Angela Lansbury, who died in 2022 aged 96, starred opposite Elvis Presley as his mother in 1961’s Blue Hawaii.
The film was one of Elvis Presley’s post-army movies of the early sixties and is on BBC 2 today along with more Elvis films and documentaries to mark the King’s 90th birthday next week.
The musical, which featured his hit song Can’t Help Falling in Love, saw Elvis play Chadwick Gates, who returned home to the Pacific US islands after serving in the armed forces.
Incredibly, Angela Lansbury played Chadwick’s mother, Sarah Lee Gates, despite being just nine years older than him.
In an unearthed interview, the late Dame shared her memories of working with Elvis on Blue Hawaii.
In the video below, the Hollywood star who received her first Oscar nomination in 1944, said: “Well obviously I was awed by being in the presence, but he was an awfully nice young man in those days. He always was a wonderfully nice young man, a very caring person. He had terrible problems of a very personal nature, but in those days he’d just come out of the army.”
Remembering Elvis being in better shape than he was in his later years, Lansbury said: “He was fit, he was slender and he was top of his form. And he couldn’t have been nicer to me. We had a lovely time, it was a wonderful location. We were on Kauai in the Hawaiian islands. I’ll never forget it, it was really wonderful.”
Asked if she spent much time hanging out on set with The King, Lansbury said: “Yes, we sat around and I had some wonderful scenes with the man who played my husband [Roland Winters] and the three of us together. And she was such a funny character! Her whole reaction to her son who she didn’t understand at all. [Elvis] loved it, he thought it was terribly funny. He was very sweet.”
Ahead of shooting Blue Hawaii in 1961, Elvis was flown out to the islands early to perform a benefit show. During the attack on Pearl Harbour 20 years previously, the USS Arizona battleship was sunk with 1177 losing their lives.
To this day the ship remains submerged with a memorial over the top that Elvis’ concert helped raise money for. The King’s ticket sales made $64,000 towards the project and the performance took place on March 25, 1961.