In the autumn of 1956, one of the most famous young actresses in America flew to Memphis to spend a week with the most famous young man in America. She had asked to meet him. She had been thrilled by their first dates. Then she walked into his family home, and two days later she was on the phone with her sister, saying a sentence that ended the whole romance: “Get me out of this, and fast.” Her name was Natalie Wood — and what drove her out had nothing to do with Elvis Presley at all.
She was 18 and already a serious star, fresh off Rebel Without a Cause. Elvis was 21 and had just conquered television. She was the one who made the first move, asking her Rebel Without a Cause co-star Dennis Hopper to introduce them. And their early dates in Los Angeles were exactly as extravagant as you would hope. When Elvis took her to the cinema, he bought out the entire theatre so they could watch alone. Her sister Lana Wood put it: “That’s not what she was used to.”
Natalie Wood & Elvis Presley
He was just as starstruck by her, which people forget. Natalie had been a child actress, and as author Ray Connolly points out, “She was in Miracle on 34th Street when he was a little boy.” So he did what any young man would do when he wants to impress a girl. He invited her home to meet his parents.
And she was not prepared for what she found. Natalie had been famous most of her life, but she had never seen fame like his. In her own words, it was “like a circus come to town the minute I got off the plane.” A crowd stood outside the house night and day. Somebody had set up a wagon selling hot dogs and ice cream to the people waiting. And when the two of them went out on Elvis’s Harley, an instant motorcade of fans fell in behind them.
Dating Disaster – Natalie Wood & Elvis Presley
The real problem, though, was inside the house. Gladys Presley took one look at the Hollywood actress and decided she did not approve. Gladys was convinced Natalie was a schemer who wanted her son for the publicity. And Natalie, according to Lana, was unsettled by something else entirely — the sheer intensity of the bond between mother and son.
Lana has described Gladys calling her grown son over with “come and sit on Mama’s lap,” and said that the constant affection between them bothered Natalie. This was not the swaggering rebel from the records. This was a young man completely wrapped up in his mother, in a house where his mother made every rule.
They were meant to stay nearly a week. Two days in, Natalie cracked. She rang Lana and said: “Gladys has wrecked everything. I don’t have a chance. Get me out of this, and fast.” The plan they came up with was simple — their mother would phone back claiming a family emergency, giving Natalie a polite reason to leave. It worked perfectly. She flew home and never went back.
Asked by a columnist not long after whether the romance was serious, she gave a beautifully non-committal answer: “Not right now. But who knows what will happen?” What she told her sister in private was rather less diplomatic. “God, it was awful. He can sing, but he can’t do much else.”