Elvis in Vegas : How the King of Rock 'n' Roll Reinvented the Las Vegas Show (9781501151217)

by Zoglin, Richard

  23 “His own resurrection,” said Rolling Stone: Elvis on opening night, July 31, 1969.

  24 At a midnight press conference after his opening, Elvis basked in the acclaim.

  25 For four weeks—two shows a night without a single night off—he played to sellout crowds in Las Vegas’ largest showroom.

  26 Twice a year the International Hotel—later the Hilton—was turned into an Elvis Presley fun zone.

  27 Colonel Parker (with Sammy Davis Jr. and Robert Goulet) was a constant presence, orchestrating his greatest carnival show ever.

  28 Elvis was still at the top of his game in 1970; after that, the white suits grew more garish and the shows more bombastic.

  29 Elvis appeared in 636 shows over seven years. But he never left the building, his legacy in Vegas kept alive by “Elvis tribute artists” forever.

  30 Elvis brought a broader, Middle America audience to Las Vegas, auguring a new era of splashy, family-oriented entertainment.

  31 And Elvis was the model for a new generation of pop stars signing on for Vegas “residencies,” from Céline Dion to (here in 2018) Lady Gaga.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  If you grew up in the Midwest during the 1960s, the summertime family car trip to California was an eagerly awaited coming-of-age ritual. My own family—two parents, four kids, and one Chevrolet station wagon—headed west from Kansas City in the summer of 1964. In between the Grand Canyon and Disneyland, we stopped for two nights in Las Vegas. We stayed at the Gold Key Motel—no fancy Strip resort for these frugal Midwest travelers—and saw two shows: Johnny Carson at the Sahara Hotel (his very first Vegas engagement) and the Kingston Trio (my sister’s favorite) at the Riviera. I remember few details about our stay, aside from going backstage to get Johnny’s autograph (I still have it, on an old Sahara Hotel postcard). But the impossibly glamorous atmosphere—the glittering showrooms, the cacophonous casinos that we were not allowed to enter, the neon fabulousness of the hotels lining the Strip—made a lasting impression on me. So I want to thank, first of all, my parents—who returned to Vegas many more times, usually without the kids—for giving me one indelible glimpse of Las Vegas in the golden age.

  It was Jonathan Karp, Simon & Schuster’s publisher, who came up with the idea, when I proposed a book about Las Vegas’ 1960s heyday, that I frame it around Elvis Presley’s big comeback show there in 1969. And it was my old friend Steve Dougherty who helped me realize what a great idea this was. Steve is a lover and chronicler of rock ’n’ roll of all kinds and eras, but he always loved Elvis best. I once asked why. Because, he said, when he first heard Elvis as a grade-schooler in the 1950s, the music made him happier than he ever felt in his life. Not a bad recommendation for any artist.

  In reconstructing Elvis’s great comeback show in Vegas, I am grateful to the people who shared their firsthand memories, including Ronnie Tutt, Bobby Morris, Sammy Shore, Terry Blackwood, as well as (via email) Jerry Scheff and (after much cajoling) James Burton. Jerry Schilling was especially generous with his time and insights into Elvis and his Vegas years. Peter Guralnick, whose definitive two-volume biography of Elvis was such an important resource for me, was gracious in counseling another writer just venturing into territory that he has so expertly plowed. David Beckwith, Kevin Kern, and Gary Hahn, of the Presley estate, were helpful when they could be—and honest when they couldn’t. And Jeroen Vanderschoot, of ElvisMatters Belgium, made sure I stuck to the rules.

  While Elvis’s life and career are well-trod ground, Vegas’ golden age of entertainment is, in many ways, almost virgin territory for a historian. There are few books or authoritative records to draw on, and a dwindling number of people with firsthand accounts of that era. I am grateful to Lisa Gioia-Acres, Lynn Zook, and Peggy King (widow of the late Vegas lounge singer Sonny King), who were so helpful at the outset in giving me ideas and connecting me with sources. Mike Weatherford, longtime observer of the Vegas entertainment scene for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was also helpful to a Vegas newbie, as were several other Vegas scholars and historians, among them Michael Green, Karan Feder, Deirdre Clemente, Larry Gragg, and Claytee White.

