BLUE HAWAII
– Blue Hawaii, Postcard production and… the beginning of the Presley formula-
(part 10)
Ticket sales officially began on Monday, March 13, 1961. The first tickets, priced at three, three and a half, five and ten dollars, were sold at the then-popular Sears Roebuck And Company chain in the Ala Moana Center shopping mall in Honolulu. At the same time, the local press also began reporting on the rapidly shrinking number of $100 VIP tickets and Parker’s new idea for increasing revenue from his famous client’s benefit concert. “Nearly one-third of the seats for Elvis Presley’s $100-a-ticket performance for the USS Arizona Memorial Found have already been sold in advance by the Bishop Trust Company ,” one local newspaper reported. “WTO’Heron, assistant vice president overseeing ticket sales, said that 114 tickets at $100 apiece had been ordered before the official opening. The first local order, from a local resident who wished to remain anonymous, was for six .”
Other sources reported that the entrance to the March concert was also paid for by… Elvis Presley and Colonel Parker. “If I had to pay to get on stage and sing, that’s a good enough reason for me, ” Presley briefly concluded.
In total, it is estimated that Colonel Parker ordered and distributed at least seventy-five tickets on the continent. At the same time, the media, citing the words of the famous singer’s manager, wrote that in order to achieve the set goal of fifty thousand dollars, it was necessary to sell “a minimum of three hundred and twenty-five tickets worth one hundred dollars”. That is, over two hundred more than originally planned.
Ultimately, within a matter of days, Presley’s Hawaii concert (which had been rescheduled to March 25 by Colonel Parker’s order) was completely sold out, and nearly every one of the four thousand seats * available in the Bloch Arena had been booked by fans eager to see their idol on stage (no one could have imagined at the time that this would be his last ‘live’ performance before a nearly seven-year hiatus ** ).
On March 25, 1961, Elvis arrived at the Los Angeles airport, where he flew on a Pan American Airways plane to Hawaii. In addition to several of his closest associates, including Charlie Hodge and Red West, he was accompanied on the trip by Jimmy Stewart (one of the most important and successful actors of the “golden age of Hollywood”) with his wife, and the American comedian and country singer, Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon. She is better known to the general public as Minnie Pearl, the character she created on stage for years.
” Last year, around this time, I had a really exciting time ,” Pearl recalled of flying to Hawaii in one of her stand-up shows. ” I flew to Hawaii with Elvis Presley. Elvis is a really good friend of mine. And of course, I’m a little too old for Elvis. I was about thirty years and forty pounds late for him (laughter). […] We flew to Hawaii to play a concert in Pearl Harbor (Minnie Peral was one of the stars of the evening, author’s note) .”
But before the plane with Presley on board had even lifted off the runway, in Honolulu, over four thousand kilometers away, real crowds of the famous singer’s fans had already begun to gather. Thousands of young people eager to give their idol the warmest welcome ever seen by any other entertainer of the time.
Additional police forces had to be sent to secure Elvis’ arrival. Eighty-seven officers were to take care of the safety of both Presley himself and the fans who greeted him. Of course, it goes without saying that Parker also made sure that the arrival of his protégé in Hawaii was appropriately publicized by the local media. For this reason, among the crowd of admirers were also journalists and reporters from the most important local dailies reporting on every, even the smallest, move of Elvis, as well as Ron Jacobs and Tom Moffat – two of the most popular radio presenters in the Islands. “There was also a concert in Pearl Harbor for the victims of the USS Arizona,” Moffat recalled in an interview. ” I was into it – myself and Ron Jacobs, very much involved. We met Colonel Parker the same day he surprised and impressed the Navy admirals here. We all went into his office at the Hawaiian Village Hotel, which was filled to the brim with paraphernalia from the latest Elvis movie. You could tell these guys (military, author’s note) came into the meeting doubting that it would raise any money for Pearl Harbor. But when they came out, they were all saluting the Colonel in unison .”
At a quarter past noon, after more than five hours of flying, Elvis Presley finally landed in Hawaii. By that time, three thousand enthusiastic fans were waiting for him at the airport, shouting and chanting his name with delight. “Presley, dressed in a black suit, tie and matching shoes, and a white shirt, smiled, but at the same time seemed a little intimidated by the commotion he had caused by appearing at the exit,” wrote one journalist. “’I’m a little nervous, but I’m glad to be here,’ he said into the microphone.”
A moment later, Presley disembarked the plane and… literally disappeared into a sea of ??his fans. Surrounded by police officers guarding him and members of the so-called Memphis Mafia, he walked along the airport tarmac, shaking hands, signing autographs and humbly accepting more traditional Hawaiian wreaths, which fans adoringly placed around his neck. “There are no words to describe the pandemonium ,” Minnie Pearl said in an interview. “I’ve never seen so many women in my life. They were screaming. They were yelling. I was just terrified. I thought – ‘they’re going to kill him!’ And they probably could have done it if they had only gotten out from behind the fence .”
After a dozen or so minutes of this incredibly warm and truly royal welcome, Elvis finally managed to get to his car, in which he went straight to the Hawaiian Village hotel under police escort. “It was an incredible experience ,” remembered one of the police officers providing Elvis with protection. “But personally, I wouldn’t want to be in Presley’s shoes… Not with all those kids yelling at me all the time .”
All the more so because no smaller crowds of the singer’s enthusiasts than those crowded at the airport also gathered outside the hotel. Several hundred young people lined up in front of the building entrance waiting for the star to appear. And as soon as Elvis appeared in their sight, the crowd immediately reacted with joyful cheering and loud shouts. Trying to draw the artist’s attention for a moment, the fans shouted at their idol – “Elvis! Elvis, look at me! “.
After spending several hours in his suite, Presley, dressed in a lilac shirt and blue blazer, clearly refreshed after his long hours of travel, went down to the Carousel Room on the hotel’s ground floor (part of the main lobby), which had been packed for several minutes with well over a hundred editors and reporters from nearly every high school in Hawaii, as well as members of the local press, all eagerly awaiting the start of the press conference scheduled for 3:30 (some sources say 3:45).
However, before the singer found himself in the crossfire of questions, both he and his manager were honored by Tucker Gratz – a navy captain and chairman of the Pacific War Commission – with commemorative plaques and certificates confirming the acquisition of the title of honorary member of the above foundation. Colonel Parker also received the title of Honorary Admiral of the US Navy.
Questions from the audience, interrupted by hundreds of flashbulbs, mostly concerned the upcoming concert (Elvis was due on stage in just a few hours), the new film, which was to start shooting in the UK the following day, and plans for the near future. ” Elvis said that between now and 1965, he has eleven more films planned .”
As Elvis calmly answered all the questions he was asked, the streets of Honolulu began to fill with traffic. Standing on the sidelines, it seemed as if everyone was headed in only one direction. To the Bloch Arena at 224 A Ave.
- In the concert reviews published in March 1961, journalists wrote about four thousand eight hundred participants of the show.
- After performing in Hawaii in March 1961, Elvis Presley completely suspended his concert activity in favor of appearing in Hollywood films. The next time he appeared in front of an audience was in June 1968, during the production of the television program “ELVIS”, which was broadcast in December of the same year on NBC.
Article written and provided by Mariusz Ogieglo, EP Promised Land (Poland) http://www.elvispromisedland.pl/
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