Original subtitles

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

Elvis Presley. An American icon.

A hip-shaking rebel with a golden voice.

Cameras love him. Crowds worship him.

The world has never seen anything like him.

Yet by the late '60s, his world is shifting...

..and so is Las Vegas,

the gambling paradise that has become a second home to Elvis.

Elvis loved the freedom of Las Vegas.

He loved it as an adult playground.

And his enigmatic manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

Colonel Parker is a compulsive gambler,

and this is his favourite place to be.

Organised Crime helped shape Las Vegas,

turning gambling and vice into a criminal empire.

But if the town had once been ruled by mobsters,

it is now being reshaped by corporate giants.

Las Vegas transformed dramatically.

Plans are under way to build the largest hotel

the world has ever seen,

an audacious symbol of Las Vegas' new era.

And to fill it, the city needs the biggest star on earth...

..Elvis.

You had to go see Elvis Presley perform.

It was an event.

But it's been almost a decade since Elvis last stepped onto a stage.

The world has changed.

So has he.

Can the King reclaim his crown

in a city built on spectacle, seduction, and danger?

The mob's tentacles in Las Vegas were into

all different facets of the industry.

Parker wants Elvis back in Vegas,

but the mob still lurks in the shadows,

and the Colonel knows exactly who holds the strings.

There is no other place where there are so many entrepreneurs

who are connected to organised crime.

For Elvis, it starts a descent into a world of drugs,

death threats, and unlimited firepower.

He's collecting a whole host of guns.

He gets a Tommy gun.

And this time, the odds are in nobody's favour.

1968.

America is in upheaval.

The Youth rebellion that Elvis Presley once symbolised

has erupted into a full-blown counterculture.

The Vietnam War rages.

Protests fill the streets...

..and the fight for civil rights

and sexual liberation dominates headlines.

In the wake of the Summer of Love,

young Americans are questioning everything,

from the government to rock-and-roll itself.

Elvis Presley, once the face of teenage rebellion,

feels like a relic.

And his manager, Colonel Tom Parker,

has trapped him in a carousel of forgettable Hollywood films.

Creatively stifled and losing relevance,

Elvis is desperate to remind the world who he really is.

In a bold move, Parker arranges a television special

to showcase Elvis at his best,

and reintroduce him to the American public.

Airing on December 3rd, 1968,

the show reminds America what made Elvis a star in the first place -

charisma, swagger...

..and pure rock-and-roll energy.

That special was a big success in the ratings.

It's an incredible piece of TV.

It's got a bit of him playing in a round.

It's also got him doing these big song and dance numbers.

It's really dynamic.

It was really, really good,

and suddenly, Elvis is back.

That special really reminded people that Elvis was still

a terrific performer. The Colonel decided, OK,

now it's time to get Elvis back to live performing.

The world is at his feet. Now what he should be doing,

I don't know, touring the world.

But instead, what does he do?

He goes to Las Vegas.

Elvis's manager, the shady Colonel Tom Parker,

has long been a fan of mob-built Las Vegas.

He thrives on its energy and its unwritten rules.

Over the years, he's grown close to the city's power players -

including Milton Prell,

the influential boss behind the Sahara and Aladdin hotels.

But new money is moving in.

Businessman Kirk Kerkorian is leading the charge,

with plans for the largest hotel in the world.

Kurt Kerkorian was opening the New International Hotel

that's set to open in the summer of 1969.

They need a big name. They need the biggest name.

So, the entertainment director of the New International

is Bill Miller.

Bill Miller ran Bill Miller's Riviera nightclub in New Jersey,

famous mobster hang-out.

He came to Vegas, he was working for Milton Prell.

He's been there for decades.

He knows everything and everyone in Vegas,

and he knows what Vegas wants,

and he knows that middle American tourists will want

to come to Vegas to see Elvis.

Alex Shoofey was the general manager of the New International,

and he had been the general manager of the Sahara for Milton Prell.

There had been rumours that Milton Prell was a gangster.

He was the front man for the Detroit mob.

