Original subtitles

This programme contains references to drug misuse, addiction, and organised crime.

Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll.

Teenagers, they all wanted to hear Elvis, to see Elvis,

and many of them wanted to be Elvis.

With the swivel of his hips,

a curl of his lip, and a sound that set hearts racing,

he didn't just change music, he changed the world.

Probably the most important figure of the 20th century.

Yet behind the spotlight stood his manipulative manager,

Colonel Tom Parker...

...a smooth-talking hustler who operated in a music business

riddled with organised crime.

You either con or you get conned.

When Parker brought Elvis to Las Vegas,

he was stepping into a city built by the mob...

...where shadowy figures pulled unseen strings.

The mob was completely enmeshed in Las Vegas.

They controlled the city.

Elvis lit up Vegas.

But gangsters owned the ground beneath his feet,

and Parker knew it.

You couldn't do business in Las Vegas without the mob.

As the Colonel gambled with the mob, Elvis slid deeper into a world

of temptation, control, and corruption.

Las Vegas made Elvis a legend.

But in a town run by mobsters and money...

...even a king could be brought to his knees.

Five years after World War II, a new era.

Dwight D Eisenhower is president of the United States.

Factories are booming...

America is alive with promise and possibility.

The 1950s are a time of amazing change in America.

It's the time of huge, huge optimism.

And I think one of the really interesting things is the music.

Sweeping across America's airwaves comes a new sound.

Raw, wild, unstoppable...

...rock and roll.

Created by African American pioneers like Chuck Berry

and Little Richard, it's shaking the nation.

But one name will eclipse them all.

Elvis Presley was a blazing star

in the mid to late 1950s.

He was something genuinely new.

It was this combination of country...

...rhythm and blues and rock.

And he was able to merge all of those into a style and a format

that was so appealing to young people.

Not to their parents, but certainly to young people.

The world changed.

He ushered in a teenage culture all its own.

The audiences just went crazy for him

in a way that they didn't for any performer before then.

He's symbolic of something that young people

could aspire to if they were rebelling.

The frenzy that he created was something

that show business had never seen before.

Elvis Aaron Presley transformed rock and roll,

but his story starts a long way from the spotlight.

He is born on January 8th, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi,

to Gladys and Vernon Presley.

Raised in poverty, he makes his first step into

the music business in 1953, when he is 18 years old.

Elvis walked into the Memphis Recording Service

one day to make a record.

The receptionist asked him who he sounded like,

and he said, I don't sound like nobody.

And indeed, he didn't sound like anybody.

And she told Sam Phillips, who owned the Memphis Recording Service,

as well as Sun Records about him,

and eventually they brought him back in and recorded him.

As Sam always said, "If I could find a white singer

"who could sing with a passion of a black singer, I'd be a rich man.

"I'd make a million dollars."

Well, he found one.

Elvis' first single, That's All Right,

is recorded in July 1954.

Released on Sam Phillips' record label Sun,

it is a hit in the local Memphis charts.

Elvis is on the rise.

But the music industry awaiting

the young star isn't built on dreams.

It's built on corruption run by crooked businessmen,

shady moguls and powerful figures with deep ties

to organised crime.

The thing about the entertainment industry and the music industry

is mobsters have been involved in it since the very, very beginning.

There were some real crooks in the record business.

They run jukebox scams, which is essentially

skimming money out of jukeboxes that have cash put into them.

You've got payola, which is bribery,

essentially to play records in the charts.

So the mobs are there right from the off.

In some cases, bright eyed newcomers could find themselves at

the mercy of record company mobsters.

They would hire young singers,

they would get a few thousand dollars upon signing

a contract and maybe a car, and then nothing else after that.

And lawyers were frightened of taking cases

to represent these young singers when they learned

that the Mafia controlled the record companies.

Sam Phillips, who founded Sun Records,

he was able to stay out of the clutches of the mob,

which operated in the record business.

The interesting thing about Elvis Presley is

that his dealings at the very beginning with people like

Sam Phillips, these are honest brokers in the industry.

But then, Colonel Tom comes into his orbit...

...and Colonel Tom is anything but.

A silver-tongued promoter in his late 40s,

Colonel Tom Parker is a man of mystery.

Claiming to hail from West Virginia,

he's clawed his way into show business from

the shadowy world of travelling carnivals and sideshows.

He came across for some people as this

kind of hayseed carny guy.

He was a razzle dazzle character.

