In 1969, Elvis Presley made his final acting role in a film called Change of Habit. His co-star was Mary Tyler Moore — already a household name in America from The Dick Van Dyke Show, and later the star of her own hugely successful sitcom. She was a genuine star in her own right, not somebody hired to stand next to him.
The film itself was not well received. What Moore remembered about it was him.
She wrote about the experience years later in her memoir After All, and her description is one of the most useful things anybody ever published about Elvis as a working actor. Because she wasn’t a fan, and she wasn’t starstruck. She was a professional assessing another professional.
Elvis Presley and Mary Tyler Moore
Her verdict: “He was in peak form during that time, careful about what he ate and exercising as if he enjoyed it.”
Then the part that matters. “He was a thorough professional: always prepared, and willing to spend extra time with the little girl in the piece, a seven-year-old, to make her feel comfortable.”
Read that again. On a film set, the biggest star present sets the tone. Elvis turned up on time, knew his lines, and spent his spare minutes putting a nervous child at ease. Other people who worked with him said the same thing for twenty years.
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But the detail everybody loves is the confession. When they finally had a quiet minute together, Elvis admitted something.
“He confessed right from the start that he’d had a crush on me since The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
And then Moore describes exactly how he did it, and it is the least rock-star thing imaginable. “He was so shy about it he was literally kicking at the dirt below him as he talked.”
She noticed one more thing. Although she was younger than him, he kept calling her ma’am. “Yes ma’am. Be right there, ma’am.” He had been famous for thirteen years by then, and he was still a polite boy from Mississippi.