And Alex Shoofey,

he'd first worked for Milton Prell at the Club Bingo.

Shoofey had the nickname of "The Cleaver" in Las Vegas,

and he was really more of

the Colonel's contact there than Kurt Kerkorian.

Milton Prell and Alex Shoofey came to the Colonel and asked him

if Elvis would want to open the hotel.

And it was the Colonel who decided that the place

to make the biggest splash on his return

to live performing was Las Vegas.

The Colonel loved Las Vegas. That was his playground.

That was his carnival. That was his fair.

He felt important there.

He knew all these top guys who jumped at his call,

gave him anything he wanted, kissed his feet -

but mostly, he could gamble and rack up massive debts.

When the international came to Colonel Parker,

they offered him $100,000 a week,

and under the table,

basically agreed to cover the Colonel's gambling debts.

The Colonel was game, but he said, "The hotel is still being finished."

They were racing to finish construction.

"We're not sure if the technical things are all going to be sound,

"the lighting and the electricity."

He said, "Let somebody else be the guinea pig,

"come in first. We'll be second."

And so, the International, they went to their second choice.

And it was Barbra Streisand

who opened the International Hotel in July,

followed by Elvis Presley for four weeks in August, 1969.

Kerkorian's team and the Colonel seal this new deal,

and it's for a month-long residency in Vegas for Elvis.

This is an entirely new concept,

and it's going to change Vegas.

Las Vegas once thrived on intimate nightclub acts,

low-lit, smoky shows made famous by Frank Sinatra and his pals

in mob-affiliated venues across the city.

But the new International is vast.

Its 2,000-seat showroom dwarfs the old lounges,

marking a new era in Las Vegas spectacle.

Colonel Parker had done an amazing job of promoting the event.

He had blanketed the area with billboards and signs

on top of taxi cabs at bus stops,

radio ads just blaring Elvis, Elvis, Elvis.

There was probably more advanced hype for that show

than any show in Vegas history.

Although he hasn't set foot onstage since 1961,

the prospect of a Las Vegas comeback

ignites a sense of purpose in Elvis.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

July 31, 1969, backstage at the International Hotel,

Elvis is preparing to take the stage for the first time in eight years.

Cary Grant's there, Sammy Davis Jr.

And I think a lot of people are curious as what's going to happen.

I mean, is it going to be a car crash?

He's not the comeback special, but you know, what's going to go on?

This showroom at the International Hotel,

where Elvis was performing,

was twice as large as any showroom in Vegas at the time.

Elvis filled it up,

and the anticipation was unbelievable.

Elvis is nervous, but comes in from the wing,

the crowd goes wild.

Elvis opens with Blue Suede Shoes,

one of his great old hits.

The minute he finishes the first song,

he kind of turns around to his band,

relaxes, and he really gets going.

BAND PLAYS

He's full of energy, I mean, he is just in constant motion,

doing Karate kicks, dancing around the stage.

The whole show, it's an hour and 15 or 20 minutes,

and it's just a spectacular success.

It turns out the show is an amazing hit.

Everybody loves him.

Magazines marvel at the staying power of this guy,

and Elvis is celebrated again.

It is a triumph.

BAND FINISHES PLAYING CHEERING

The very next day, Alex Shoofey, from The International Hotel,

got together Colonel Parker and basically tried to sign up Elvis

for regular gigs at the hotel.

He just wrote up the contract, apparently on a tablecloth.

It was all done very quickly.

$125,000 a week, eight weeks a year -

that makes $1 million a year,

which was Colonel Parker's favourite number.

But many people believe that it was actually a very bad deal,

locking Elvis into five years, essentially no raise -

in that Prell was negotiating that deal,

and there is no way that Elvis

and Colonel could have come out on top.

To this day, rumours continue to swirl that the hurried deal

to keep Elvis in Vegas was made possible

because of Colonel Parker's historic gambling debts,

vast sums of money owed to the city's casino bosses,

putting him at a distinct disadvantage when negotiating with

the likes of Alex Shoofey.

