THE KING AND I
GC WOMAN TELLS
AS a 10-year-old growing up in Hollywood, Donna Shelton told her mum she loved Elvis Presley and one day would plant a kiss on him.
Seven years later – in 1963 – it happened, with a starry-eyed Donna not only locking lips with the rock’n’roll king but pashing him on the thick shag pile carpet beneath Presley’s famous white baby grand piano.
It could have been a love-metender moment and Donna, more than half a century later, still rates Presley as the best kisser on the planet.
But instead of the earth moving for Donna that night in Presley’s mansion in LA’s ritzy suburb of Bel Air, she was turning blue, unable to breathe.
“I was coming down with a cold,’’ the Robina woman revealed this week, roaring with laughter at the memory.
“I was so embarrassed because he was kissing and I couldn’t breathe.’’
With all the hype now about Australian director Baz Luhrmann’s plans to use the Gold Coast to shoot a movie about Elvis’s life, LA-born Donna is surprised but enthusiastic about the plan.
Back in 1963, aged 17, Donna and her two sisters, Billie and Lana, made up a girl group known as The Drake Sisters. Managed by their mum Marcia Day, who looked after big-name acts including Maureen McGovern and Seals and Crofts, the
girls had been performing successfully around the casinos in Las Vegas and had released a single that “went nowhere, just fizzled’’, says Donna.
The girls were used to meeting famous people in the entertainment business, but Elvis Presley? For a teenage girl, that was the ultimate dream and Donna had been smitten since seeing him in his early movies, which included Love Me Tender.
Big sister Lana was going out with Elvis’s cousin, Sonny, who was part of the King’s security team. Lana told him about Donna’s childhood infatuation and asked if he could arrange for her to meet her idol. Sonny delivered and both girls were invited.
They arrived about 8pm and while Lana, who was 18 months older than her little sister, and Sonny joined others in the games room at the mansion and played pool, Donna was taken to what could only be described as the King’s throne room where Presley, maybe feeling lonesome that night, waved her over to sit on the sofa.
There were only a few people there when Donna arrived, but gradually pretty young women drifted into the room and sat in two rows of chairs along the walls, with the focus on the white sofa where Presley sat. He led the conversation, enjoying the attention and laughter as his audience hung on every word.
The only other males in the room were his security, who would rush over with a lighter whenever Presley decided to smoke. There was no alcohol. The King was sipping orange juice. A TV was on in the corner.
“I went to the house thinking I was just going to get to meet him, and it ended up like a blind date,’’ Donna says.
“When I say a blind date, you didn’t ‘date’ Elvis Presley, because he was never seen in public. He would never go to a restaurant or to a movie. He would have parties and get-togethers at his house all the time.
“When I first got there, there weren’t a lot of people.
“I met Elvis, he was very sweet, he told me to come and sit next to him so I sat next to him and we chatted.’’
Presley was much older than her. “I was 17, he (probably) thought I was 19, everybody thought I was 19.
“I’m sitting there with Elvis and I don’t know what I am. Am I his date? I had no idea.
“I’m just sitting there thinking all right, I’m here. I was thankful to be there. I couldn’t quite believe that I was.
“After a while it kind of thinned out and everybody left, except Elvis and I were there.’’
The Harcourts Coastal Robina sales agent shakes her head and starts laughing as she recalls what happened next.
“I was sitting there and had my feet up on the sofa and he started rubbing my feet. These are things you don’t forget,’’ she says.
“I had my legs over his lap and he was rubbing my feet as he was talking. I’m thinking I can’t believe this!’’
Then – and to this day she still doesn’t know how it happened, other than Presley initiated it – the pair ended up on the plush carpet under the piano. As Donna says, back then the length of the shag pile reflected how rich you were.
“It was so surreal. It’s like I couldn’t grasp or comprehend it at the time, which I wish I could have because I could have really enjoyed the moment, because I was in such shock, feeling like I was in a dream,’’ she says.
