After 20 years Presley still tops
by Earl Wilson
Reno Evening Gazzette
Tuesday, April 8, 1975

NEW YORK - Elvis Presley has a five-bedroom, 6000 square foot suit that occupies the 30th floor of the Las Vegas Hilton hotel. The management supplies him a portable pool he can step out into and take a dip in privacy.

Privacy is his thing. The Pelvis is still tops 20 years after Jackie Gleason put him on TV on the Dorsey Brothers summer replacement show. I made the Beatlemaniacs ripping mad years ago predicting he'd be around longer than the Beatles. He and his manager Colonel Tom Parker make several million a year selling Elvis and his souvenirs. He just finished another of his two-shows-a-night engagements here playing to close to 2,000 customers a show. But the management doesn't see much of him afterward. He stays in that suite.

I got into his dressing room - quite an achievement. A fellow there with a bandaged hand was said to be a bodyguard named in a $6.3 million suit against Elvis in connection with a fight at a party at Stateline, Nev last year.

"Elvis wasn't feeling well tonight," one of his group said. You couldn't tell it. The girls screamed hysterically and tore those white Elvis scarves out of his hands Barron Hilton presented him a jeweled medallion and Elvis who calls people "Sir," thanked him ever so politely. Col. Parker, famous for his wheeling and dealing boasted, "You won't get off that cheap with me."

The consensus was that Elvis, who's 40. was singing very good and in good spirits though a little thick in the middle. "He's going to make it a campaign to get thin so he can look graceful when hound-dogging it with the guitar" a man said.

I inquired about the girls. The answer was, "The last one was former Miss Tennessee or maybe she was the one before last. They're here, they come and go "

Courtesy of Francesc Lopez