Tom Parker was an obsessive compulsive gambler,

and he made a deal with the hotel that he would have carte blanche

to gamble as much as he wanted,

and he wouldn't have to pay any gambling debts.

He would get to keep all of his winnings.

And they gave him all sorts of benefits to stay there -

and they did this in exchange for being able to pay Elvis

only $150,000 a week,

instead of maybe two or three times that.

Alex Shoofey was loose with the lips

when it came to talking about Colonel's gambling.

He said initially he was good for $1 million a year,

but eventually, he became good for $1 million a month.

Elvis performed hundreds of shows

that he never knew were to cancel the Colonel's gambling debts.

This is another instance in which

Colonel's decisions benefit the Colonel

more than they do Elvis.

It's a five-year deal.

It's going to require an incredible output of energy,

or an incredible input of amphetamines.

As Elvis' residency at the International begins in

the summer of 1969,

Las Vegas is - on the surface - cleaning up its act.

Although mobsters still control a number of hotels in Las Vegas,

a new wave of corporate ownership is moving in,

keen to legitimise the casino business and wash away

its ties to organised crime.

The first of these corporate giants

had been the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes,

whose arrival in 1966 signalled a shift

in the city's power dynamics.

But the transition was anything but smooth.

The Mob's tentacles in Las Vegas were into

all different facets of the industry,

and it was very hard to extricate the mob from them.

All the people who had owned these hotels

now became the managers of the hotels that Howard Hughes owned.

And they were skimming the money,

and they were cheating Howard Hughes,

and he didn't know what was happening to him, even though he was

the owner of these hotel casinos.

So, there were so many instances of people owning things in Las Vegas,

but not realising that they were really working for the mob.

It is a slow transformation,

but gradually business starts to change.

The lavish budgets of the mob era,

fuelled by skimmed profits and backroom favours,

begins to shrink.

Performers who had grown used to envelopes stuffed with cash

and extravagant perks now find themselves negotiating

with corporate managers, not wise guys.

The corporate players were coming in

and changing the rules in Las Vegas.

The mob people were willing to spend tons of money

on big-name entertainment,

knowing that they could make it back from the gambling.

The new corporate players became

much more careful about how they spent money.

They really put a cap on the salaries they were paying.

This kind of pissed off some of the old-line entertainers

who were used to being lavishly feted and paid.

To them, the corporate people who were coming in were kind of

spoiling Vegas a little bit,

and some of them started avoiding it.

This was all beginning to shift Vegas away from the mob people

who were also seeing a lot more aggressive law enforcement.

With Elvis' residency at the International under way,

federal authorities are launching sweeping investigations into

the criminal control of the city's casinos.

In 1970, the RICO Act is passed.

This is a law that allows for the prosecution of people

involved in organised crime -

whether you can prove individual criminal acts or not,

if you're associated, you're busted.

And so, this gave the federal government a great deal of power

to crack down on the mob.

So, the way this manifested in Las Vegas was in what they called

Operation Straw Man.

Gary Jenkins, who was head of police intelligence in Kansas City,

was able to bug all these gangsters and get them talking about

how much money they were skimming from the casinos,

and how it was being distributed, and where it was going,

and why they're not paying taxes.

They admitted all of this on tape,

and so, when the FBI arrested them

and the prosecutor got a hold of the tape,

indictments just flowed freely.

The federal investigations are yet another factor in the shift of power

that is taking place in Las Vegas.

And, as the mob starts to lose its vice-like grip on the city,

Elvis continues to dazzle onstage at the International...

..yet the pressure on the King is relentless.

Behind the curtain, the physical and emotional toll begins to mount,

and cracks begin to show.

When Elvis went into Las Vegas,

it was at a punishing schedule.

He was the first performer to play shows seven days a week,

and he played two shows a night.

And if the Colonel wasn't keeping him on a terrible

punishing schedule in Las Vegas,

then he was doing one-nighters on the road.

And so, that meant that, to keep this schedule,

he was on an unbelievable regimen of drugs that were prescribed to him

by his personal physician.