He worked for several carnivals, but mostly he was a concessionaire.

He sold hot dogs where he would take the middle out of the hot dog,

he'd fill it with Kraut, and he'd charge full price for it.

And when he made change,

he glued a quarter to his ring,

he would show them the change in his palm with a quarter

of corn stuck to his ring, and then he would put it

in their palm and close their hand so they wouldn't count it.

So they'd just go off and that way he was always a quarter ahead.

He was a salesman.

He was a covenant.

I have to live up to my reputation of being a nice guy.

This is it, folks.

He gave off an air of danger

that was threatening and intimidating,

even when he was laughing and smiling

and looking you right in the eye.

He's the only person I ever met...

...that I felt was evil.

Yet, if Colonel Tom carries an air of menace,

he can be equally charming.

And he has an uncanny ability to turn his

carnival honed hustlers skills to his advantage.

He understood why carnivals and circuses were popular.

He also came to understand and appreciate the love

so many Americans had for country and western music.

And he thought, I can combine the love

of country western music

and my abilities as a carny.

And he started putting together these tours

of country western stars to communities

that had never seen a live show, and they were sell-outs.

He had some of the big or budding stars of country music

in these, Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Hank Snow.

But the one he came across that gave him

the most success was this mild mannered singer named Eddy Arnold.

And he controlled Arnold's recording contracts.

He controlled Arnold on these tours...

...and made Arnold a lot of money,

and made Colonel Parker a lot of money.

In 1953, after eight years together...

...Arnold is worn down by Colonel Tom's controlling style,

and the two men part ways.

Colonel Tom begins hunting for a new act.

And in January 1955 he finds him.

A young man who's rock and roll swagger sends

audiences into a frenzy.

He saw Elvis and he realised this was something special.

And so he kind of stalked him for a while.

They would see him in the shadows backstage

when they performed in Shreveport or in Texarkana.

He wouldn't really approach them, he would just be there.

The glow of his cigar in the shadows.

And suddenly Tom Parker got to him

and convinced his parents that he'd be very good for the boy.

He said, "Elvis has a million dollar talent

"and I'm going to make him a million dollars.

He had incredible foresight that this was

not just a quick flash in the pan,

but this was a guy he could really build

into a major, major star.

And Elvis trusted him.

And Colonel Parker was able to sign Elvis at 21,

and all bets were off as to how big a star he could be.

The Colonel had big plans for Elvis from the very beginning,

so the first thing he did was get Elvis off of Sun Records,

take him over to RCA, and very, very quickly,

Elvis was a big star with Heartbreak Hotel.

1956 was probably

the greatest year for any pop music artist in history.

He began at the beginning of the year with one hit song,

Heartbreak Hotel...

...got TV appearances on several shows,

including The Ed Sullivan Show,

and by the end of 1956, he was the hottest

entertainer in America.

Between 56 and 58, Elvis achieved massive success.

He has a ton of hit singles, he's got All Shook Up,

Don't Be Cruel, Teddy Bear,

amazing singles that we still listen to today.

He has three albums, Elvis, Elvis is Back,

Elvis' Christmas album.

I mean, he's gone stratospheric.

The partnership between Colonel Tom and Elvis blossoms

and Elvis' career soars.

In 1956. Elvis sells 12 million records alone.

His debut album raking in over a staggering

$1 million in sales.

On the surface, the partnership between the Colonel and Elvis

is a perfect match.

But behind the scenes, the Colonel is quietly

taking half of everything Elvis earns.

A shocking and unheard of amount.

The Colonel had a 25% royalty

and a 25% management fee.

Most agents take 15 or 20%.

The Colonel took 50%.

But Elvis went along with it.

Everybody was a sucker, everybody was a mark.

But he thought he was above it.

With Elvis' meteoric rise,

the money floods in...

...making both him and Colonel Tom wealthy men.

Elvis spends generously, lavishing money on his parents

and buying his Memphis mansion, Graceland.

Colonel Tom, meanwhile, throws away his cash

in pursuit of an old addiction.

Colonel Tom Parker loved to gamble his entire life.

Because it reminded him of his glory days on the carnivals.

He was attracted to games of chance, which he knew

that he couldn't really win, but he couldn't stop himself.

The colonel always liked doing things

in a slightly shady way.

That's why he was attracted to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

And there he first really got involved with gambling.

Hot Springs, Arkansas...

...since the late 19th century, it had been America's

hidden capital of gambling.

