Pulaski Tickets & Tours

Graceland Is Taking Its Show on the Road to Las Vegas

Graceland has left the building.

February 05, 2015

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​The new operators of Elvis Presley’s estate and brand took their show on the road for the first time with a nine-month exhibition of Presley artifacts at London’s O2 arena that began in December.

Now Graceland, the longtime Presley home that opened to the public in Memphis in 1982, five years after the star's death, will establish a second permanent home in Las Vegas, where the singer had some of his greatest triumphs.

The plan will not be officially announced until later this month, but Joel Weinshanker, the managing partner of Graceland, said that the new Presley outpost — featuring an exhibition space and live performances — will be at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort and Casino on the site of the former International Hotel, where Presley played a record 58 consecutive sold-out shows in 1969. Presley would eventually play 837 performances in Las Vegas.

“We have everything from a 35-foot-high outdoor sign promoting Elvis’s show there to a Stutz car he had delivered to him when he first performed in Las Vegas in 1956,” Mr. Weinshanker said, adding that the live performances will be “Elvis-related but not Elvis impersonators.”

Las Vegas offers an opportunity to show off more of the million Graceland artifacts that often remain in storage, Mr. Weinshanker said, saying that the exhibit will not cannibalize audiences from Graceland but whet people’s appetites for a trip to Memphis.

“Once you give someone a taste of this they’ll want more,” he said.

Mr. Weinshanker, who is also founder of the National Entertainment Collectibles Association, partnered in late 2013 with the Authentic Brand Group, which bought 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises. Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, owns the rest as well as Graceland and its artifacts. Mr. Weinshanker oversees Graceland and live events, while Authentic Brand Group manages licensing and intellectual property.

There has been plenty going on at Graceland since Mr. Weinshanker and Authentic Brand Group took over. In August, they introduced an interactive iPad tour guide and the Graceland Archive, in which curators exhibit and discuss material not on permanent display.

Additionally, the Guest House, a 450-room hotel and conference center that is owned by Elvis Presley Enterprises, is scheduled to open in 2016 to replace the 128-room Heartbreak Hotel. It is Memphis’s largest new hotel since the Peabody Hotel was built in 1925 and features a 500-seat theater.

“The Heartbreak Hotel did not have enough rooms and was not comfortable enough for the 21st century,” Mr. Weinshanker said, adding that the city embraced the new hotel because Memphis often loses overflow Graceland hotel business to other towns in Tennessee and Mississippi. “We have firefighters and policemen wanting to hold conventions here and there is never enough room,” he said.

He promised that some of the “kitsch factor” would survive in the special Elvis suites, which will have things like televisions in the ceiling, the way Presley liked it.

One recent decision by Elvis Presley Enterprises has made some fans unhappy. It is planning to evict Presley’s two planes, the Lisa Marie and the Hound Dog II, from Graceland, inspiring a Save the Planes campaign on Facebook that alternates between pleading and vitriol. OKC Partnership, which owns the planes, has been trying to sell them for months.

Presley owned the planes only during his final two years and barely used the smaller Hound Dog; he spent more time aboard the Lisa Marie, which he customized with gold bathroom fixtures, four TVs and a stereo with 52 speakers. His father, Vernon, later sold both, but after Graceland opened to the public, a leasing deal led to their display. Mr. Weinshanker said only half of Graceland guests visited the planes; as the only items Graceland does not own, improving the exhibit was difficult, he said.

Elvis Presley Enterprises sent a letter last April telling OKC that a new Graceland Archive would replace the airplanes on the premium ticket package and asking the company to “make arrangements for the removal of the airplanes and the restoration of the site.”

OKC previously tried unsuccessfully to sell the planes through an aviation website and Ebay. Now Julien’s Auctions, a well-known seller of entertainment memorabilia, has put them back on the block, with a silent bidding auction that was scheduled to conclude on Feb. 2. Darren Julien, president and chief executive of Julien's Auctions, said he could not disclose the reserve but said that "the planes are priced to sell."

“Whoever buys these planes is buying an instant museum or attraction. People will travel all over the world to see them wherever they are located,” he said. Stefaan Demarest of Belgium, one of Save the Planes’ leading voices, said that there is only one suitable location. “Graceland wouldn’t be the same without the planes,” he wrote in an email. Presley, he said, “always called the ‘Lisa Marie’ his ‘Flying Graceland.’ ’’ and added that “When one visits the planes, you step into Elvis’ world. Removing them would be destroying a part of his world that we love.”

Mr. Weinshanker said that the space would be part of a new exhibit area “that is completely indoors and climate controlled so when it’s 20 degrees or 90 degrees out you can have a comfortable experience.” Although details are not settled, construction is scheduled to begin late this year.

Still, depending on the outcome of the auction, Mr. Weinshanker said, he is willing to negotiate new terms to keep the planes. “We are open to everything,” he said. “If there is an opportunity to keep them then we would.”