As Elvis, continued to perform in Vegas every six months

for four weeks at a time,

it was gruelling for him - and to relax, he would do his show,

and he would stay up almost all night,

he would invite people to his suite at the top of

the International Hotel.

He would have jam sessions.

They would sing, and they would take drugs.

It was Elvis' way of unwinding.

Elvis would convince himself he wasn't doing drugs,

because they were being given to him by a doctor,

a guy called Dr Nick.

Dr Nick and his team are prescribing Elvis everything.

There's opioids, uppers, downers,

Quaaludes, Valium, Demerol -

you name it, it's all there.

And just being there for four weeks straight,

doing the same show every night,

that was when the drug use and the real sort of burn-out

began to take hold.

Elvis has struggled with addiction for much of his life -

but in Las Vegas, it starts to consume him.

Amidst the bright lights and relentless schedule,

his private battles deepen.

This isn't just a rough patch,

it's the beginning of a tragic descent.

The usual thought is that Elvis indulged himself in pills,

or became dependent on pills in the Army,

when he had to stay up all night for guard duty.

The fact of the matter is that he began taking pills in the early days

on the road so he could drive for long hours and perform.

He stole his mother's Dexedrine, or diet pills - the uppers.

But later, as anxiety set in,

he really preferred downers -

drugs that would take the edge off of things.

Growing increasingly anxious and paranoid,

Elvis indulges in a lifelong fascination with firearms.

And back in Memphis, he's collecting a whole host of guns.

He's got a Luger, getting a Walther PPK.

He's got so many guns.

One of the more fascinating guns is the Tommy gun,

one of the old-school guns that the Chicago mob used to use,

like Al Capone.

Chaotic tales about Elvis' erratic behaviour emerge

with alarming frequency.

His inner circle - jokingly known as the "Memphis Mafia" -

are often drawn into his manic episodes.

There are some wild stories at this time.

They're stories about Elvis pulling a gun on a car

that's going past him a bit too fast.

There are stories of him trying to rally the Memphis Mafia together

to go and beat up some local drug dealers in Memphis -

which is kind of crazy,

because he's also one of the most famous men in the world.

As the spotlight intensifies,

threats appear in the shadows.

Elvis was starting to get paranoid.

But with Elvis' huge popularity,

there also came dangers.

In 1970, Elvis caught wind of a plan

to kidnap him off the stage at Las Vegas.

He was pretty nervous about it.

It seemed real.

This galvanised the whole group, the Elvis entourage.

They planted themselves around the stage,

getting ready to protect him.

Elvis goes onstage with a gun.

Into his performance, some man stood up and yelled, "Elvis!"

"ELVIS" ECHOES

Elvis freaked, and he crouched down on the stage,

reached into his boot, and pulled out a derringer.

Turned out he was just requesting Don't Be Cruel.

It showed that there was some danger.

Elvis was a huge star,

and he was worried about what could happen to him.

Threats against Elvis continue to swirl,

and members of the Memphis Mafia

are dragged further into the confusion.

The day after the kidnapping threat,

Joe Esposito, who's one of the Memphis Mafia,

receives a call that Elvis is going to be shot that night.

The caller demands $50,000 to reveal the name of

the would-be assassin.

A menu that's promoting Elvis' show

is delivered to the hotel that day,

and it's got a picture of Elvis on it,

and the picture is defaced with a gun pointed to Elvis' head,

and the words "guess who, and where" on it.

The Colonel calls Elvis' lawyer,

and the lawyer arranges extra protection to be sent over,

and these guys are from the FBI.

Once again, the show goes off without a hitch.

It's another hoax.

But the question lingers, who's behind it?

Could the threat have come from somewhere, or someone,

no-one had expected?

Elvis was never really sure if it was for real,

or if Colonel had orchestrated this to keep him in line,

or if Colonel himself was really the target -

if it was a message sent by the mob that it was time

for Colonel Parker to pay his gambling debts.

Just a year into his Vegas residency,

Elvis' dependence on prescription drugs

is spiralling out of control.

At the same time, he becomes fixated on what he sees

as a new national threat - hippie culture.