A town where the law looked the other way

and the mob ran the tables.

Colonel Tom first visited in the 1930s,

still hustling on the carnival circuit,

drawn to the city's smoky back rooms

and easy money.

It was off track betting hotels offered prostitution.

There was anything you wanted as far as illegal activity.

And he loved it there.

He was really in his element.

It's because he could rub shoulders with so-called important people.

This is a place that attracted

the elite of organised crime.

Lucky Luciano loved to go to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Al Capone liked to go to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Frank Costello also went to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

It became a kind of resort for mobsters who were on the lam.

And we know that Parker went there.

He could get away pretty much with doing what he wanted.

1,500 miles west of Hot Springs,

another city was rising from the desert...

Las Vegas.

A place where casinos thrived and betting was a way of life.

It soon captured Colonel Tom's imagination.

But when he got to Las Vegas, he must have said,

"Oh, my goodness, this is heaven for a gambler.

"there are all these places and they're legal."

Colonel Tom fell hard for Las Vegas...

...and the feeling was mutual.

The casinos adored the Colonel,

especially when they saw how much he was willing to lose.

In one sitting alone, the colonel reportedly lost $800,000,

making him a prime target for the city's powerful mob bosses.

A glittering playground of crime and cash,

Vegas would soon play a defining role

in the lives of both the colonel and his sole client, Elvis Presley.

Las Vegas, a city that Elvis Presley and his manager,

Colonel Tom Parker, will come to see as a second home.

Drawn to its wild energy,

endless action, and dangerous allure.

A city where roulette wheels spin night and day.

And the promise of sin and sleaze

is never more than a dice roll away.

Mobsters run the town from

the smallest casino to the grandest hotel.

But Vegas wasn't always like this.

It began as a dusty railroad stop

in the Nevada desert back in 1905,

and within just a few decades, it exploded.

Two things happened in 1931 that have consequences

for the rest of the century for Las Vegas.

Number one, they started construction of Hoover Dam.

The biggest public works project in American history.

And what that does is to bring in thousands of workers

who will want to have a good time on the weekends.

The closest place to have a good time is Las Vegas.

Second of all, the state of Nevada legalised gambling.

And Las Vegas was getting this idea that gambling

could be the centrepiece of an economy.

The little light bulb goes on over the head like,

Hmm, maybe Las Vegas could be a place that would attract tourists.

So during the course of the 1930s, you see building

up along Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas,

a series of hotel casinos.

They're small, but they're active

and there's entertainment and there's gambling,

and it's something you can't get anywhere else.

The legalisation of gambling changes everything.

For America's crime syndicates, Las Vegas isn't just a city,

it's an opportunity.

It's going to be an open invitation

for organised crime to come into the state of Nevada.

So what you see is the migration

of organised crime from all parts of the United States.

You have people coming in from Chicago,

New York, Cleveland, Detroit,

Milwaukee, Miami,

New Orleans, Los Angeles.

All of these cities are getting their piece

of what's happening in Las Vegas.

Once the mob arrived, they played

a really important role in the development

of the major industry, the casino industry here,

by bringing expertise, entertainers,

money, all kinds of different elements

that they had picked up in their own underworld ways,

you know, around the country to Las Vegas.

Some LA gamblers, they've been running these casinos

in LA and offshore gambling boats for quite some time,

see Las Vegas as a safe place to go.

And the leader among them is a former police

vice captain named Guy McAfee.

Guy McAfee comes in from California,

He had been a gambling and prostitution racketeer

in Los Angeles.

He's kind of driven out of town, he moves to Las Vegas,

and he buys a place called the Paradise Club.

And he does some renovations, and he turns it into the 91 Club.

But he doesn't stop.

He... a few months later, opens the Frontier Club

on Fremont Street downtown, and it's a success.

And within two years he's opened with

a consortium of other gamblers from California,

the Pioneer Club.

Once a sleepy desert stopover,

Las Vegas is becoming unrecognisable.

The mob are turning it into their own shimmering

kingdom built on crime, sin and entertainment.

In 1946, it's a huge year

because you see two really iconic casinos open here.

One, the Golden Nugget...

...and the other one, even more important was the Flamingo Hotel.

And the Flamingo was built

and operated principally by Bugsy Siegel,

a New York mobster who came to Las Vegas

in a desire to go legit, if you will,

and to do something more constructive

with his life than kill people.

