When Elvis Presley returned to the USA in 1960 after being in the army in Germany for a few years, he had a new love in his life. His fame on the other side of the planet meant he was more popular than ever with women, and during that time he met a number of young girls to spend time with. During this trip, he even met the woman he would eventually marry, Priscilla Presley (Beaulieu at the time), who was just 14-years-old. After touching down in the United States, he fell for yet another 14-year-old.
Elvis was in his 20s in 1960, and his fame was continuing to skyrocket. He was just about to star in another major blockbuster, GI Blues, and he was on the lookout for more young talented women to shoot alongside.
In 1961 he apparently walked into a Los Angeles club when he saw a photo of a young woman on the wall: Sandy Martindale.
The young starlet was just 14-years-old at the time, and Elvis apparently was “bowled over” by the photo of her.
Sandy spoke to Elvis.com.au in 2015 where she revealed, after seeing her photo, he tried to get her to go out with him.
Sandy said: “He called me to go out, but I had to tell him I had school the next day.”
The story goes that Sandy’s mother was insistent that she could not go on a date with Elvis because she not only had school the next day, but because she was just 14-years-old.
Elvis had an ace up his sleeve for this problem, however. He asked Sandy’s mother if he could take her for a date if she chaperoned them the entire time.
“The next night mom drove me to the club to meet him,” Sandy revealed, before noting she was not happy about how it all turned out. Sandy said: “My mother came with us on our first dates. I was so embarrassed I cried.”
Despite this, she added that it was an extremely enjoyable date for her – despite the fact Elvis turned up with another woman in the first place.
“Elvis had a date with a gorgeous actress that night and there I was,” she recalled. “With my little ponytail. He was 24. He held my hand, kissed me on the cheek and I was a goner.”
For the next six years, Sandy revealed, she maintained a relationship with the star “on and off”.
Elvis even got Sandy some roles in a few of his films, she revealed. As a dancer, she was often called up to join some of his more elaborate dance scenes.
“I danced in six of his movies because I was going [out] with him,” Sandy explained.
She even had the same dance teacher as Ann-Margret – the woman Elvis would go on to fall in love with just a few years later in 1963.
This meant she shared the screen with the Swedish-American star in the movie she worked on with Elvis, Viva Las Vegas.
Sandy said: “In Viva Las Vegas that’s me with Ann-Margret and Elvis dancing at the roulette table.”
Sandy and Elvis drifted apart in the late 1960s when he became infatuated with Ann-Margret. And shortly after that, he broke things off completely when he proposed to Priscilla on December 25, 1966.
Elvis and Priscilla were married five months later on May 1, 1967. Exactly nine months later, on February 1, 1968, their first and only child, Lisa Marie Presley, was born.
Sandy admitted she was “devastated” by the breakup, and last saw him backstage at one of his Las Vegas concerts in 1977. Later that year, he was found dead at his home, Graceland, on August 16, 1977.
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