Convinced the country is at risk from left-wing radicals,

Elvis decides law enforcement needs his help.

He begins obsessively collecting police and federal badges -

seeing them as symbols of authority and protection.

But there is one badge above all others

that he is determined to own -

the badge of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

He wants to crack down on drugs, which is kind of crazy,

because he's addicted to drugs.

But I guess he thinks that the drugs he's addicted to are legal,

they're prescription drugs,

so it's not the same as the street drugs,

and he's going to go after those guys.

He really figured himself to be

a crime-fighting superhero over this time.

He wanted to be a federal agent,

so he had one of his people contact President Nixon.

Somehow finagled a trip to the White House.

He said, "Don't tell anybody. Let's go to Washington."

He disappeared. His wife didn't know where he was.

No-one knew where he was.

He actually just turned up at the White House.

When he met Nixon, it seemed so absurd that

a rock-and-roll star would suddenly knock on the White House front door

and get invited in, and sit with the President.

He gave Nixon a gun - a mad thing to do.

And was presented with a badge

and a kind of phoney title,

in terms of drug enforcement or something.

He believes this badge gives him the authority to go undercover

and fight crime.

When we heard we thought, "He's crackers,

"but, you know, he's Elvis."

It was part of Elvis' craziness,

the beginning of his going off the rails a little bit in the '70s.

He was actually stoned out of his head all the time.

So the question is, why is he so obsessed with law enforcement

at this time?

Is it because he's paranoid, because of all the drugs?

Is he going a bit crazy?

Or is it the way to keep his nose clean in a city

of organised crime?

Elvis tries to badger the Memphis Mafia into joining him

to go after local drug dealers.

And apparently, he even told Red,

one of the members of the Memphis Mafia, that,

"These sons of bitches need to be wiped out."

He invites them into his bedroom,

where there are a whole bunch of guns laid out in the bed,

and tells them to each pick up a weapon,

and they're going to go out to local bars,

and they're going to beat up organised crime figures,

they're going to shoot them.

I mean, who knows what he's thinking.

The tragic contradiction is striking.

While Elvis publicly pledges to help fight America's growing drug crisis,

he's quietly sinking deeper into his own,

trapped in a fog of prescription medication and dependency.

It's clearly affecting his personal life -

so much so that he grows distant, from his wife, Priscilla,

and she starts having an affair.

As Elvis Presley's drug use grows ever bigger,

his relationship with his wife, Priscilla, falters,

and she seeks comfort in the arms of another man.

Now, the person she has an affair with is a guy called Mike Stone.

That's a karate instructor.

Elvis got very upset.

He told his mates, "I want to kill the guy.

"Let's kill him."

He asks members of the Memphis Mafia to see if they can hire a hit man

to have him killed.

He's deadly serious, and they actually go to the extent

of tracking down a mob man who is going to kill Priscilla's lover.

Luckily, Elvis steps back - this time.

But episodes like this are becoming routine.

Sudden fits of rage, bizarre ultimatums,

and a dangerous drift from reality.

In February 1972, after less than five years of marriage,

Elvis and Priscilla officially separate.

For Elvis, it's a crushing emotional blow,

one that pushes him deeper into loneliness, drugs and dependency.

As his personal life unravels,

so too does his grip on the world around him.

One of the reasons that Elvis was so self-destructive...

..is that he realised Vegas was a treadmill

that he could never get off,

because Las Vegas owned the Colonel,

and the Colonel owned him.

And so, he numbed himself out with pills and guns,

and whatever diversion he could think of.

Perhaps it's the amount of time he has spent in Las Vegas,

or the countless rumours,

but Elvis has finally realised that he isn't trapped in the city

by fame or the stage lights.

He's trapped by Colonel Parker's mounting gambling debts.

Those debts tie him to the casinos,

chaining him to a contract he can't escape.

With the pressure building, he pulls aside one of

the most trusted members of the Memphis Mafia

to share the weight of the burden he's been carrying.

And one of them was a portly guy named Lamar Fike.

