Elvis in Concert
| Elvis in Concert | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Annett Wolf |
| Directed by | Dwight Hemion |
| Starring | Elvis Presley |
| Music by |
Joe Guercio Felton Jarvis |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) |
Dwight Hemion Gary Smith Rita Scott (associate producer) Bernard Sofronski (supervising producer) |
| Editor(s) | Andy Zall |
| Running time | 50 minutes |
| Distributor | CBS Television |
| Release | |
| Original release | October 3, 1977 |
Elvis In Concert is a posthumous 1977 TV special starring Elvis Presley. It was Elvis' third and final TV special, following Elvis (a.k.a. The '68 Comeback Special) and Aloha From Hawaii. It was filmed during Presley's final tour in the cities of Omaha, Nebraska, on June 19, 1977, and Rapid City, South Dakota, on June 21, 1977. It was broadcast on CBS on October 3, 1977, two months after Presley's death. It is one of only few of Elvis' programs which remains unlikely to ever be commercially released on home video and is only available in bootleg form. However, parts of the special were used in the video documentary Elvis: The Great Performances and the theatrical documentary This is Elvis, both of which were released on home video.
On June 1, 1977, it was announced that Elvis Presley had signed a deal with CBS for a new television special. It was agreed that CBS would videotape concerts during the summer of 1977. The final special was culled from footage from two performances on June 19, 1977, in Omaha, and June 21, 1977, in Rapid City, although much of the footage from Omaha was considered unusable due to sound and performance problems. This concert has been heavily edited and bootlegs have appeared on auction web sites over the years. The show was shot on NTSC videotape although many film conversions have appeared over the years. The crew also filmed footage of Elvis at the airport in Indianapolis, receiving a gold record from RCA Records on June 26. This is the last known footage of Elvis ever filmed, and he can be seen wearing his favorite DEA jacket.
During the special, Presley performs a number of songs spanning his career. During one song, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?," just before Elvis goes into the recitation part of the song, the music is faded down and a devoted female fan is shown talking about her determination to see Elvis live in concert, then it switches back to Elvis after the recitation was finished. This may have been done so that viewers would not have to see Elvis fumbling through the recitation, although this footage was included in the later documentary This Is Elvis to illustrate his poor condition at the time, and the recitation was left intact on the soundtrack album as well. However, a strong case is made in Darrin Memmer's book "Elvis Presley - The 1977 CBS Television Special," published in 2001 by Morris Publishing, that Elvis regularly played around with the words during the recitation of the song when performing it onstage, rather than it being a case of poor memory. Indeed, a concert recording of Presley similarly joking around during the recitation of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" dating from 1969 has been issued by RCA on numerous occasions. Dubbed the "Laughing Version" (due to Elvis breaking into fits of laughter during the recitation), it even made the UK charts after Presley's death; and he also poked fun at the song during his 1968 Comeback Special, pretending to mumble the recitation instead of speaking it.
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