Elvis Has Left the Building

Elvis Has Left the Building is a 2004 film directed by Joel Zwick and starring Kim Basinger as a cosmetics saleswoman who accidentally kills a series of Elvis impersonators as they travel to a convention in Las Vegas.John Corbett plays an advertising executive and her love interest. Tom Hanks has a cameo appearance as one of the dead Elvis impersonators. Angie Dickinson plays Basinger's mother, a former mechanic for the real Elvis.

Plot

The film opens with Harmony (Basinger) driving down a long, winding road, the music of Elvis playing on the radio. She feels that her life is empty and artificial. She is a traveling cosmetic saleswoman, setting up "Pink Lady" training seminars in the western portion of the United States. When she is asked if she's "one of those Mary Kaye ladies," she replies, "No, we're pink, they're more salmon." While she is popular and successful selling "Pink Lady," there is nothing real or honest in her life.

As Harmony travels around the country, trying to figure out what is missing from her life, Elvis impersonators keep dying in her wake. She is romantically pursued by Miles (Corbett).

Elvis has left the building

"Elvis has left the building" is a phrase that was often used by public address announcers at the conclusion of Elvis Presley concerts in order to disperse audiences who lingered in hopes of an encore. It has since become a catchphrase and punchline.

Origin

The phrase was first used by promoter Horace Lee Logan on December 15, 1956, near Shreveport, Louisiana, to plead with concert-goers not to remain in a concert hall in hopes of seeing Elvis, as he had already left. The full quotation was:

"All right, all right, Elvis has left the building. I've told you absolutely straight up to this point. You know that. He has left the building. He left the stage and went out the back with the policemen and he is now gone from the building."

"Elvis has left the building" is also heard at the end of Elvis' March 1961 Pearl Harbor Memorial benefit concert, after Elvis exits at the end of "Hound Dog" and a short coda from the band.

Throughout the 1970s, the phrase was captured on record several times, spoken by Al Dvorin. In later years the phrase would be spoken by some of Presley's backup singers to calm down the audience after concerts.