And, of all the guys, really,

only Lamar Fike would get in his face and talk turkey with him.

And one night, early, early in the morning, really,

they had a heart-to-heart, and he said, "Lamar,

"I'll play this town till I die.

"That old son of a bitch owes so much money that they own him,

"and they're trying to own me.

"I'm talking all the way back to the Sahara Hotel and Milton Prell."

But it isn't just the lure of the casinos that keeps

the Colonel tethered to Vegas.

Although Elvis is offered lucrative deals to perform

outside of the United States, the Colonel turns them down

for reasons that very few people know.

For years, rumours have swirled within Elvis' inner circle

that Parker isn't from the South at all,

and that if he ever leaves the country,

he might not be able to return.

The fellows at RCA really began to suspect this when,

A, Colonel did not go to Germany when Elvis was in the Army,

and especially when, B, he never took Elvis overseas.

I said to the Colonel, "Why can't Elvis come to Britain?"

He was huge in England.

And he said, "Well, Mrs Parker isn't very well right now,"

but that was just an excuse.

The real reason was because the Colonel had no passport,

and couldn't let Elvis out of his sight,

and wasn't going to risk some other guy coming along and saying,

"I can do a better job for you."

Parker's real name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk.

Born in 1909 in the Netherlands,

he had stowed away on a ship to America as a young man,

building his career in show business under a new identity.

But he was meticulous in concealing the truth of his past

from everyone around him.

His wife, his first wife,

didn't even know he was from Holland.

But he could've cleared up his illegal status

with one phone call.

It would have been very easy for him,

as he had lots of friends in the US government,

including Lyndon Johnson, who was his pal.

So, you have to ask, why didn't the Colonel become a US citizen,

particularly when he was being offered millions of dollars

for one performance for Elvis overseas?

Well, the Colonel got into some kind of trouble in Holland.

Exactly what, we don't know.

What I can tell you for certain, is two things.

He was implicated in a murder.

Only privately, by a letter, an anonymous letter -

which I have seen.

But I can tell you with certainty that, also,

he had a file in the central police records in The Hague.

And when a reporter went to find it in the '80s,

there was a note there that said the file had been removed

by the Dutch state consulate.

Whatever it was, there was something in Holland

that he was frightened about coming to light,

and he wanted no background checks.

And his grand title of Colonel?

It was a gimmick, designed to mask the truth

and give him an air of charm and authority.

The Colonel wanted to be important.

He had been in the US Army,

he had been a private first class,

but he ran away to join the circus.

He had a carny friend who worked for the governor of Louisiana,

Jimmie Davis,

and so, he arranged to be an honorary colonel.

After the war, if you announced yourself as a colonel,

you got all kinds of perks.

You got lots of things put in your lap for such a title.

He thought that was hilarious.

And so, he said, after he got this honorary colonelship,

"From now on, you will address me as Colonel."

The mid-1970s, after two decades together,

the bond between Elvis and the Colonel is fractured.

Elvis, once lean and electric, is now a wreck.

Exhausted, overweight, and barely holding it together.

People who were close to Elvis were concerned.

One of Elvis' old pals from Memphis, Jerry Schilling,

he came to see Elvis in around '76,

saw his show, and was just appalled

at how he looked and how he sounded,

and he could tell that there was such deterioration.

He was bloated from all these drugs.

He had legitimate medical problems.

His diet was terrible - he ate like a teenager.

He was living a life that would have killed most people

long before it killed him.

And it was clear to people, something was really wrong.

And I think the Colonel just purposely looked away,

and just went for the regular pay days,

and didn't look out for his artist.

In the midst of this decline, Hollywood throws Elvis a lifeline.

For the first time in years,

a prestigious leading role playing

a fading superstar comes Elvis' way.

But to his bewilderment, the Colonel kills the deal.

Sometime in the mid '70s,

Barbra Streisand actually came to Elvis and offered him

the co-starring role in the remake of A Star Is Born.

Elvis, looking for something different to do besides

Las Vegas and touring, really jumped at the chance.

