Elvis - Aloha from Hawaii

Elvis - Aloha from Hawaii (1973)

The concert seen around the world

A 1973 concert by Elvis Presley that was broadcast live via satellite on January 14, 1973. The concert took place at the Honolulu International Center in Honolulu and aired in over 40 countries across Asia and Europe. Viewing figures have been estimated at over 1 billion viewers world wide, and the show was the most expensive entertainment special at the time, costing $2.5 million.

Date of release
1973-01-14
TMDB
8.2 / 10 (51)
Runtime
1h 5m
Genres
Music, Documentary
Director
Marty Pasetta

Casting

Interesting facts

Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite is a concert starring American singer Elvis Presley that took place at the Honolulu International Center and was broadcast live via satellite to audiences in Asia and Oceania on January 14, 1973. The show was presented with a delay in Europe. In the United States, to avoid a programming conflict with Super Bowl VII and Elvis on Tour which was playing in cinemas at the time, NBC opted to air a ninety-minute television special of the concert on April 4.

Production

On September 4, the final day of Presley's 59-show engagement at the Las Vegas Hilton, Parker announced at a press conference that the live NBC television special, Aloha from Hawaii, would take place in January 1973 in Hawaii. Parker had the idea in February 1972, when he saw the live broadcast of Richard Nixon's visit to China. Parker approached NBC's president Tom Sarnoff with the proposition.

Sarnoff suggested Marty Pasetta produce the special. Pasetta had produced television specials for Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Glen Campbell, and Don Ho's five specials, filmed on location in Hawaii. He had also produced broadcasts of the Oscars, Emmys, and Grammys. Presley was interested in a producer who could capture the atmosphere of a live concert. Pasetta attended Presley's concert in Long Beach on November 15.

RCA Records Tours, founded by RCA Records at Parker's request to manage the promotion of Presley's tours, would receive US$1 million (equivalent to $7.25 million in 2025) from NBC for the special. RCA would receive US$100,000 (equivalent to US$725,300 in 2025), while Presley and Parker would receive US$900,000 (equivalent to $6.53 million in 2025) to be split between them.

Eddie Sherman, a Honolulu Advertiser writer, contacted Parker with the idea of giving the proceeds of the concert admissions to a charity he had recently established. Sherman had worked with Parker to promote Presley's 1961 benefit concert for the construction of the USS Arizona Memorial. Since Parker could not charge a television audience for tickets, Sherman proposed taking donations for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund instead.

Pasetta took sketches of his ideas for the stage to Parker. He envisioned the band placed on a riser behind Presley. The stage was to be built low to allow the audience proximity to him, with a runway to allow Presley to move towards them.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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