Frank Sinatra blasted Elvis’ music as “cretinous and phony” but at the height of their rivalry, Old Blue Eyes was forced to have The King on his show when he was already sleeping with his fiancée – and Sinatra knew it

Frank Sinatra blasted Elvis’ music as “cretinous and phony” but at the height of their rivalry, Old Blue Eyes was forced to have The King on his show when he was already sleeping with his fiancée – and Sinatra knew it. Years later, he would desperately try to save Elvis’ life.

Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley were both idolised by millions of women – and both happily enjoyed numerous affairs throughout their careers (and marriages). But what happened when one was sleeping with the girlfriend of the other? Old Blue Eyes has an entire evening devoted to his career and his TV appearances tonight on BBC2. As well as his radio, record, movie and Rat Pack fame, he was a major TV personality, with his own light entertainment show in the late 1950s and early 1960s, just when Elvis was the biggest and hottest star in the world. On May 12, 1960, the crooner celebrated The King’s March 5 return from military service with a special edition of The Frank Sinatra Show.

Elvis fit it in between his busy filming schedule for new movie GI Blues. The two men were all smiles, playing up their rivalry, bantering and even performing medleys of each other’s songs – despite everything the host had said about his guest in the past, and everything that was going on behind the scenes.

During the show, Sinatra even had a go at dancing with Elvis, even though, just two years earlier, he had said of rock ‘n roll: “It is the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression it has been my displeasure to hear… It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phony and false.

“It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd—in plain fact, dirty—lyrics, and as I said before, it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth … this rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore.”

Behind the scenes, Elvis was having a passionate sexual affair with Juliet Prowse, even though he had just left future wife Priscilla Beaulieu behind in Germany and was still officially dating starlet Anita Wood in the US.

Actress and dancer Prowse had been with Sinatra since they met the previous year on the set of the musical Can-Can. The crooner was so instantly smitten that he had her guest on his national TV show as a backing singer. He would even sing some numbers directly to her.

However, in April 1960, Prowse started filming GI Blues with Elvis, playing nightclub dancer Lili. As so often happened, The King soon started an affair with his beautiful co-star.

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