Toenails of Elvis Presley

Toenails of Elvis Presley. Human toenails, wax, gold leaf, and ponderous frame. Clipped ca. 1972, c.e. in a Las Vegas hotel suite.

re.1975.10.em (Pre-1997 Museum. Formerly catalog number 50)

Original Label from South Main Street Exhibition

These souvenirs were retrieved while still recently clipped by a hotel services employee, Earlene Vesta Dunnan in 1972 from the tile floor of the bathroom of the penthouse suite of the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, while executing her morning room service and the great entertainer was deep in somnambulate torpor in a satin and velour lined womb—a bedroom suite high above the desert dawn. Falling upon hard times, the elderly woman, to augment her social security payments, parted with precious artifacts only at the prompting of a member of a collection agency, who gently reminded her that she was in arrears, and either her sectional sofa or the relics would have to go. The repossessor then sold his acquisition to a curiosity seeker in Cincinnati, who does a large trade in Antiques, Chatzkahs, and Curiosities.