Introduction
Why Ann-Margret Still Refuses To Watch This One Scene She Filmed With Elvis In 1964
Few Hollywood pairings of the 1960s generated the electricity of Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret. When the two met while preparing for Viva Las Vegas, released in 1964, they discovered an immediate creative connection. Their shared energy, love of music, and instinctive ability to move together made their performances unusually memorable. Turner Classic Movies notes that their chemistry extended beyond the screen, while Ann-Margret herself later described their connection as deeply personal.
The film was actually shot in 1963, from July into September, before its nationwide release on June 17, 1964. Ann-Margret played Rusty Martin opposite Elvis’s Lucky Jackson, and their musical numbers became some of the movie’s defining moments.
But there was another piece of their musical partnership that audiences did not see in the finished film. Elvis and Ann-Margret recorded “You’re the Boss,” a lively duet written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Although the performance was filmed, it was ultimately left out of Viva Las Vegas. The song later became one of the most intriguing surviving reminders of their collaboration.
Their relationship also became a subject of intense public fascination. Ann-Margret has spoken warmly about Elvis throughout the decades, but she has also made clear that some memories were intensely private. In a 2022 CBS interview, when asked about her fondest memory of Elvis, she became emotional and declined to discuss it, saying it was something shared between the two of them.
So while the claim that she refuses to watch one specific scene cannot be independently established, the real history is poignant enough: behind one of Elvis’s most celebrated screen partnerships was a personal connection Ann-Margret chose to keep partly private—and a filmed duet that disappeared from the movie audiences originally saw.