View source for Toenails of Elvis Presley

 re;1975.10;em: 

'''Toenails of Elvis Presley.''' Toenails, wax, gold leaf, and human toenails. Clipped ca. 1974, c.e. in a Las Vegas hotel suite, actual relics of the Body of the King, Las Vegas, 1972. The following is the original museum label from the 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.''

(Pre-1997 Museum. Formerly catalog number 50)