‘Don’t You Go Winnin’ Elvis No Oscars’

Las Vegas — The morning of the day Elvis Presley opened his third month-long appearance at the International Hotel, his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was supervising the decoration of the building’s entrance, watching half a dozen men climb ladders and hang hundreds of little colored flags on strings. The flags said it was an “Elvis Festival” and they gave the entrance to the huge hotel the look of a used car lot.

Inside, on the carpeted steps leading to the casino dripping crystal stood a pretty blonde hawking Elvis Presley photographs ($1) and picture books ($1.50) and beyond her every dealer and pit boss was wearing an Elvis Presley scarf ($3.50, available at the hotel’s gift shops) and a white styrofoam skimmer with a colorful band that once again proclaimed the month an “Elvis Summer Festival.”

Elsewhere in the hotel — in the six restaurants, by the bay-sized pool (largest man-made body of water in Nevada, aside from Lake Mead), in the half-dozen bars, in the youth (baby-sitting) hostel — were pasted posters and autographed pictures and scarves and banners and flags. Outside the 2,000-seat Showroom Internationale the hotel’s professional decorator was stapling this stuff to everything that wasn’t moving.

At the reservation desk there was a line 30 feet long and an attractive redhead was telling the day’s 300th caller (her estimate) that no, there wasn’t any room in the inn — every one of the hotel’s 1,519 rooms was full. (Herb Alpert was told he could bunk in with Lou Adler or go somewhere else.) The showroom itself was reported sold out two shows a night, seven nights a week for more than half the engagement, unprecedented on opening day.

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Why? Nick Naff, the short, dapper hotel publicist, says, “Elvis changes the entire metabolism of the hotel. And he is singularly significant in one regard: there is constant occupancy. Tom Jones, they fly in, see the show, fly out again. Elvis has such a following, so many fans, for him they fly in, check in and stay the month.”

The fans . . . the incredible Elvis fans, who make it clear once and for all that the word’s origin is in “fanatical.” Bob and Nancy were here to get married in a chapel near the hotel. Sue and Cricket were here, too, but wherever Elvis is, they are — literally, most hours of every day, 365 days each year — so that was expected. The girl from Chicago, the one who’d bitten Elvis on the neck in February, was back. On the elevators were dozens more, trying to get past the guards on the 30th floor, where Elvis was staying in the incredibly luxurious Crown Suite. While still more wandered aimlessly through the casino, wearing I LIKE ELVIS buttons, seeking a familiar face – a fan from England or Australia met here the last time Elvis was in Las Vegas; one of Elvis’ hired hands; or, prize of prizes, Elvis’ dad Vernon, who likes to play the slot machines, or Colonel Tom, whose favorite game is roulette.

Giving the scene a final, bizarre touch was a 40-man camera crew from MGM, here to make a feature-length documentary for national distribution in time for the Thanksgiving school holidays. So regularly were they in the casino — interviewing the bell captains, the dealers, the maitre d’, the bartenders, the change girls, the chefs, the fans — the gamblers paid them no mind, even if they were hauling and shoving huge Panavision cameras between the rows of slot machines.

“What’s all that?” said a woman with pendulous breasts, dressed in a halter and Bermuda shorts.

“They’re makin’ a TV about Elvis,” said her husband.

“Oh,” said the woman. “Gimme another five, will ya, hon? I wanna play the quarter machines.”

* * *

It had begun a week earlier, as Eddy Arnold approached his final week in the showroom. It was then the film crew arrived with the Colonel and some of his staff, followed by Elvis and his “Memphis Mafia” and the five-man backup band. Each day thereafter you heard the name Elvis more and more.

Already the filming had begun, back in Los Angeles, as Elvis started rehearsals with his band and the documentary’s Oscar-winning director, Denis Sanders, visited some of southern California’s top Elvis fans.

“What we’re trying to do,” said Denis, once arriving in Vegas, “is capture Elvis the entertainer, from the point of view of the fans, the hotel, the city, the audience.”

He explained that about half the film — 50 minutes to an hour — would be edited from Elvis’ first five performances in the showroom, the rest would be in scene and interview. Scenes like Bob and Nancy Neal’s wedding — in three takes, incidentally — and interviews like those with members of the Hair cast.

(Those filmed with the cast appearing at the hotel’s theater were deemed too “far-out” for inclusion in the film: they began with someone mentioning one of Elvis’ MGM films, Harum Scarum, and saying what a horror it was, building to where a black actor improvised a scene, playing Elvis as an illiterate learning how to talk.)