I did tell him, but very few others did...”

“It was the early 1970s. I was 22, working in some little show in a hotel that's now gone, and he was doing a gig at the Las Vegas Hilton. We met backstage at a Tom Jones concert, then he showed me some karate moves, with a small party of folks ending up at his penthouse suite. There, he turned to me and said he had something to show me in his bedroom, so I thought, 'Oh, here comes the cliche,’ Turns out, he just wanted to read to me from Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet.” It was a sweet moment, as he sat on a footstool beside me and read like a child, his finger following the text. He signed the book, gave it to me and told me to have a blessed life. He was so sweet, that's what struck me the most. In retrospect, I view him as a prisoner of his fame. That, and his roots in gospel music and the church, fueled his desire to seek out more knowledge about the world and self-realization.”

“I was asked who would be my dream opponent in the ultimate game of truth or dare, anyone, living or dead, and I picked Elvis Presley who I love so much that I named my dog after him.”

“He was a wonderful person, and a lovely man to kiss. During the movie shoot, we did it (kiss) in the morning, in the afternoon and at night. He is a wonderful person, you can't define him in one line”

“Elvis's music is the one true gift he's left behind, and it is continually being shared with the world. The music will never die, but apart from that, it's the other intangible things that keep him alive- his love, his laughter, his films, all the photos that we see and have access to will keep him alive, for generations to come. The last time I saw him, In 1974, he did put in a great show.”

“i) The other recording session I always think of was Elvis. Not in my wildest dreams — I mean, it was like how is this little girl singing background for Elvis Presley? How do things like that happen? The stars lined up, everything was in order, and Elvis fell in love with me because of my gospel background. Whenever he would get a chance he would go to me, 'Do you know this song? Come on, let’s go sing it.' Gospel music was the closeness that we had. "If I Can Dream" is my all-time favorite Elvis song. It was a big record, but not as big as it could have been. It was one of those records where you'd think it sold 10 billion copies, but it didn't. I did that song in my show a couple of times, but it's a really hard song to sing, it really is, the meter is really difficult. You have to really study hard to learn how to sing that song. That's why I don't sing it anymore ii) He did interact with the Blossoms, but it had a lot to do with our gospel. I came from a gospel background and my father was a minister, so I knew a lot of old hymns of the church, and that's what Elvis sang. That's how he interacted with us. Actually, when he got ready to do his 1968 comeback special, we didn't know we were actually going to be in the special because we were just singing in the background. But because of us talking to him all the time, and talking to him about gospel and everything, he told the producers, "No, I want the girls in this. I want them to be singing. He was a gentle giant.”

“I felt there was a man there who truly cared about people. But his life was on a level that my life was not on. I felt like Phillip Dunne [director] fawned all over Elvis. Elvis' attitude was – I saw Elvis looking around that set and summing up people faster than anyone else could have, and I felt that after a short period of time he was disappointed in Phillip Dunne, but he was too polite and well behaved to say anything. He tried very hard to make this film better than his other movies, and you saw him trying and asking questions. And I just believe the sad thing is that [the director] did not have the ability to help Elvis through it. I remember one scene; we were sitting in the truck, and we were supposed to be driving home from a dance or going to a dance, and in the script he was supposed to break into song, turn on the radio and start singing. And to me it was like "yuk," I was very young and I thought, " my sisters are going to tease me, this is so embarrassing and tasteless." You see, I was a snob, too. But – and this was the nicest thing – while we were rehearsing, finally the director walked away, and Elvis looks at me and says, "God, this is so embarrassing. Nobody would ever do this in real life. Why are they making me do this? He never used his star power – never. Maybe he should have. Maybe he did it on some level, but he sure didn't do it on the set. I felt like he was younger than me, this very humble person who would make statements that he believed in. All I know is that there was a person there with a refined heart and soul, and I say refined on any level you want to look at it. When you meet someone like that, you know they're there,The essence of Elvis was a fine person as I've ever met.”

“As soon as we were done with the first shot, he said, ‘You wanna talk?’ I was shocked. He pulled up two chairs together, we sat down, he took my hand and then he began to tell me about his mother. He talked about how much he missed her, how when he was in the Army, they wouldn't let him go see her when she was dying. It wasn't like he was flirting, he was just being very sweet and could not have been nicer.”

“Every morning when I woke up and looked out the window, there were at least two hundred kids lined up on the sidewalk outside, staring at the house. Some of them would stay there all day long, just trying to get a glimpse of him. And when he would go out, he was very sweet to them. A lot of people I know would get angry, or impatient -- but Elvis was very nice to them, spent as much time with them as he could.”