Q: Did Elvis bomb in Las Vegas?
A: Kind of. When we think of Elvis Presley and Las Vegas in the same sentence, three things come to mind. One, “Viva Las Vegas,” the 1964 film co-starring Ann-Margret and featuring what remains the iconic Las Vegas song. Two, Elvis’s wedding to Priscilla Beaulieu at the Aladdin Hotel in 1967. Three, Elvis’s 837 consecutive sold-out shows at The International and the Las Vegas Hilton from 1969 until his death in 1977, with the rhinestone suits and long sideburns.
But an earlier incarnation of Elvis performed in Las Vegas, and it didn’t go quite so well as his run on Paradise Road. In April 1956, Presley began a two-week stint on a bill at the New Frontier. He didn’t exactly drive people away, but the response to him was underwhelming. The hotel billed him as “The Atomic Powered Singer,” a sop to the above-ground tests northwest of town whose mushroom clouds served as a tourist attraction. He appeared along with Shecky Greene, the legendary comic who is still performing occasionally in town, and Freddy Martin’s big band, whose biggest hit had been “I’ve Got a Loverly Bunch of Coconuts” for one of Martin’s earlier singers, Merv Griffin.
The audience pretty much yawned at Elvis when it wasn’t shocked by him. After all, he was 21, and his ideal audience wasn’t a Las Vegas showroom audience, which tended toward the age of the parents of the usual Elvis fans. While Martin’s band played its version of rock music to introduce Presley, it wasn’t quite right. Presley did do well in a special afternoon fundraiser, which teens overran. He also enjoyed clowning with Liberace, who was caught on camera playing the guitar while Elvis tried a few licks at the piano, and liked Las Vegas enough to make it a regular vacation spot for himself. But Elvis’s true success in Las Vegas would come later when, as J. Kell Houssels, Jr., a longtime casino operator here, put it, “He and his audience grew up.”