The girls were already in costume when the complaints started.
This was June 1968 at NBC’s studios in Burbank, California. Elvis Presley was filming his first TV special, and one scene had the network nervous before a single frame aired.
Elvis really needed this show to work. He’d spent most of the 1960s making movies while his records cooled off, and with the Beatles owning the charts, plenty of people figured he was finished.
So director Steve Binder, a young TV whiz who had never worked with Elvis, built the show around a story. A kid with a guitar leaves home to chase fame, and along the way he drifts through a carnival, a nightclub and some rougher spots before he finally becomes the star he dreamed of.
One of those rough spots was a house full of women.
The set was dressed up like a fancy house of ill repute, with dancers in revealing outfits everywhere. Elvis walked in and sang a brassy tune called “Let Yourself Go.” Among the women he met there was a shy, innocent girl who didn’t seem to belong.
She was played by Susan Henning, a 20-year-old blonde. Decades on, she laughed about the role. “I was a virgin hooker,” she said. “I take pride in that.”
NBC executives were the ones who started calling it “the bordello scene,” and the name stuck.
The censors actually approved it. But someone complained that the dancers showed too much cleavage, so the costume team stitched black netting over the tops of their outfits. Binder asked if that would do, and everyone said yes, so as far as he was concerned the matter was settled.
The show’s sponsor, the Singer sewing machine company, wasn’t so sure. According to Binder, an executive flew in from New York to make the final call, and he didn’t take long.
“No, we can’t show that.”
Graceland later dug into the story behind the special, including how close Elvis came to never making it at all.
Gates of Graceland: Secrets of the ’68 Special
Binder was furious. He’d been promised the scene would air, and he later said he felt lied to.
The special went out on NBC on December 3, 1968. Titled simply Elvis, it was a monster hit, the most-watched show of the whole season, and it brought Elvis roaring back to life.
But viewers that night only caught bits and pieces of the house full of women. The full number sat in NBC’s vault for almost nine years.
Then, in August 1977, Elvis died at Graceland. He was 42.
That November, NBC put together a three-hour tribute hosted by his old co-star Ann-Margret. Binder said a staffer grabbed his longer director’s cut from the archive instead of the shorter broadcast version, and so the bordello scene went out on national TV for the first time.
By then nobody blinked. “America had moved on by that time,” Binder said.
Henning has also talked on camera about what it was like on that set with Elvis, and her memories are worth a listen.
Susan Henning Talks About Elvis and the 1968 Comeback Special
These days the scene is part of the official Comeback Special releases. If you want to see the number Singer kept off the air, black netting and all, it’s below.