Rita Moreno reveals how someone else’s lingerie in Marlon Brando’s home led to Elvis Presley date

Rita Moreno agreed to go on a date Elvis Presley after finding another woman's lingerie in Marlon Brando's home. Photo / AP

Rita Moreno agreed to date Elvis Presley after finding another woman’s lingerie in Marlon Brando’s home.

The 92-year-old actress was “crushed” to discover Brando wasn’t being faithful during their romance, and the incident led to her meeting the King of Rock and Roll.

Speaking to People en Español magazine, she recalled: “Elvis Presley is another whole story. I was going with Marlon [Brando] at the time. He wasn’t necessarily going with me, but I was going with him. You know what I mean?

“I found one day some lady’s lingerie in his house and I went home weeping and crying and so hurt and furious and I thought, ‘I never want to see him again’.

“But I knew I didn’t mean that. I was really just absolutely crushed. Not only crushed but I was his slave. I just adored and worshiped him is more like it.”

The West Side Story icon - who played Anita in the original 1961 adaptation of the legendary musical - received a call the next day from Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

Doing an impression of the Colonel, she remembered him saying: “Turns out Elvis saw you with the commissary of the 20th Century Fox.

“He liked what he saw and he would like very much to meet you. Would you like to meet him?”

Speaking as herself, she added: “I saw the underwear and I said yes.”

Moreno - who first met Brando when she was 22 on the set of Désirée - previously described Elvis as “sweet but boring”.

Recalling the moment Brando found out about her romance with the Suspicious Minds singer, she told The View: “He started to throw chairs. He was so angry. It was wonderful. And I just sat there as he threw chairs and carried on.”

And she previously described the late actor as the “lust of her life”.

She told People back in 2017: “Why that picture of Marlon Brando [in my bedroom]? Because he was a big love of mine in my life.

“This one, it almost seems like a vignette out of a movie, so that’s why it’s there. He was the lust of my life and that over there [with her husband] is the love of my life.”