  I am indebted to all of the people quoted in the book who ransacked their memories of both Elvis and Vegas. But I owe particular thanks to Corinne Entratter Sidney, whose trust I won early on and who rewarded me with hours of memories, stories, and insights into the world of her late husband, former Sands Hotel chief Jack Entratter. Among the many others who were so welcoming to an outsider diving into the world of classic Vegas entertainment, I am especially grateful to Maria Pogee, Pat Gill, Vera Goulet, Marty Beck, Kathy McKee, Sonny Charles, Ruth Gillis, Claire Plummer, Jerry Jackson, and Nelson Sardelli. And also Shecky Greene, who gave me two of the most entertaining lunches I can remember.

  Su-Kim Chung was an invaluable guide through the Special Collections at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Crystal Van Dee helped me sort through the Mark Tan Collection at the Nevada State Museum. Kelli Luchs and Jim Rose at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority were a most accommodating resource for photos and video of Vegas’ golden age.

  Jeff Abraham, who always seems to know more about my book topics than I do, was his usual font of ideas, connections, and tidbits of information. Joanne Kaufman, Arthur Hochstein, Steve Koepp, Barbara Graustark, Richard Gurman, Harvey Myman, Steve Oney, Kathleen Brady, and Peter Newman were among the many friends and colleagues who followed my progress on the book and provided counsel, support, and in some cases specific help. And Kristiina Laakso was an enthusiastic cheerleader and sympathetic sounding board all the way through.

  My editor at Simon & Schuster, Priscilla Painton, was once again a dream to work with: encouraging but tough, and such a good friend that I knew our clashes would always end happily. Her assistant, Megan Hogan, and the rest of the Simon & Schuster team made the process as orderly and painless as possible. And my deepest thanks, as always, to my agent, Kris Dahl, who has been so supportive for so long, whose words are always comforting, and whose advice is never wrong.

  Finally, a remembrance of two people who couldn’t be around to see this book. Richard Corliss, my longtime colleague at Time magazine, was a great fan of both Elvis and Vegas, and I regret that he didn’t get a chance to read this book—or, even better, to write it. He was a passionate devotee of popular culture, who not only showed me what great critical writing is, but taught me to never be embarrassed about what you love.

  And, of course, my thoughts are always with my late wife, Charla Krupp. She has been gone for more years than I want to admit, and this is the first book I have written entirely without her input. But her great, generous, uplifting spirit continues to hearten and inspire me. I hope she would have liked this.

  More from the Author

  Hope

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  HOWARD SCHATZ

  RICHARD ZOGLIN is a longtime writer, editor, and critic for Time magazine. He is the author of Hope: Entertainer of the Century, Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America, and Elvis in Vegas. A native of Kansas City, Zoglin currently lives in New York City.

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  ALSO BY RICHARD ZOGLIN

  Hope: Entertainer of the Century

  Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America

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  LIVE FROM VEGAS

  A Selected List of Recordings

  ELVIS

  Elvis in Person
at the International Hotel (1969, RCA)

  Elvis Presley on Stage (1970, RCA)

  Elvis Aron Presley (four-disc box set, with excerpts from 1956 Vegas engagement and later performances, released 1980, RCA)

  Elvis: Live in Las Vegas (four-disc compilation, released 2015, RCA)

  Elvis: Viva Las Vegas (compilation, released 2007, Sony BMG Europe)

  Elvis: The Return to Vegas (recorded 1969, released 2014, Follow That Dream/Sony). This August 3 performance, the earliest known recording of Elvis’s ’69 Vegas show, is one of the several live Vegas recordings from Follow That Dream, Sony’s Elvis collectors label.

  Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970 documentary; special edition two-disc DVD, 2007, Warner Bros.)