And so he builds, with help from

a lot of his partners in the mob, the Flamingo.

The Flamingo was the breakthrough hotel in Las Vegas

because it was a real spiffy place

with not kind of an Old West decor,

which the earlier hotels had, but a real sort of LA, Miami Beach

kind of sophistication.

Really the first of its kind in Las Vegas.

And it was attracting the Hollywood crowd,

it was attracting the Los Angeles crowd in a way

that the other places in Las Vegas couldn't.

And it looks like it's going to be a success

because he sells luxury at a low price,

but most notably, he decides

the best way to bring ever more customers into

the Flamingo is to offer top flight entertainment.

Entertainers would continue

to keep people entertained while they're gambling.

This was a way to keep them in the showroom,

to keep them spending money, and it was great,

everywhere you went, there was entertainment.

So by the late 1940s,

Vegas was beginning to get a reputation

as a magnet for the top nightclub stars in America.

With entertainment now a major draw for tourists,

Las Vegas continues to grow

as hotel casino after hotel casino sprang up.

The real heyday of Las Vegas

didn't come until the early '50s...

...when the new hotels, the sort of classic Vegas hotels,

began to open one by one.

The Desert Inn, The Sahara,

The Sands, The Riviera.

In about five, six, seven years,

suddenly you had this strip of hotels,

one more glamorous than the next.

All of them competing for the top nightclub stars in America.

What really appeals to these figures from organised crime is

that when the take is picked

up at the end of the gambling day

and taken to the count room,

virtually all of these mob owned casinos

will skim off some of the profit.

It happened in all the casinos.

There would be people working in the cash room,

counting up all the cash,

and someone from the mob would go into

the cash room and start filling up briefcases with money,

hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time.

And the people counting the money pretended not to see this.

This illegally skimmed money often finds its way

to entertainers paid under the table

on top of their official earnings.

This lucrative bonus makes Las Vegas an irresistible draw

for the biggest names in show business.

You know, it was the logical place for any entertainer to go.

Perhaps it's the promise of easy money

that draws Elvis Presley's manager to Las Vegas.

Once settled in, Colonel Tom begins to move in powerful circles,

befriending casino bosses and local kingpins.

Among them Milton Prell, the visionary behind one of

its most iconic resorts, The Sahara.

Prell's business partner is an underworld

linked figure called Al Winter.

Leading some historians to speculate over Prell's

own possible mob connections...

...and his friendship with Colonel Tom.

The Sahara is

a very popular place, and ever since it opened,

people have tried to puzzle out how did Prell get the money?

One rumour is that it came from the Detroit mob,

but we just don't know for sure.

My own conclusion is that Milton Prell

got his money through legitimate means.

The relationship between Milton Prell and the Colonel

is kind of murky.

I think Prell was the frontman for the Detroit mob...

...but he was closely involved with Moe Dalitz.

Moe Dalitz was, of course, Mr Las Vegas.

Moe Dalitz is sort of epitomised the Las Vegas story

in the sense that he was very much had a dark past.

He had been involved in bootlegging and illegal gambling for years.

But he comes to Las Vegas and somehow he is now

one of the leaders of the city.

Parker was no fool...

...he was aware of what Las Vegas was like.

So Parker had to know that he was entering a place

where organised crime was a fixture.

Well, the colonel spent so much time in Vegas,

he's meeting everyone.

He's meeting all the casino people, he's meeting all the people

who run the venues.

Parker had to promote Elvis.

He has this ambitious idea

of how to promote this new star.

And he knows Las Vegas, he knows Las Vegas

has become ever more popular for people to go to.

He knows about The Sands, he knows obviously about The Sahara,

where his friend Milton Prell is.

So he decides to book Elvis in Las Vegas

at the New Frontier Hotel in summer 1956.

I think the Colonel took Elvis into Vegas

in '56 for a number of reasons.

One, it had now become his playground...

...he wanted to go gamble.

But most important, I think he wanted to be a big shot.

And people there knew his name and were taking him seriously.

The 91 Club started Life as Paradise,

one of the earliest mob affiliated casinos on the strip.

Now renamed The New Frontier,

it's where Elvis Presley makes his Las Vegas debut,

but Las Vegas isn't ready for him yet.

When Elvis played Las Vegas in 1956,

he was too new to play Vegas.

He had just come on the national scene,

and he was 21 years old.

And you can hear his jokes, they're just almost

painful to listen to.

His accent is very Deep South.