But the Colonel made the deal so difficult,

demanded so much money,

and I think probably felt it wasn't really the right thing for Elvis.

I mean, perhaps one of the reasons Colonel Tom vetoed him

from doing A Star Is Born is the fact that he realised

his client shouldn't be starring as a washed-up rock star,

especially when he's trying to claw back his own career.

The other reason was, he maybe thought,

Elvis is in such a bad state with drugs,

he won't be able to do it.

I think the Colonel just manipulated the deal,

made the deal so difficult,

that Streisand and her team finally just opted out.

After the collapse of A Star Is Born,

Elvis' downward spiral accelerates.

Perhaps due to his paranoia and distrust,

Elvis fires three long-time bodyguards.

They retaliate with a tell-all memoir published in 1977

that exposes Elvis' drug use to the public for the first time,

igniting a scandal.

Early summer 1977.

Elvis drifts between the dazzle of the stage

and the quiet shadows of his Memphis mansion, Graceland.

He's swollen, exhausted,

and drowning in prescription drugs.

But the show goes on... because it has to.

By 1977, it's clear Elvis is not well.

You can see it in concert footage.

He's a beast.

Visibly larger, sweatier, his performances are more erratic.

He was just getting too loose and lazy,

and he was going off on tangents in the middle of sets.

Sometimes you couldn't even understand him.

But he keeps turning up, he keeps performing.

He keeps bringing the people his shows.

He's giving them what they want.

It's a hot, August night in Memphis,

and Elvis is enjoying a brief moment of calm -

a rare pause from the relentless demands of life on the stage.

Elvis was due for another stint in Vegas.

He was in Memphis, getting ready to fly on his next tour date.

Before, he was seeing friends,

they played racquetball in the middle of the night.

At some point in the early morning hours,

Elvis' girlfriend at the time, Ginger Alden,

found him in the bathroom, keeled over.

The King is dead.

Elvis Presley is officially pronounced dead at 3.30pm

on August 16th, 1977,

at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

He is just 42 years old.

It came as a huge shock not just to Elvis' entourage, but,

as we know, to the whole nation.

His death, in some ways, seemed to be the end of an era.

The death of Elvis was really one of the most traumatic events

in rock-and-roll history.

People don't want to accept that God is dead.

They don't want to accept that it's over.

After Elvis' death, rumours and conspiracies spread like wildfire,

fuelled by mystery and grief.

Despite a public autopsy that says he died of heart failure,

the speculation is endless.

People are saying he was murdered,

different ways he died.

There's also speculation that Elvis was murdered by the mob.

Maybe the Colonel owed too much money to the mob.

Maybe the mafia wanted to control his career,

and Colonel Tom wouldn't sign him over.

The theories around the mafia involved with his death are endless.

Probably none of it is true,

but it doesn't stop the rumour mill from carrying on.

Despite all the wild theories,

Elvis Presley is truly gone.

Yet the Colonel remains,

strangely composed, untouched by grief,

as if the loss of the world's most famous musician is just

another business transaction.

He attended the funeral wearing a Hawaiian shirt -

which some people thought was disrespectful,

but he told Elvis' guys not to wear suits,

but to dress the way Elvis knew them.

That's the way he would want to remember them.

With his client gone, the Colonel's focus doesn't waver,

relying on earlier agreements

that entitle him to half of Elvis Presley's earnings.

Parker keeps himself tied to the King's income

even after Elvis' death.

On the day that Elvis' body was laid out,

the Colonel went to Vernon Presley, his father, and said,

"This changes nothing"...

..and had Vernon sign a piece of paper

to keep the 50% in play.

What the Colonel said publicly is that Elvis wasn't dead,

just the body was gone.

So, for Colonel, it was business as usual.

It didn't take him long before he was trying to see

what he could do with the Elvis brand.

He went to work immediately after finding out Elvis had died,

to make sure that RCA pressing plants were at full speed.

He had meetings regarding the merchandising.

And this sounds really cold on the surface,

but you could also argue that he was indeed taking care of business.