  SINATRA AND THE RAT PACK

  The Rat Pack Live at the Sands (recorded 1963, released 2001, Capitol)

  Sinatra at the Sands (1966, Reprise)

  Sinatra: Vegas (four-disc compilation, released 2014, Reprise)

  Live at the Sands: Dean Martin (recorded 1964, released 2001, Bianco Records)

  Live from Las Vegas: Dean Martin (recorded 1967, released 2005, Capitol)

  Sammy Davis Jr./That’s All! (two-disc LP, 1966, Reprise)

  CLASSIC VEGAS

  Tony Bennett: Live at the Sahara (recorded 1964, released 2011, Columbia/Legacy)

  Nat King Cole at the Sands (1960, Capitol)

  Bobby Darin: Live from Las Vegas (recorded 1963, released 2005, Capitol)

  No Cover, No Minimum: Billy Eckstine (1960, Roulette, reissued 1992, Blue Note)

  Tom Jones Live in Las Vegas (1969, Decca, Parrot)

  Wayne Newton Live at the Frontier (1969 LP, MGM)

  Louis Prima and Keely Smith: Live from Las Vegas (released 2005, Capitol)

  Don Rickles: Hello, Dummy! (recorded 1968, released 1995, Warner Bros.)

  Nancy Wilson: Live from Las Vegas (released 2005, Capitol)

  NOTES

  Quotations, excerpts, and descriptions of performances are taken either from audio recordings or from reviews and contemporaneous accounts in Variety and other sources.

  ONE: VEGAS MEETS ELVIS

  In a town addicted to building: The history of the Last Frontier and New Frontier hotels is drawn mainly from Stefan Al, The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream (MIT Press, 2017), 18–22, 44, and Eugene Moehring, Resort City in the Sunbelt, 2nd ed. (University of Nevada Press, 2000), 46–47.

  “with sides running to such length”: Variety, April 20, 1955.

  Mario Lanza . . . was booked: Variety, April 7, 1955.

  “Seldom in the history”: Ralph Pearl, Las Vegas Is My Beat, rev. ed. (Citadel Press, 1978), 86.

  But first, Elvis played Vegas: The details of Elvis’s 1956 engagement at the New Frontier are taken primarily from Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (Back Bay Books, 1994), 270–75, and Paul Lichter, Elvis in Vegas (Overlook Duckworth, 2011), 13–34, as well as contemporaneous accounts as cited below.

  “No check is any good”: “The Man Who Sold Parsley,” Time, May 16, 1960.

  “easily the talking point of this show”: Variety, May 2, 1956.

  “What is all this yelling”: Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis, 271.

  “Elvis Presley, coming in on a wing”: Variety, May 2, 1956.

  “like a jug of corn liquor”: “Hillbilly on a Pedestal,” Newsweek, May 14, 1956.

  “For the first time in months”: Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis, 271.

  “They weren’t my kind”: Ibid.

  “He came out in a dirty”: Shecky Greene, interview with author.

  “The carnage was terrific”: Lichter, Elvis in Vegas, 17.

  “This cat, Presley”: Ibid., 24.

  “He recognized me”: Ibid., 32.

  One day he ran into Bing Crosby: Greene, interview with author.

  “Man, I really like Vegas”: Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis, 274.

  “supernatural, his own resurrection”: David Dalton, “Elvis Lights Up Las Vegas,” Rolling Stone, February 21, 1970.

  “Buddy Greco, if you’re hearing this”: Lezlie Anders (Greco’s widow), interview with author.

  “The town was so much fun”: Norm Johnson, interview with author.

  “You told ’em what you wanted”: Pete Barbutti, interview with author.

  “Vegas was kind of an adult”: Paul Anka, My Way: An Autobiography (St. Martin’s Press, 2013), 1–2.

  “It’s syrup city”: Ron Rosenbaum, “Do You Know Vegas?,” Esquire, August 1982.

  “yukking across the stage”: Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Vintage Books, 1971), 44.

  “his act was not working”: John Gregory Dunne, Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season (Random House, 1974), 43.

  “Dante did not write”: Nick Tosches, “The Holy City,” in Literary Las Vegas: The Best Writing about America’s Most Fabulous City, ed. Mike Tronnes (Henry Holt, 1995), xvi.

  “The biggest no-talent dork”: Richard Meltzer, “Who’ll Stop the Wayne?,” in Literary Las Vegas, 271.

  “You gotta do a lot of up things”: Vic Damone, interview with author.

  “There was no experimenting”: Dennis Klein, interview with author.

  “For many, Vegas Elvis”: Dylan Jones, Elvis Has Left the Building (Overlook Duckworth, 2014), 87.

