By 1966, Elvis Presley’s movie career was fizzling out, victim to repetitive, often flimsy, plots and a reluctance to allow the King to stretch his very evident acting abilities.
His 1966 co-star in Paradise, Hawaiian Style, Brit Suzanna Leigh said: “Elvis was a fabulous actor, very underrated by a lot of the conventional (movie) theatre people.”
She formed a close bond with the superstar on set, and he was keen to star with her again. She later claimed it was blocked by his Svengali’sh manager: “Colonel Tom Parker never liked our friendship, mainly because I was introducing him to actors like Richard Harris. Elvis wanted to be a real actor, but Colonel Parker only looked for easy money.”
Leigh had always been very strong-willed, taking her stage name from actress Vivienne Leigh, whom her father claimed was her godmother. Aged 11, the then Sandra Eileen Anne Smith looked up the Hollywood legend’s address and knocked on her door. The star had no memory of any connection but took her under her wing.
Leigh said: “It was really exciting. She was so fantastic to me. She said that so many of my dreams seemed like hers.”
The young hopeful was soon was carving her niche on television in The Saint, followed by her own French series. While in France, she heard Hollywood heavyweight Hal Wallis was staying at The Dorchester while talent hunting in London. Feigning illness, she hotfooted it to the airport.
She found out his hotel room and repeated that childhood door tactic, this time hammering away and shouting, “I’m the one you’re looking for!”
It worked and, at the tender age of 19, Suzanna jetted off to Tinseltown and was swiftly snapped up by Paramount Pictures to star with Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis in the comedic romp Boeing Boeing. Elvis was next…
Leigh said: “The moment when Hal disclosed that my next film would be with none other than Elvis, I was over the moon. As a huge admirer of his, learning that we’d be shooting in Hawaii was just the icing on the cake.”
Suzanna was cast as Elvis’s leading lady, Judy ‘Friday’ Hudson, in Paradise, Hawaiian Style. He played Rick Richards, a playboy helicopter pilot.
Rick’s classic cheesy pickup line to Judy was: “We met before, on a surfboard, in Waikiki. You were wiped out.”
In her 2003 autobiography, Paradise, Suzanna Style, she raved about their passionate on-screen clinches, writing: “His kisses held an intensity that melted my very being. I slipped my arms around his neck and our bodies entwined. This was all madness, but we didn’t stop. A person could go to the gallows with such a kiss lingering on their lips, knowing life had been good.”
Their shared interests in spirituality and guardian angels brought them closer. She later said: “Elvis, who was very religious, loved my stories about my English convent school. The first time he took my hand was on set. We only kissed twice, but there was the promise of many more intimacies to come.”
An impromptu off-screen kiss in front of photographers his headlines around the world but they never went any further.
Leigh added: “We remained friends throughout my passionate affair with Richard Harris, and wanted to make another movie together — but it was never to be.”
A dispute that year between the British actors’ union Equity and its American counterpart, SAG, stopped British actors landing Hollywood gigs temporarily and Suzanna returned to Britain with film offers in hand. She would never return to LA.
Her subsequent career included a mix of horror flicks and cheesy spy films, appearing in Hammer Horror standouts such as Lust For A Vampire, The Deadly Bees, and The Lost Continent and faded out in 1981 with the birth of her daughter Natalia.
From 1996, Suzanna became a regular at Graceland during the annual Elvis Week in August, where she would engage with fans and sell copies of her autobiography Paradise, Suzanna Style in the gift shop. She died in 2017 from liver cancer.