NEED TO KNOW
- The new documentary Tura! alleges that Tura Satana and Elvis Presley had a hot love affair after meeting in the early days of their careers
- “They were friends until he died. And she was very upset about his drug use,” Satana’s longtime manager Siouxzan Perry says
- The late Satana claimed that Presley proposed to her at a Chicago park
Tura Satana may have been Elvis Presley’s “the one that got away.”
The famed showgirl and the King of Rock and Roll allegedly had a hot romance after meeting in the early days of their careers. The new documentary Tura!, narrated by Margaret Cho, dives into their relationship based on accounts from close friends and colleagues.
Pamela Des Barres, who spoke to Satana about her relationship with Presley for her 2008 book Let’s Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies, says in the documentary that she first learned of their closeness while at a party.
She recalls walking into the party and seeing her ex-husband, actor and singer Michael Des Barres, speaking with Satana. “I saw him talking to Tura, and I was like, ‘Oh!’ And I didn’t even know at this point that she had slept with Elvis,” she says.
Pamela instantly felt inclined to talk to the Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! actress. A bunch of women were already discussing the famous guys they’d slept with.
“I said, ‘Oh, I’ve got to get into this. I’ve got to listen.’ So I popped out a few names — Mick Jagger or whatever,” she says, adding that Satana then mentioned that she had once slept with Frank Sinatra.
“She threw that name out there, and I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ Finally, when she threw out the name Elvis, everybody became silent. There was a competition, really. Trying to one up each other with who they’ve slept with. That was that. The competition was over: She slept with Elvis,” Pamela remembers.
She goes on to reveal that Satana and Presley met “when he was a nobody,” just “walking down the beach.” During the fateful encounter, she says, Satana “didn’t even know who he was at that point.”
But, as Cho recounts in Satana’s own words, the two didn’t really hit it off until he was brought backstage at a club where she was a dancer.
“I could’ve fallen through the floor. It was the man I’d met on the beach,” Satana says in archival material.
Satana claimed that Presley told her, “I really enjoyed your show. Some of those moves, the shimmy, the high kicks. Would you show those to me?” She flirted back, saying, “From what I understand, you can do the shimmy already, at least with one leg. Are you trying to turn on every girl in the audience?”
To that, Presley allegedly said, “Well no, ma’am. I want to learn them in case I’m ever lucky enough to get close to you.”
Their relationship continued from there, and Satana said that the next time he visited her show, she “could feel the exact moment he walked into the theater.”
“I did the best show of my life, knowing he was there,” she said.
In footage from an old interview, Satana recalls Presley proposing to her while they were sitting in a Chicago park. “He got down on one knee and said, ‘Will you please marry me?’ I said, ‘I’ll think about it,’ ” she says in the clip,
Satana’s longtime manager Siouxzan Perry, also the CEO of Tura Satana Productions, alleges that Satana “never would’ve married him.” However, she notes that the two “had a wonderful friendship.”
“They were friends until he died,” she adds. “She was very upset about his drug use. He would call her and ask for advice. He could talk to her like a real person, and she was never infatuated by him.”
The documentary also claims that Presley gave Satana a large diamond ring, which she wore throughout her life. Perry now owns the ring and says she still wears it in honor of Satana.
Presley died at his Graceland home in Memphis, Tenn., on Aug. 16, 1977, at age 42. Satana, meanwhile, married twice before dying on Feb. 4, 2011, at age 72. She had two kids, Jade and Lani.
Speaking in the documentary, Lani recalls meeting Presley at a young age: “I knew he and Mom had dated at one time. I remember Elvis sitting there and saying to me, when I was a little girl, ‘You were supposed to be my little girl.”
Presley and Sinatra weren’t Satana’s only celebrity flings. For years, Lani believed jazz crooner Tony Bennett was her biological father because “that’s what my mother told me.”
However, in the documentary, she explains that she got a DNA test done and it did not indicate any Italian ancestry. Instead, it was revealed her father was comedian Marty Allen, who opened on stage for Bennett.
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Tura!, directed by Cody Jarrett, is a sweeping look at Satana’s personal and professional life in her many roles as a dancer, actress, mother and feminist icon. It also addresses her difficult upbringing, during which she experienced racism and rape.
Jarrett also produced the movie, alongside Perry, Cho and others. John Waters, Dita Von Teese, Kitten Natividad and Peaches Christ are among those interviewed who share stories about Satana.
Tickets are now available to see Tura! at the Lumiere Theater in Los Angeles.
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