  TWO: HOW VEGAS HAPPENED

  The Las Vegas Valley: In recounting the early history and development of Las Vegas, I have relied mainly on Moehring, Resort City; Al, Strip; Don Knepp, Las Vegas: The Entertainment Capital (Lane Publishing, 1987); Sally Denton and Roger Morris, The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America (Vintage Books, 2001); and Larry Gragg, Bright Light City: Las Vegas in Popular Culture (University Press of Kansas, 2013).

  “The town has been converted”: Mike Weatherford, Cult Vegas (Huntington Press, 2001), 3.

  “The third day all the stars”: Rose Marie, interview in The Real Las Vegas, History Channel documentary (A&E Networks, 1996).

  “The fun of Las Vegas”: Mel Tormé interview, Mark Tan Collection, Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas.

  “one of the greatest handshakers”: Pearl, Las Vegas Is My Beat, 93.

  “probably the turning point”: Richard English, “The Million Dollar Talent War,” Saturday Evening Post, October 24, 1953.

  “nobody gets killed in Vegas”: Susan Berman, Lady Las Vegas (TV Books, 1996), 79.

  In fact, Kefauver’s investigation: Denton and Morris, Money and the Power, 116.

  “a hunk of promotion”: Variety, December 24, 1952.

  “Jack Entratter is responsible”: Sands Hotel publicity material, Sands Collection, University Libraries Special Collections, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

  the Sahara had to be more creative: Stan Irwin interview in Mark Tan Collection, and Bill Miller profile in Las Vegas Review-Journal, February 7, 1999.

  “It’s worth any price”: Variety, February 24, 1954.

  She caused quite a stir: Steven Bach, Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 368–69.

  “Las Vegas, as now constituted”: Variety, February 11, 1953.

  Concerns about the escalating salaries: Variety, May 17, 1950, and November 19 and August 20, 1952.

  “Failure of the entertainment industry”: Variety, December 24, 1952.

  “We put him with a musical”: George Schlatter, interview with author.

  “The artistry of her delivery”: Joel Lobenthal, Tallulah!: The Life and Times of a Leading Lady (Aurum Press, 2005), 435.

  “Why do we do it?”: “Las Vegas: It Just Couldn’t Happen,” Time, November 23, 1953.

  He had urged Dietrich: Bach, Marlene Dietrich, 368.

  “This is a fabulous, extraordinary madhouse”: Noël Coward diaries, in Literary Las Vegas, 211.

  “Jake Kosloff wanted them to stop”: Schlatter, interview with author.

  “the Andrews Sisters doing”: “Natural Seven Muzak,” Time, August 11
, 1961.

  “Frank Ross stirred the pot”: Lorraine Hunt-Bono, interview with author.

  “Mary Kaye was incredible”: Pete Barbutti, interview with author.

  “You could shout out requests”: Weatherford, Cult Vegas, 46.

  “The lounges were freedom”: Ibid.

  The group was started: Description of the Treniers’ act in Weatherford, Cult Vegas, 56–60, and Skip Trenier and Sonny Charles, interviews with author.

  “It was like a three-ring circus”: Trenier, interview with author.

  “Everybody loved the Treniers”: Joe Darro, interview with author.

  Black entertainers like the Treniers: The account of the racial history of Las Vegas is drawn largely from Moehring, Resort City, 173–202, and Claytee D. White, interview with author.

  “The other acts could move around”: Sammy Davis Jr., Jane Boyar, and Burt Boyar, Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (Farrar and Rinehart, 1965), 123.

  “There was a color line”: Stan Irwin interview, Mark Tan Collection.

  When Harry Belafonte made his: Belafonte describes the incident in his memoir, My Song (Knopf, 2011), 105–9.

  The racial barriers were challenged: The Moulin Rouge’s short life is recounted in Janis L. McKay, Played Out on the Strip: The Rise and Fall of Las Vegas Casino Bands (University of Nevada Press, 2016), 35–36, as well as in Moehring, Resort City, 182–84.

  “We were the only ones”: Interview with Anna Bailey, Las Vegas Women’s Oral History Project, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 1997.

  Wardell Gray, the highly regarded: Variety, June 1, 1955.

  “tyranny of names”: Variety, January 8, 1958.