The Mystery of the Missing Las Vegas Elvis Presley Shows
While a big win at an online baccarat table may be thrilling, online casinos offer a completely different experience to land casinos and nowhere is this more apparent than in Las Vegas. It is truly a city of dreams, with people flocking to the gambling Mecca with the hope of hitting a life-changing win while enjoying world-class amenities, food, and entertainment. However, there are also numerous false stories and beliefs surrounding Las Vegas, and one of the biggest Las Vegas myths relates to the King himself, Elvis Presley.
Elvis aficionados around the world will be familiar with the plaque positioned outside the Westgate Hotel. It reads:
“Elvis: “The King” of Las Vegas An Eight-Year Exclusive Run In the Las Vegas Hilton Showroom 837 Consecutive Sold-Out Performances Entertained Some 2.5 Million People… Enough to Fill the Rose Bowl 25 Times Over! Las Vegas’ All-Time Favorite, and Successful Performer.”
However, it turns out that the information is simply not true.
From 636 to 837
The plaque, together with a bronze statue of Elvis that was sculpted by Carl Romanelli, was unveiled on September 8 1978, by the owner of the Las Vegas Hilton at the time, Barron Hilton. It was almost a year after the singer’s death, and the unveiling was the highlight of a convention titled “Always Elvis”.
However, the number of performances on the plaque, 837, is actually 201 more than Elvis gave. Elvis was based at the venue from July 31, 1969, to December 12, 1976, and while he had time to give 837 performances, the evidence says otherwise.
It is possible that the misinformation on the plaque is an innocent mistake. However, there are a number of other possible explanations that are just as likely.
For instance, some people believe that Hilton, who bought the International from its owner Kirk Kerkorian just a year into Elvis’ eight-year residency, deliberately increased the number of performances by Elvis in order to cover up numerous fire code violations.
If Elvis really did play to 2.5 million people, as claimed on the plaque, it would have to mean that the concert hall contained far more people than its supposed capacity of 1,150. Even if Elvis had performed 837 times, that would have meant 2,986 people per concert. While this is still well over double the official capacity, it is far better than saying that he performed 636 shows with 3,930 people in attendance each time.
A Less than Honest Manager
Another popular theory is that the number of shows and the audience number were both exaggerated by Elvis’ manager, who was well known for being less than honest at times.
His manager, Col. Tom Parker, was secretly an illegal immigrant to the US from the Netherlands. Many believe that this is why he never allowed Elvis Presley to tour outside of America. Furthermore, he was also never a colonel in any military. Given his propensity to lie and exaggerate, he may well have assumed that he could inflate both the number of shows and the audience numbers without any ever bothering to check.
However, he was wrong in this assumption. When Westgate bought the property, it looked to capitalize on its connection to Elvis. Back in 2015, the venue opened “Graceland Presents Elvis: The Exhibition, the Show, the Experience”, offering guided tours and the chance to see what remains of Elvis’ penthouse on the thirtieth floor.
As it was a joint endeavor with Graceland and Elvis Presley Enterprises, Angie Marchese, the chief archivist at Graceland, decided to make sure that all of the information in the exhibit was correct, and she soon found that the number 837 just didn’t make any sense.
Marchese repeatedly went through the records of every Elvis Vegas performance at the International and Las Vegas Hilton and kept coming up with the number 636. The record has since been corrected, but the plaque remains with its misinformation. As such, it has become one of Las Vegas’ most enduring myths and one that looks likely to remain for some time to come.
