Hilton retiree reflects on Elvis, glamour, life lived in Vegas.

 

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Janie Steele hugs Elvis Presley in this 1960s photo. Steele has retired after nearly 30 years at the Hilton, where she worked in photography and bookkeeping

 

The 67-year-old photographer-turned-bookkeeper retired Friday from the Las Vegas Hilton, where she hobnobbed with Elvis Presley and other celebrities during her almost 30 years at the venue.

 

“When I feel sorry for myself about not having done anything, I think that for somebody who thought they would never leave their small town, I’ve seen and done quite a lot,” says Steele, a native of Westminster, S.C., population 2,763.

 

As Steele thought of retirement, she began turning back her pages:

 

She saw Ike & Tina Turner, Redd Foxx and Frankie Laine at the Hilton lounges and such memorable entertainers as Barbra Streisand, Bill Cosby, Juliet Prowse and Maurice Chevalier with the Kim Sisters at showrooms around town.

 

And of course, Elvis.

 

Steele went to work at the Hilton — then the International Hotel — as a photographer in 1970. Streisand was the headliner at the International when it opened in 1969, but then it was Elvis.

 

“He would do two shows a night, seven nights a week, for four weeks,” Steele says. “I don’t know how he did it, but that’s how all the entertainers used to do here. They never had a day off.”

 

She lost track of how many times she saw Elvis. She would attend his shows even if she had to pay for them. She often joined members of the public who were invited to his suite.

 

“It was the only way he could meet normal people,” Steele says. “They would just invite people up to his rooms. Music would be playing. He’d sometimes demonstrate his karate kicks. He’d chitchat with everyone, mingle with the little groups of people who were all around the suite. He was such a gentleman to me. It breaks my heart that things happened the way they did.”

 

It wasn’t unusual for her to bump into Priscilla Presley and their daughter, Lisa Marie. “The last time I saw Lisa Marie was in the showroom. She was about 6 years old. A gorgeous child.”

 

When Steele arrived from South Carolina in 1964, she worked in data processing at the Nevada Test Site. “A bus would pick up employees in the morning and take us home in the evening. It was 180 miles round-trip, an hour and a half each way.”

 

She lived in the Naked City neighborhood near South Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue. In those days it was a trendy part of town where showgirls lived and sunbathed by the pools, hence its nickname. “I never saw anyone naked, but they did have awfully tiny little bikinis.”

 

She married Charlie Steele, music teacher by day and drummer in relief bands in the casinos by night, and they moved to different parts of town. “I loved Las Vegas back then. You could go anywhere in 15 or 20 minutes.”

 

After her job at the test site ended, she went to work taking pictures in the Hilton’s showroom and lounges. “I was really shy. I had the hardest time walking up to people and asking them if they wanted their picture taken.”

 

She moved back to South Carolina for four years but returned to Las Vegas and worked at Saks Fifth Avenue when the Fashion Show Mall opened in 1981. She returned to the Hilton to work in the accounting department. “When I left, Siegfried & Roy were a small part of ‘The Lido’ show at the Stardust. When I came back, they had a show of their own.”

 

Her fondest memory of Old Vegas?

 

“I always wanted to live where people wore long gowns and gloves and fixed their hair,” she says. “When I first moved here, that’s what you did. You dressed up.”

 

2008/04/22 by Jerry Fink - www.lasvegassun.com / www.epgold.com

Great reading Carole

 

 

I would have done the same as her too, i would have paid to see Elvis's shows too, even if i did work there. :cheer: Can you imagine all those shows, wow, how wonderful to see Elvis all those times every day. :yahoo: :wub:

 

It would have been fantastic to have her job, a very very lucky lady

 

 

Local fans still have vivid memories of brushes with Elvis:

 

In the wonderful world of Elvis Presley fandom, there's always more.

Unflagging interest in all things Elvis means that even 30 years after Presley's death, there are more stories to hear and more images to see. In that sense, the King is definitely not dead.