“What was also so uncomfortable for me, under the baby grand piano kissing Elvis Presley, was I was coming down with a cold.
“I kept saying I can’t breathe. “I remember he laughed.’’ Presley didn’t try anything othe than to kiss her.
And to talk, for hours as it turne out.
About what? “Religion,’’ says Donna.
“He did not say he belonged t any particular religion. He did tal about his mother. He definitely talk ed about having faith, and God. H didn’t talk about Jesus. It was mainl that he believed in God.
“He definitely was seeking searching for answers.
“We talked about music, abou movies. He wasn’t happy with hi movies, I remember. He wanted t be more serious.
“In fact he was making a movie a the time, Roustabout I think. He’ had to have a couple of stitches i his eyebrow.
“He was in a fight scene and h actually ended up getting hurt, s they had to delay shooting until hi eye healed. He had a little bandage.
As the conversation weave backwards and forwards about Pres ley’s quest for the meaning of lif his movies and his mum, there wa one topic he did not explore.
“It’s funny, he didn’t really as me anything about me,’’ Donn says, laughing once more.
“I don’t even know if he knew m name, to be honest. No, I’m sure h did. But he was very, very sweet.’’
Despite this, there were no pr vate concerts. Presley did not try t sing to Donna, and did not ask her t sing for him.
Later, as Donna left the mansio with Lana, Presley handed he some cold tablets and in his dee velvet voice said: “Take thes
Elvis looked at me and he made this gesture like ‘Sorry, you’re late’
they’ll make you feel better.’’
Whether the King then succumbed to Donna’s cold is not clear. What is known is that he liked her enough to invite her back – via Sonny – the next night.
But Donna arrived too late to score the coveted righthand seat again in the room where the King held court.
This time 20 or so pretty girls were already lined up.
“When I went in, there was a girl sitting next to him where I had sat the night before.
“Elvis looked at me and he made this gesture like ‘Sorry, you’re a bit late’.
“I wasn’t embarrassed, but I thought to myself ‘Aha, I get it now, I get it’.
“More than likely most of these girls, at one point, had been in that spot. To me, it was like there’s no way I’m ever going to be one of those girls.’’
The Elvis connection became something of a family tradition.
Before Donna’s invitation to meet Elvis, her future husband – Los Angeles session guitarist Louie Shelton – had already met the King when Presley, still a rising rock’n’roll heart-throb, performed at 13-year-old Louie’s junior high school in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Presley’s first record, That’s Alright
Mama, had just been released.
In the years that followed, Louie Shelton’s guitar career went from humble beginnings to much bigger things. He and Donna met when the girls and Louie’s band were combined in a group called The Dawnbreakers. A few years later Shelton had become part of The Wrecking Crew, the session musos used for thousands of studio recordings in the 1960s and ’70s.
He backed The Jackson Five, The Monkees, John Lennon, Lionel Richie and a long list of others, and is still performing and producing his own albums from a small studio at Robina.
Back in their teens, Louie’s big sister, Glenda, ended up going out with Presley for about a year. Years after that, Presley asked Louie to give up his growing career as a session muso to join his band for a six-week gig in Las Vegas, but Shelton said no.
Donna believes Luhrmann’s Presley movie is a great idea.
“I think they should have a big part for me,’’ she says, and breaks into laughter again. “Elvis is an icon and he will be that way forever.
“I was lucky because I got to be with him, talk to him before he got messed up.’’
She found him to be a gentleman, even though he decided to give his famous lips a workout that night.
“In fact he never came close to trying anything,’’ she says.
“From what I understood later, he wasn’t a real super-sexual person anyway.
“He’d probably kiss and be romantic with women, but I don’t think he took many of them to bed.
“He was being a gentleman, 100 per cent – except kissing.
“He was absolutely without a doubt the best kisser on the planet. And my husband knows and he doesn’t care.’’