He's mush mouthed.

He's kind of embarrassing.

The people who came to Vegas then were an older crowd.

They were raised on very different kinds

of music than rock and roll.

And Elvis was just too green.

He was too young.

He was too unsophisticated for the Vegas audience.

One local later recollected

that she went to one of the shows and found it vulgar.

Elvis first appearance in Las Vegas

was not successful.

Yet...

...he loved being in Las Vegas.

He loved the whole atmosphere of the city.

He loved staying at The Sahara, Milton Prell's hotel.

He liked the entertainment possibilities in Las Vegas.

He loved the restaurants, and he met

an awful lot of attractive women.

Indeed, the one thing that Colonel Parker

got really upset about the following year

is that there were photos snapped of Elvis with

a famed stripper named Tempest Storm.

Parker said, "No, you can't do it,

"we're trying to create an image of you,

"and that's not going to be helpful at all."

Tempest storm is famous because she has affairs

with so many famous people.

Sammy Davis Jr...

Mickey Rooney.

And she also has an affair with Mickey Cohen,

who was one of the most notorious mobsters of the era.

So it shows that Elvis was dating people

who were certainly connected to the mob.

Elvis Presley revels in the neon buzz of Las Vegas

its glamour, its danger...

...its sin.

His first show in the city may have fallen flat,

but his fame keeps rising around the world.

He stars in films like Jailhouse Rock...

...and King Creole.

movies that utilise his raw charisma to powerful effect...

...and he records more classic singles

like Love Me Tender, Shake, Rattle and Roll,

and Tryin' To Get To You.

Elvis seems unstoppable.

But soon his rise will come to a screeching halt.

In the middle of the most spectacular

show business rise in history,

Elvis had to drop out.

In 1958, Elvis was drafted.

He went to Germany and spent two years in the Army.

It's possible Colonel Tom could have kept Elvis out of

the Army if he had wanted.

But military service is good for business.

It scrubs Elvis' image clean,

turning the rebellious rocker into an all-American boy.

Elvis time in the army doesn't just stall his career...

...it ends his Vegas escapades, too.

Meanwhile, the city is hitting its stride.

Pulsing to a rhythm all its own.

At this time, there's a different entertainer

who's associated with Las Vegas.

And that man is Frank Sinatra.

Frank Sinatra was the leading

Vegas entertainer in the 1950s.

He was a superstar.

Early 1960, Frank Sinatra came to Las Vegas

to shoot Ocean's 11,

a film that he had helped produce, and enlisted a lot

of his Hollywood friends in the cast.

Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr...

...and Joey Bishop.

They decide, why don't we perform at The Sands,

two shows a night, while during the day

we film Ocean's 11?

That show became known as The Rat Pack shows.

Those five performers came onstage and just tore up the place.

It becomes a phenomenon.

All those guys were really the kings of Las Vegas in those years.

While Elvis is in the Army, Frank Sinatra cements his

reign over Las Vegas.

To the crowds who flocked to Las Vegas,

Sinatra and his crew are the ultimate entertainers.

Yet underlining Sinatra's many years at

the top of the entertainment industry are

the friendships and alliances he's built

over decades with a web of organised crime figures.

One of the more intriguing aspects of The Rat Pack

performances is that comedian Joey Bishop,

when he would bring on Frank Sinatra,

he would say, "Frank, why don't you come on

"and say something positive about the Mafia?"

And Sinatra inevitably would say, "Ah, it's a good group."

Yet if he downplays his connection onstage,

Sinatra's buddies include some of the most

vicious mobsters of the era.

While he's performing at The Sands,

Sinatra is maintaining a strong friendship with

a Chicago gangster named Sam Giancana...

...who was the head of the Chicago outfit.

He had met Giancana in the early 1950s.

They became friends.

Sinatra would claim that he was friends with them,

but he had nothing to do with their business.

But definitely it was always something

that tainted Sinatra's reputation.

Elvis, stuck in the Army misses the rise of The Rat Pack,

But when he's finally discharged in 1960,

Colonel Tom sets the stage for their worlds to collide.

Elvis did a Welcome Home special with

Frank Sinatra when he came home from the Army.

Sinatra and Elvis were pretty odd couple.

During the mid '50s, Sinatra was one of the people

who really badmouthed rock and roll.

Frank was the epitome of the classic nightclub singer,

and this new music, this crazy rock and roll,

was something that was kind of a threat

to the traditional pop, jazz singers.

