Of all the top leading ladies of the sixties Elvis never appeared in a film with Annette Funicello of The Mickey Mouse Club and Beach Party film fame. Though they knew the same friends, such as other sixties leading ladies, Shelley Fabares and Debra Walley, Annette was not known to have ever associated with Elvis.

Oddly enough, the two mega movie stars and songsters of the sixties decade had two managers who could have been partly responsible for their client's unusual and obvious avoidance of one another.

Both stars were religious. Both were the most popular of their time. However, both were overshadowed by two very domineering and overbearing "father" images, Col. Tom Parker and Walt Disney. Add to this Annette's marriage in 1965 and her low-key private life. Annette was still an old-fashioned girl at heart.

While the Colonel saw to it that Elvis did not overextend himself either publicly or socially, Walt Disney contractually forbid Annette to appear in Beach Party movies showing her naval! Annette, herself, would not wear bikinis in public. Both the Colonel and Disney set strict limitations on their clients regarding whom they socialized with, whom they dated, what type of films they could appear in, when and where they could appear, and so on.

It seems highly unusual that Elvis and Annette would never have met one another or shared some brief conversation. The closest they may have gotten to appearing together was thought to have been in tabloids or magazines such as the one at left. However, The Kin of Rock and Roll has recently learned that there was almost a chance meeting!




According to the first newsreporter to every interview Elvis, May Mann, she attempted to bring Elvis and Annette together!! The story goes that Elvis confided to Mann about marriage to a girl as "sweet and beautiful" as his mama, one who would have to be a true love. Mann thought immediately of her friend, Annette Funicello, twenty years old at the time, single, and very sweet. When Mann mentioned a meeting between the two to Annette, "her big eyes lighted with a real thrill at the thought." She then mentioned it to Elvis who contemplated the meeting, and was even impressed by Annette's sweet and innocent charm. However, it was Elvis who declined to meet with Annette for, apparently, while he had marriage on his mind, two other gals played tug-o-war with his heart: Ann-Margret in Hollywood, and Priscilla Beaulieu recently graduated and temporarily in California to visit with her parents.1 Priscilla otherwise lived at Graceland® and the stage was already set for her to inherit the king's castle.


1-source: "The Private Elvis," by May Mann, publ. Pocket Books, 1977, p. 181