Elvis Presley & Liberace 1956 Vintage Photo – Riviera Hotel Las Vegas

Description

One of the great meetings of 1950s American show business: Elvis Presley and Liberace backstage at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas in November 1956, clowning for photographers by trading not only instruments but personas. Liberace wears Elvis’s unmistakable striped jacket and holds his guitar while Elvis, his face turned away from the camera, sits at Liberace’s piano wearing the pianist’s glittering sequined jacket. Other photographs from the session show the pair facing the cameras with Liberace’s trademark candelabra, and the resulting pictures were distributed nationally—a wonderfully calculated collision between the reigning king of flamboyant adult entertainment and the 21-year-old phenomenon who was rewriting American popular culture.

What makes this photograph especially compelling is that it’s an image that was never really supposed to leave the photographer’s studio. Unlike the familiar publicity shots from the session, Elvis isn’t even facing the camera—he’s turned away at Liberace’s piano while Liberace, wearing Elvis’s striped jacket, works the guitar and another photographer stands alongside them, camera in hand. It’s an outtake rather than the polished publicity image: a moment between the moments everyone was supposed to see. I have been unable to locate another example of this particular image online, while reproductions of the familiar posed photographs are readily available. This is an original vintage photographic print, not a modern digital reproduction—a rare, wonderfully imperfect glimpse behind one of the most famous Elvis and Liberace photo sessions of the 1950s.

A killer piece of 1950s Las Vegas and rock-and-roll history—and a wonderfully different image from one of the most famous Elvis/Liberace photo sessions.