A year after Elvis' death,

the Colonel organised a kind of Elvis celebration in Las Vegas,

to kind of mark the one-year anniversary of his death,

and attracted a lot of people.

And I think it was the start of Elvis becoming

this kind of symbol for Las Vegas.

After Elvis' death,

Colonel Tom Parker becomes even more focused on profiting

from his late client's legacy,

but questions begin to surface.

In the early 1980s, Elvis Presley's estate sues Parker,

accusing him of syphoning off vast sums of money for himself.

In the ensuing legal battles,

Parker finally reveals the truth about his real identity.

Colonel answered that he could not be sued in federal court

because he was not an American citizen.

The news that Colonel Tom Parker is actually Dutch

reverberates around the world.

But the scrutiny of this investigation

takes its toll on Parker.

In 1983, he is forced to relinquish all rights and control

over Elvis' estate.

Stripped of his power, Parker retreats to Las Vegas,

moving into a suite at the Las Vegas Hilton -

formerly known as the International,

where Elvis once reigned.

The Colonel was always not particularly popular among

the general rock-and-roll music community,

because they felt that he kind of stymied Elvis' career

after his initial rise to fame.

So, when they found out that he wasn't what he made out to be,

I think that went along with people's distrust of the Colonel,

who was this huckster and con man.

The Colonel actually ended up staying in Las Vegas,

becoming a consultant with the Hilton Hotel.

But he becomes a shadow of his former self.

People begin to see him as a pathetic figure.

Everyone knows he has become this notorious compulsive gambler.

The addiction was so harsh that it got to where

the Colonel wouldn't even go down on the floor.

He'd have the roulette wheel brought up to his room.

Vegas was the place that he ended up with.

It's the place he brought Elvis to at the beginning, in '56,

and it was the place he ended.

Colonel Tom Parker dies in Las Vegas in 1997,

aged 87.

To some, he was a brilliant showman.

To others, a manipulative fraud who exploited Elvis for decades.

Built on falsehoods, Parker's life was a long con.

And in protecting his lies,

he made decisions that would define -

and ultimately derail - Elvis Presley,

including the choice to bring the King of Rock and Roll

into a city built by crime.

When Colonel Tom Parker dies in 1997,

the Las Vegas that tourists saw in that year

was so dramatically different than the Las Vegas

that Colonel Parker saw in the late 1940s.

Went from being the mob town, the Rat Pack environment,

to a place that was very corporate.

The casinos were ten times bigger than the ones he saw

when he first got here.

Colonel Tom is a fascinating figure,

and there have been recent attempts to reappraise his career.

That the Colonel really was a good force in Elvis' life,

and that he really was doing his best to look after Elvis

as a client.

I'm not sure I entirely believe it.

The Colonel always used his client as a human shield

to conceal his secrets - of his illegal status,

of his shady dealings,

of his financial overreaching,

and his associations with the criminal underground.

He was definitely a shady figure

with some very nefarious sides to his life.

I think he knew the mob.

I think he knew how to use the mob to steer Elvis' career -

and keep them away from him, as well, and at the end of the day,

he is a really, really interesting, multifaceted figure.

Someone who knew both the light and the dark,

and someone who was able to look after Elvis,

but also control him.

Elvis Presley came from nothing and became everything.

Vegas was both his kingdom and his undoing.

The stage gave him new life,

but also helped drain it away.

And yet, his presence changed the city,

helping to sweep aside the old crime-riddled Vegas,

transforming it into the capital of spectacle.

I think Elvis may have contributed to the diminishment of

the mob influence in Las Vegas,

because it was Elvis - and nobody else -

who drew those crowds.

That did contribute to the gradual disappearance of the mob.

Half a century after his death,

Elvis is still everywhere in Las Vegas,

from street names and wedding chapels,

to the endless parade of rhinestone-studded impersonators.

His show was the blueprint for everything that followed -

the mega residencies, the arena-scale productions,

the billion-dollar strip.

A new kind of Vegas - bigger, brighter,

and far beyond the reach of the famous and infamous figures

who once ruled it.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media