Most people know Angela Lansbury as TV’s Jessica Fletcher, the mystery writer who solved cases on Sunday nights on CBS from 1984 to 1996. Others know her as the warm voice of Mrs. Potts in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” from 1991.
But long before either of those roles, she played Elvis Presley’s mother.
The movie was “Blue Hawaii,” and it turns 65 later this month. Paramount released it nationally on Nov 22, 1961. Much of it was filmed at the Coco Palms Resort on the island of Kauai.
Elvis played Chad Gates, a young man just home from the Army. Lansbury played his mother, Sarah Lee Gates, and she has big plans for her boy. She wants him to take over the family fruit company. Chad isn’t so sure.
Now for the funny part. Lansbury was born on Oct 16, 1925, and Elvis was born on Jan 8, 1935. So his movie mom was only about nine years older than him. She wasn’t even 36 yet.
Elvis really was fresh out of the Army, and Lansbury remembered it when she talked to Turner Classic Movies in 2013. “He was fit, he was slender and he was top of his form,” she said.
In this clip she talks about Elvis and the film, so you can hear the woman the whole world knows as Jessica Fletcher remember the King in her own voice.
Angela Lansbury looks back on Elvis and “Blue Hawaii”
She admitted she was starstruck. “Well obviously I was awed by being in the presence, but he was an awfully nice young man in those days,” she told TCM. “And he couldn’t have been nicer to me.”
She loved the island too. “We had a lovely time, it was a wonderful location. We were on Kauai in the Hawaiian islands,” she said. “I’ll never forget it, it was really wonderful.”
Sarah Lee Gates isn’t a cuddly movie mom, though. She never quite gets her son. A young star could easily have been touchy about a mother like that, especially one so close to his own age.
Before you read what Elvis thought, watch the two of them share the screen as mother and son.
Angela Lansbury and Elvis together in “Blue Hawaii”
Here’s how Lansbury described her part. “And she was such a funny character! Her whole reaction to her son who she didn’t understand at all,” she said.
And Elvis? “[Elvis] loved it, he thought it was terribly funny. He was very sweet.”
So the biggest star in the world got the joke and laughed right along with her.
There’s a little more, from one source only. Start TV quotes her saying, “Elvis was unfailingly polite.” She also reportedly said, “Between breaks, he would break bricks with his hand.” That was his karate.
The music did very well too. The soundtrack spent 20 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Pop LPs chart, the US album chart. It also gave fans “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and here’s the scene where he sings it in the film.
Elvis sings “Can’t Help Falling in Love” in “Blue Hawaii”
Lansbury passed away in 2022. When she talked about Elvis, she didn’t dwell on fame. She talked about a sweet young man who thought his movie mother was a riot.
If you watch “Blue Hawaii” again for its 65th birthday on Nov 22, keep an eye on Sarah Lee. The young man playing her son found her a lot funnier than Chad ever did.