But by 1960, when Elvis came out of the army,

Frank Sinatra realised

that this was going to be the biggest comeback,

probably in American show business history.

And he managed to negotiate that

Elvis would make his first appearance on TV

after getting out of the Army on a special

that Frank Sinatra was doing for American TV.

It was really a weird sort of get together of

these two icons of two different styles of American music.

Pairing Elvis with Frank Sinatra,

he was signalling that Elvis was now a respectful character.

He was not that hooligan who used to wiggle around on the stage.

He was the boy next door, come home.

Thanks to his appearance on Frank Sinatra's TV special,

Elvis Presley is now tied to the old guard of Las Vegas.

But after Elvis' disastrous first shows there,

Colonel Tom is reluctant to bring Elvis back to the city.

He had an offer from Milton Prell

at $75,000 a week to play Las Vegas...

...and the Colonel turned it down.

He couldn't risk sending Elvis back to Las Vegas yet,

after that really embarrassing bombing in 1956.

In 1961, Elvis Presley retreats from

live performing entirely.

Instead, the Colonel steers him into acting,

and across the 1960s, Elvis stars in dozens

of mostly mediocre Hollywood films.

With names like Speedway,

Clambake, Change of Habit,

Double Trouble.

Yet whenever Elvis is not filming,

he's back in Las Vegas, indulging in the city's

endless temptations with his entourage,

who have picked up a playful new nickname.

He would bring his pals along with him,

they would travel around town in their dark suits and sunglasses,

and they became known as the Memphis Mafia.

Elvis loved Las Vegas.

He loved to go and play and see shows,

and he wasn't a big gambler,

but he loved the freedom of Las Vegas.

He loved it as an adult playground.

There were hookers there.

There are beautiful showgirls, and the mob runs these places.

The mob might have its hands in every corner of the city,

but if Elvis notices, he doesn't seem to care.

And he is about to play with fire.

Elvis was having an affair with Phyllis McGuire,

who was one of the McGuire sisters.

It was a big pop singing group from the '50s and '60s.

Her boyfriend was Sam Giancana, a well-known mob figure,

and when Elvis met Phyllis,

she was carrying a gun...

...and said that Sam Giancana,

her boyfriend wanted her to carry a gun.

And Elvis says, "Well you tell Sam that I carry two guns."

At the height of it all, Elvis makes a movie

in the city that has become his playground.

A glittering love letter to Las Vegas itself.

Viva Las Vegas was one of the better films that Elvis made.

What Viva Las Vegas did was really showcase Las Vegas.

There were scenes in the hotels and the showrooms

up and down the strip.

This film is just almost a perfect promotional film for Las Vegas,

because what you see is what Las Vegas

promoters want you to see.

You don't see organised crime.

You see how spectacular a resort city it is.

Glitz and glamour and fun and desert vistas

and everything that's portrayed in the movie.

And you have Elvis in his peak.

That film did a lot to sort of raise people's consciousness

of Vegas and maybe attract more people there.

Viva Las Vegas shows a sparkling, cleaned up version of the city.

No gangsters, no crime, just music, glamour and fun.

In real life, the mob is everywhere,

woven into the very fabric of Vegas life.

But somehow Elvis keeps his hands clean.

The guys in Elvis' entourage were puzzled by the fact that

they really didn't see the Mafia

around Elvis very much.

And they wondered how the Colonel was able to keep them away

from Elvis as much as he did.

But it was clear that they were there and watching.

One day, Elvis' friend Marty Lacker

was in the coffee shop at The Thunderbird.

This obvious mafioso looking figure

stopped by and he asked how Elvis was.

Marty told him he was doing fine and he said, "He's a good boy."

"It's good to hear, but tell him

"if he ever needs anything, let me know."

Working tirelessly behind the scenes,

Colonel Tom's old friend Milton Prell

helps keep Elvis' image squeaky clean.

Milton Prell's main role with Colonel Parker

was an arrangement by which Milton protected

Colonel and Elvis from

the more malignant figures in the Mafia.

That, I believe, was the key to that relationship.

So he wouldn't allow Elvis to be photographed

with most of the players.

And by that I mean the Mafia figures in Las Vegas.

He kept it all on the hush-hush.

Yet Colonel Tom isn't above using

the threat of the mob to keep control,

especially when Elvis begins to grow restless

with his endless string of film roles.

And the Colonel uses the recent homicide

of a famous soul singer to his advantage.