 

Two weeks ago, after reading an Associated Press story about newly discovered 1972 Presley concert photos, I shared a picture I have. It shows Presley in the 1950s, when he apparently visited the Dallas radio station KLIF. My late father-in-law David Muhlstein, a radio news director there, is standing right next to Elvis.

 

Seeing that was all it took to coax a few Herald readers into sharing their personal Presley pictures. I also heard from far-flung Elvis fanatics, who sent theories about my photo. A Danish gentleman, Brian Petersen, is such an Elvis aficionado he believes he can precisely pinpoint the date of my picture -- Aug. 10, 1956. Another e-mail directed me to a message board where Elvis fans guessed at the timing of my photo based on Presley's sideburns.

 

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My goal was to find other candid shots.

 

Diane Woodall's snapshot may be the fuzziest of the bunch, but the Everett woman has a good story to go with it. Her mother, Arlene Dinsmore, worked at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. She was there while Presley was filming "It Happened at the World's Fair."

 

Along with the picture her mother took -- Presley flanked by police officers -- Woodall sent a statement her mom wrote about the scene.

 

Dinsmore wrote that during the time Presley was at the fair, "September Fourth to the 17th, 1962," he was walking to the Seattle Monorail one day with two police officers. "I rushed up to him and grabbed his arm and told him I had two daughters who would like his autograph. He very kindly signed two World's Fair postcards for me," she wrote.

 

In 1999, Woodall's mother went so far as to have her statement, with the Presley picture attached, signed and stamped by a notary public.

 

The story behind it may be a riddle, but the photo Mark Hibbert sent looks to be a sharp-looking Elvis posed with a hotel maid -- to me, that maid looks pretty nervous. Hibbert of Marysville said the picture was taken by his late grandmother, Wynn Barry, who was a beautician at Seattle's posh Olympic Hotel.

 

Describing Barry as quite a character, Hibbert said she lived an elegant life in San Francisco before divorcing and moving here. At the Olympic, she once styled the hair of opera star Maria Callas, among other famous clients. During the Seattle filming of "Cinderella Liberty," Hibbert said, his grandmother landed his brother, Scott, a role as an extra in the 1973 James Caan movie.

 

About the Presley photo, though, Hibbert is short on details. Searching the Internet, where Elvis Web sites trace an almost day-by-day history of Presley's life, I could find no mention of him being in Seattle in 1966 -- the year marked on the photo's border. Along with his 1962 World's Fair visit, Presley sang at the old Sicks Stadium and in Tacoma on Sept. 1, 1957. HistoryLink.org, an online encyclopedia of Washington state, puts Presley in Vancouver, B.C., and in Spokane on Aug. 31, 1957.

 

Perhaps Elvis made an unreported Seattle visit, or Hibbert's grandmother photographed him on her travels elsewhere. "If my grandmother saw Elvis, she would have pinned him down," said Hibbert, who runs a Marysville music studio, Whiskey Ridge Recording.

 

In the mid-1960s, Hibbert played bass guitar in a successful local band, Axis Drive. The band was a regular at Seattle's Warehouse Tavern, and once backed up Bobby Sherman. It was hardly Elvis fever, but Hibbert recalls girls throwing jelly beans at the band.

 

Retired KJR disc jockey Danny Holiday, who lives near Stanwood, sent me a picture of Presley taken with Holiday's mentor and close friend, Red Robinson.

 

Taken at Vancouver's Empire Stadium on Aug. 31, 1957, the day before Presley played Seattle, it shows a 22-year-old Elvis with Robinson, then 20. Robinson, who emceed the Vancouver concert and is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is still heard on Vancouver's CLEAR-FM, 104.9, every Saturday night.

 

A half-century ago, Holiday said he went with his parents to Vancouver to see Elvis. "The Vancouver show only lasted 20 minutes because the crowd rushed the stage," Holiday said.

 

In the summer of '57, Presley's "Teddy Bear" had been a No. 1 hit. With the smoldering look of a star at his peak, Presley posed with the fresh-faced Robinson while holding a cute prop, a plush toy bear.

 

"Red still has the bear wrapped in plastic," Holiday said.

 

(News, Source: Julie Muhlstein, Herald Columnist / www.epgold.com)