EVERY WOMAN WENT FLYING AT ELVIS — EXCEPT SHELLEY FABARES
The Shocking Reason Their Friendship Was So Different
When Elvis Presley walked onto a movie soundstage, something happened that Shelley Fabares never forgot.
People stopped.
Conversations suddenly disappeared. Eyes turned toward him. According to Shelley, Elvis didn’t even have to say anything. He could simply walk into a room, and his presence seemed to take over the entire place.
But Shelley noticed something else.
Almost every woman around Elvis appeared to be drawn toward him.
“Like radar.”
That was how she eventually described it.
Yet Shelley Fabares was different.
And decades later, she would reveal why.
By the time Shelley met Elvis, she wasn’t some unknown actress hoping the King would make her famous. She was already a major star in her own right. She had appeared on The Donna Reed Show, had her own devoted audience, and had even achieved a No. 1 hit with “Johnny Angel.”
She didn’t need Elvis to give her a career.
Perhaps that was exactly why their relationship became so unusual.
Shelley worked with Elvis in three different movies—Girl Happy, Spinout, and Clambake. And whenever interviewers brought up those films years later, Shelley knew exactly what questions were coming.
What was Elvis really like?
What was it like to kiss him?
And, inevitably:
Did you have a romance with Elvis?
Her answer was always the same.
No.
There was no secret affair. No hidden love story. No scandalous romance behind the cameras.
Instead, Shelley described something that she believed Elvis desperately needed but rarely received: a genuine friendship without romantic pressure.
She had married Lou Adler shortly before filming began, and she maintained that her relationship with Elvis never crossed that line.
“We just clicked,” she explained.
She liked him. She loved him. But she wasn’t trying to possess him.
And Shelley believed Elvis noticed that.
According to her, women around Elvis would often become fascinated with him almost instantly. His looks, fame, charm and extraordinary presence made him nearly impossible to ignore.
But Shelley didn’t “fly” toward him.
And that gave Elvis something unusual—a woman who could simply be his friend.
Shelley believed that this allowed him to relax around her in a way he couldn’t always do when flirtation and attraction were constantly surrounding him.
That may be the most surprising part of their story.
Because behind the glamorous image of Elvis Presley was a man who, according to Shelley, could simply enjoy being around someone without wondering what they wanted from him.
And their movie sets were often filled with laughter.
Shelley remembered Elvis as a genuine Southern gentleman—polite, funny, respectful and fond of practical jokes. The productions themselves could be chaotic and ridiculous, but she remembered making the films as incredibly fun.
She was also remarkably honest about those movies.
She knew they weren’t exactly cinematic masterpieces.
The stories were often repetitive. Elvis would frequently play characters such as a race-car driver or ski instructor, and the plots seemed designed around a familiar formula.
But Shelley didn’t care.
The making of the movies was the memorable part.
And one moment from Clambake became one of her favorite memories of Elvis.
During the final scene, Elvis’s character was supposed to prove his true identity by showing Shelley his driver’s license. Instead, Elvis secretly replaced the photograph in the wallet with a bizarre picture of an extremely old woman.
Shelley opened the wallet.
She saw the photograph.
And completely lost it.
Elvis was laughing.
Shelley was laughing.
A photographer captured the exact moment.
Decades later, that photograph remained one of her favorites of the two of them.
It wasn’t romantic.
It wasn’t glamorous.
It wasn’t carefully staged.
It was simply two friends laughing.
And perhaps that was precisely what made it so special.
Shelley continued to speak about Elvis with affection long after his death. She said she loved him, missed him and still ached over what happened to him.
She believed Elvis had become another victim of show business—a man surrounded by fame, attention and people, yet desperately needing something as simple as genuine human connection.
That is why her story remains so fascinating.
Everyone wanted something from Elvis Presley.
Women wanted his attention.
Fans wanted his autograph.
Hollywood wanted another hit movie.
The public wanted the King.
But Shelley Fabares believed she gave Elvis something different.
She gave him friendship.
No chasing.
No affair.
No secret romance.
Just two people who genuinely enjoyed each other’s company.
And perhaps that was the one thing Elvis rarely had.
Shelley’s story challenges the way we usually remember Elvis Presley. Behind the legendary performer, the sex symbol and the Hollywood icon was a man who could still laugh at a ridiculous photograph, joke around on a soundstage and appreciate someone who wasn’t trying to fall in love with him.
That may be why, after all these years, her memories of Elvis feel so different.
She didn’t remember the King.
She remembered the man.
And maybe that is the biggest shock of all.
Every woman seemed to go flying at Elvis.
Shelley Fabares didn’t.
And according to Shelley, that may have been exactly why Elvis trusted her—and why their unusual friendship lasted long after the cameras stopped rolling.
