Picture on the left is the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. It straddles, but does not touch the ship. 

In 1961, during the filming of Wild in the Country in Napa, CA, Elvis and manager Tom Parker became aware of the USS Arizona Memorial project in Hawaii.

Both men loved the islands and all America as well. The USS Arizona was the resting place for 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and marines killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In 1958, president Eisenhower approved the creation of a National Memorial with a budget of $500,000, but it had to be privately financed, with $200,000 subsidized by the government. However, even though Hawaii contributed $50,000 to the project, interest had slowed to a halt.

Elvis and Parker came up with the idea of doing a concert to both, raise money for it, and call attention to the project. On March 25, 1961, during the production of Blue Hawaii, Elvis performed the benefit concert.

High ranking military men called Parker to get free tickets. Parker replied, “No free tickets on this one. Elvis and I bought our own tickets to the show.”

The concert raised $62,000, the largest single contribution to the project. The memorial was completed and opened to the public in 1962.

Twelve years later, Elvis returned to Hawaii for his live satellite around the world broadcast. It cost 2.5 million dollars to produce, the most expensive entertainment special at the time and was seen by 51% of the viewing audience. It was NBC’s highest rated program of the year.

Elvis looked and sounded great singing I'll Remember You written by prolific Hawaiian song writer Kue Lee as a farewell to his family. All the ticket sale money from this concert went to the Kue Lee Cancer Fund in Hawaii.

The next day Elvis' friends and bodyguards knocked on his door to take him to their planned visit to the USS Arizona memorial. They were greeted by Elvis’ girlfriend Linda Thompson who said, “Elvis isn’t feeling well and can’t go.”

This leads one to believe bodyguard Sonny West about the Barbara Streisand version of A Star is Born. Sonny said:

“People blame Tom Parker for stopping Elvis from being in that movie by putting to many demands of money and staring credit onto the project. But that’s not true . After Elvis’ meeting with Streisand, yes, he was excited, but after a while he started coming up with all kinds of excuses not to do it. So he had Tom Parker kill Elvis' involvment in it and take the blame.”

One can assume, if Elvis didn’t have the health to make a simple local trip to the Arizona Memorial which he helped build, than he wouldn’t have had the energy for the required daily grind of making a movie which is all about showing up every day, ready to work.

Recently Barbara Streisand said, “Though it would have been monumental to have Elvis in the movie, Kris (Kristofferson) was perfect in the part.”

That said, Elvis fans are still wondering what it would have been like for Elvis to be singing Watch Closely Now in front of thousands of fans, instead of Kris.

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Below link is Elvis singing I'll Remember You at the '73 concert. If you're a fan, don't miss it.