The stunning actress celebrates her 73rd birthday tomorrow and remains as beautiful and vivacious as she was when she met Elvis fifty years ago. Cybill Shepherd had become an instant sensation after her breakthrough roles in 1971’s The Last Picture Show and then The Heartbreak Kid the following year. When The King heard she was visiting Memphis he requested a date, but the young actress may have only been 22 but she was already strong-willed and immediately made her own demand in return.
Shepherd said: “He asked me out through a mutual guy we knew and I said, ‘No, he said he’d call me himself!’ So then my best friend Jane picked up the phone and said, ‘Oh my God, it’s Elvis!’
“We arranged to meet at a big theater he would rent out through midnight. We were waiting for him forever. When he finally got there, everybody in the row to my right got up. In Memphis, he had kind of a Memphis mafia.”
The actress admitted: “At the time I thought he was too old for me – the Beatles were my music – but there was this chemistry between us… He smelled soapy, and sweet, like sugar and sweat. I felt a lot for him.”
Shepherd also revealed: “He liked girls to wear white underpants, you know what I mean,” something she refused to do.
The actress is referring to the King’s notorious fascination with the innocence of younger girls. Priscilla, after all was 14 years old when they first met.
Elvis also hated sleeping alone so the companionship was as important as the physical acts. He had shared a bed with his mother Gladys into his teenage years and her death on August 14, 1958 while he was doing his military service hung over him for the rest of his life. He was 23 at the time and 14 years later little had changed.
Memphis Mafia member Lamar Fike confimed: “His sexual appetite was very, very strong. The touching and the feeling and the patting and everything else meant more to Elvis than the actual act. I guess Elvis was the King of Foreplay.”
Asked by US host Andy Cohen if the sex with Elvis had been good, Shepherd replied: “Oh yes! Wonderful… Loving and caring.”
However, in another interview, the actress spilled the beans on what she had taught The King in bed.
She said: “We started dating and he’s a really wonderful, sexy, incredible guy.” And then she referred to a chapter in her autobiography, Cybill Disobedience, about Elvis which was titled, “White boys dont eat…”
Apparently, the star was reluctant to perform oral sex on her and she added: “I had to teach him how to do it. There are worse things to teach a man to do!”
Unfortunately, Elvis’ prescription drugs habit ended the relationship quickly.
Shepherd said: “I really liked him. I thought he was very warm. And one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen. As I spent more time with him, I realized he did have a drug dependency – and I’ve never been interested in drugs at all.”
The actress has described The King sometimes coming into the bedroom and passing out immediately or leaving drugs and emerald and diamond jewellery for her on the bedside table.
She told Cohen in 2019: “He said Here’s your drugs. I said, ‘Where are yours?’ He said, ‘I already took them.’ So I flushed them down the toilet and left the jewellery there. I kind of wish I’d taken it now…. I learned very early don’t let men give you something to drink or any pills of any kind.”
Their short-lived affair was over but Shepherd has never forgotten their time together: “I’ve been haunted by Elvis in the sense that when I knew him, he was very sweet but also seriously into drugs… Maybe I could have helped him?”
