Biggest Day At City Auditorium
by Natalie Crozier
Mobile Press
June 3, 1975

It was a day that will belong remembered. "Biggest in the history of Mobile's Municipal Auditorium." declared manager W.C. "Buddy" Clewis, still dazed this morning from handling the massive 30,000 crowd that jammed the sprawling complex yesterday to hear pop king Elvis Presley and to watch two high school graduations.

Both Presley concerts drew capacity audiences of more 10,000.

"Never a dull moment," exulted assistant manager Gene Lambert as he supervised the cleanup of the tons of debriswhich he described as "the most i can remember."

It was also the auditorium's biggest financial success. Clewis said the city reaped $17,000 in rent and license fees from the $197,000 gross gate.

Clewis estimated Presley, who left Mobile this afternoon after spending the night at a Battleship Parkway motel, netted about $160,000 fom the huge gate.

He said the promoters spent $10,000 for auditorium guards and other support services and additional thousands on advertising.

Cleanup crews, which had less than an hour and a half between the Elvis shows, had just enough time to clear the auditorium foyer, hallways and lobby before the second crowd of over 10,000 came through the doors to hear and watch their idol.

There was no chance to even attempt picking up paper cups, papers, boxes, cigarettes and souvenir wrappings which littered the arena floors after the first concert, Lambert said.

"We'd have created bigger problems trying to clean that up." Lambert said. He said the first crowd began arriving for the 4:30 p.m. concert at 2:30, even thouseats were reserved and the doors were not scheduled to open until an hour later. "There were so many of them we had to open up at 3," Lambert said. He added the second crowd began milling into the arena on the heels of the first audience's departure.

All in all, there were no major problems, and everybody left happy. Lambert reported.

Today, however, cleanup crews were hard at work again, getting the arena in order for another night booked solid with events.

Davidson High School held a breakfast this morning in the west exhibit arena, and began rehearsing for tonight's graduation ceremonies immediately afterward. Once the rehearsal is over, the crews will begin clearing away the debris and rearranging seating for the 8 p.m. graduation. Alba High School is scheduled to hold its graduation ceremonies at 8 in the theater, and wrestling is set for 8:15 in the Expo Hall.

Traffic yesterday might have been impossible without the help of Mobile Police. Every available unit was on the scene to help speed up traffic flow to and from the auditorium and facilitate parking.

As for the crowd itself, once the people were in the arena, they were deafening in their screaming approval of the internationally famed pop idol.

"Elvis is 40," one female fan was heard to gush, "but he still packs 'em in, and I love 'im like I did 20 years ago".

Courtesy of REX's 1970s W.E.N.S.W #206-207