By the mid '60s, Elvis was just fed up with the movies.

He wanted to be a Brando.

He wanted to be James Dean.

He wanted to win an Oscar.

Instead, he ended up making the string

of formulaic movies,

and he was embarrassed by them,

and he didn't want to do them any more.

And he got to where he would show up late.

And of course, the Colonel would be furious with him.

He told him that his fellow RCA artist,

Sam Cooke, that the mob had gotten to him

because he was stepping out of line,

and the Colonel threatened Elvis that these very kinds

of things could happen to him.

The Mafia wasn't just gangsters in the streets any more...

...it was the heads of corporations.

These were men whose names ended in vowels.

Men with uncles with names like Jimmy the Thumb.

So Elvis needed to keep it all squeaky clean

and do it as he is told and earn money.

The mid '60s...

...music tastes are changing

and psychedelic rock is the new sound.

The king of rock and roll's crown is slipping.

Colonel Tom needs a way to get the nation talking about

Elvis again, and he has the perfect occasion.

The wedding of Elvis and his girlfriend Priscilla

at Milton Prell's new hotel, The Aladdin.

Elvis hadn't planned on getting married in 1967,

nor had he planned on getting married at all.

But this is a way to get him

in front of the national media again.

They marry inside Milton Berle's private suite at The Aladdin.

And of course, it gives the Colonel another chance

to go to his favourite city, where once again he can gamble.

There are very few people at the wedding.

Most of the people there are photographers...

...and news folks.

The Beaulieu-Presley wedding

was really the Parker-Prell wedding.

Parker and Prell are able to pull off this remarkable event

that captured the nation's attention.

Elvis wedding closes one chapter and opens another.

And as his life evolves,

so too does the ever changing face of Las Vegas.

A new era is dawning in Las Vegas.

As outside investment pours in,

the mob's grip on the city starts to slip.

In the mid-'60s, Vegas was starting to change.

The mob controlled hotels were still there,

but suddenly, in 1966,

billionaire Howard Hughes moved into Las Vegas.

He and his entire entourage took over the top

two floors of the Desert Inn, which was owned by Moe Dalitz.

And they were all Mormons...

...so they neither drank nor gambled.

They wanted him to leave because they needed

those penthouse suites for the big high rollers

that they would bring in around Christmas-time.

Hughes refused to leave, and he bought the hotel instead.

Then he goes and buys The Sands

and three or four other hotels.

As Howard Hughes snaps up properties across the strip,

his money brings respectability.

As Vegas changes, Elvis stagnates.

By the late 1960s,

Elvis hasn't performed live for over seven years.

Trapped in a Hollywood film career he no longer believes in,

he's been overshadowed by bands like The Beatles

and The Rolling Stones.

But in 1968, a visionary TV producer

gives him the push he needs,

relaunching Elvis for a new generation.

Steve Binder was a fan of rock and roll,

a young guy, and he really wanted

to reintroduce Elvis to the American public.

So he created a special that really showcased Elvis

as a live performer in a way

that people hadn't seen for almost a decade.

And it's the most watched programme on American

television in 1968.

And after that special, the Colonel decided,

OK, now it's time maybe

to get Elvis back to live performing.

Back in Las Vegas, the strip continues to change.

More corporate figures are arriving.

The next mogul seduced by Las Vegas' allure

is a powerful businessman named Kirk Kerkorian.

Kerkorian was someone who,

like Howard Hughes, saw Las Vegas as an opportunity.

He decided to start investing here.

He decided to build a brand-new hotel in Las Vegas,

the biggest hotel in Las Vegas.

In fact, the biggest hotel in the world...

...the International Hotel.

Getting ready for an opening in the summer of 1969,

he was looking for the biggest act he could find

in America to open the hotel.

They focused on Elvis Presley.

Elvis is back, and for the first time in years,

he's returning to the stage.

But behind the scenes, there's a darker motive at play.

Colonel Tom's choice of venue may have less to do with music,

and more to do with the mob connections

that still shape the city,

and his own entanglements with organised crime.

The Colonel's gambling debts and all the things

that he owed to the mob

and the control that they had over him...

...completely and totally shaped

the last third of Elvis Presley's career.

What should be a thrilling comeback for the King of Rock and Roll

will soon fall apart.

Fuelled by drugs, paranoia,

and the dark underbelly of Las Vegas...

...what comes next will rewrite the legend forever.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media