When she starred in Elvis Presley’s cinematic debut, Love Me Tender, Debra Paget was stunning and captivated millions.
Famous filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille said the gifted actress was “touched by the hand of God.”
The ‘King of Rock and Roll’ reportedly got enamored with her.
Denver-born Debra Page was born on August 19, 1933. Originally Dabralee Griffin, she changed her name to become a movie star.
In the 1930s, Debra’s showbiz parents relocated to Los Angeles to help create Hollywood’s film industry. (Debra’s sisters Tala Loring and Lisa Gaye had successful film and TV careers).
Debra, who longed to dance, calls herself a “post-depression” baby. She was born during a severe recession. Debra respected her parents despite their poverty.
“When I looked back, we had so much love in our home,” Debra said Dale Evans Rogers.
‘World’s most beautiful legs’
Debra attended Hollywood Professional School at 11 at her mother’s urging.
The bright eight-year-old never questioned herself, getting her first professional job. She then starred in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Her film career began at 14 and took off in 1950 with Broken Arrow. Debra Paget played Sonseeahray (“Morningstar”), a Native American maiden, with James Stewart.
Debra’s “exotic” appearance got her countless adventure drama roles, and she became known as the lone starlet who had never been kissed.
She was named “The most beautiful legs in the world” by the National Association of Hosiery Manufactures in the 1950s after polling 15,000 industry workers. The very religious Debra won big, according to The Baltimore Sun.
As a 14-year-old, Debra had signed an exclusive contract with 20th Century Fox. But it was when Paramount Pictures borrowed Debra for The Ten Commandments that she made her most successful movie.
Debra played Lilia, the water girl, in Cecil B. DeMille’s epic biblical film. Brown contact lenses gave Debra, a blue-eyed woman, much trouble.
Without the lenses, I wouldn’t have gotten the part. Work was miserable since the klieg lights heated them, she added.
The seven-Academy Award-winning film altered her life.
“It was probably the highlight of my career,” Debra added.
Elvis Presley and she met months before on the Milton Berle Show on June 5, 1956. Elvis’ pelvic gyration during Hound Dog startled conservative America.
“Although I usually don’t form an opinion of a person until I meet him,” she said. With mixed feelings, I anticipated my first Elvis Presley meeting. I had heard and read a lot about this new Tennessee singing star, and much of it was negative.”
Young vocalist shocked Debra in numerous ways at their first unforgettable meeting. Debra liked The King as a born-again Christian, despite appearances.
The 21-year-old rising star was introduced to Debra by Mr. Berle, who grabbed her hand and said, “I’m glad to meet you, Miss Paget.”
Elvis then shakes her mother’s hand with “equal vigor,” apologizes, and returns with a chair a few minutes later.
Debra Paget (Lilia) still alive, born 1933. #TheTenCommandments pic.twitter.com/OX4gSv07zt
— ross (@ross_rlz) April 21, 2019
“We only spent a few hours together, but you can learn more about a person in a short time than in weeks of constant contact. Thought I did. Elvis struck me as a kind, sincere, and accommodating young man from the start, Debra said.
The idea
Debra worked with Elvis in his first film, Love Me Tender, months later. The musician became obsessed with his co-star, Daily Express reported. He called Debra “the most beautiful girl he had ever seen” and visited her parents.
“From the time he first came to the house, my folks have considered Elvis a member of the Paget clan—a feeling which, I believe, he reciprocated,” Debra said.
The young actress believed Debra and Elvis’s relationship was more family-oriented than a whirlwind romance.
“I was shy, quiet, and immature for my age. I was in my early 20s but emotionally 16 years old. Elvis and I bonded like children.”
A 1956 ‘Love Me Tender’ still shows Elvis Presley kissing Debra Paget in Los Angeles. Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Elvis apparently believed otherwise.
After the screening, he proposed, but my parents disapproved. Debra said she cared about Elvis but didn’t disobey her parents.
Debra declined Elvis because she loved Howard Hughes, a millionaire film producer.
Debra married actor and singer David Street, but she always praised Elvis. Elvis didn’t forget Debra, either—many believe she inspired his obsession with the “Debra Paget look.” After discovering Debra, young Priscilla Beaulieu modified her hair and makeup.
After leaving the entertainment world in 1964, Debra is now 89. Debra lives a quiet life away of the spotlight, so nothing is known about her today.
Joan and Elvis Blackman
Elvis proposed to Debra in the late 1950s, but he wanted to marry other co-stars. After shooting Blue Hawaii with Joan Blackman in 1961, he intended to marry her while dating Priscilla.
Joan Blackman, who resembled Priscilla, revealed what transpired during Blue Hawaii’s filming.
When we first met in 1957, there was a magical spark in the air… “There was just that special something between us, sometimes so warm and wonderful you could almost touch it,” she told the Midnight Globe in 1977.
Joan Blackman revealed in the astonishing interview that Elvis “really wanted” her as his wife and urged her to act in his movies, but she always declined.
“I wanted parts because of my ability, not because I was dating Elvis,” she said.