Tourists kneel over Elvis Presley’s name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame every day, snapping the same photo by the thousand. It looks like the ultimate image of a showbiz king crowned by the movie capital.
The reality is stranger. Elvis got his Hollywood star in 1960 while he was still a U.S. Army sergeant in Germany, and the Walk itself was essentially a construction zone.
To understand what that sidewalk really says about Elvis, you have to look closely at the exact date, the location drama, and the way Hollywood tried to tame rock and roll’s most dangerous man.
Elvis’s Hollywood star: quick facts
Before we dive into the controversy, here are the core details that most historians agree on.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Ceremony date (official) | February 8, 1960 |
| Category | Recording (not film) |
| Original address | 6777 Hollywood Blvd |
| Elvis’s presence | Absent – he was still in the Army |
| Later history | Star later associated with the Hollywood & La Brea “Goddess” gazebo |
The official version: 8 February 1960 at 6777 Hollywood Blvd
If you want the clean, bureaucratic answer to “when did Elvis get his Hollywood star,” you go to the institution that runs the Walk. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce lists Elvis Presley’s ceremony date as February 8, 1960, with his star in the Recording category at 6777 Hollywood Boulevard.
That listing also makes clear that the star was for his work as a recording artist, not his movies. By early 1960 he was already a bankable film name, but Hollywood chose to honor the kid who had detonated jukeboxes long before he ever kissed a co-star on camera.
On paper, then, it looks simple: February 8, 1960, Elvis joins the very first wave of names on the Walk of Fame, immortalized in pink terrazzo and brass.
A star on a half-finished sidewalk
The strange part is what the street looked like that week. According to a detailed history of the project, February 8, 1960 is also the date construction officially began on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The Walk would not be dedicated until later that year, and the first 1,558 stars were not fully unveiled until the following spring. In other words, Elvis’s official “ceremony date” lines up less with a glamorous unveiling and more with the bureaucrats and contractors finally breaking ground.
Hollywood was quite literally pouring concrete around his name while the man himself was still thousands of miles away, saluting officers in Germany.
February 8 or 9? Inside the fan fight over the date
Things get more interesting once you leave officialdom and wander into fan research. A long investigative piece from the Elvis Information Network argues that the real public dedication of the first stars took place on February 9, 1960, with Joanne Woodward touted as the first and Elvis included in the same inaugural group.
That article reproduces the wording of Elvis’s personal Walk of Fame award plaque, which explicitly references the placement of his star on February 9, 1960. It also places his original star between Highland Avenue and McCadden Place at 6777 Hollywood Boulevard, and notes that he could not attend because he was still stationed in Germany.
So which date is “right” – the 8th or the 9th? The safest reading is that the Chamber records February 8 as the official start of the project and Elvis’s paperwork date, while the fan community hangs on to the 9th as the day the first stars, including his, were actually unveiled to the public. For once, both sides might be correct, just talking about different kinds of ceremonies.
Where was Elvis when Hollywood put his name in stone?
From Elvis’s point of view, the timing is almost surreal. Graceland’s own timeline of his life notes that he was still in Germany through February 1960, promoted to sergeant and wrapping up his service at Ray Barracks.
He left Germany on March 2, arrived in New Jersey the next day for a press conference, and was officially discharged from active duty on March 5. Only then did he board a train for Memphis, where he was greeted by the usual wall of flashbulbs and screaming fans.
So when Hollywood immortalized him on the sidewalk, Elvis was in uniform, living in barracks, eating mess-hall food and wondering if two years out of the spotlight had killed his career. The Walk of Fame saw a safe legend where the man himself still felt like a question mark.
From 6777 Hollywood Blvd to the “Hollywood Goddess”
Even the location of Elvis’s star has not stayed fixed. A Los Angeles travel feature on Presley landmarks notes that he originally received his star at 6777 Hollywood Boulevard in the Recording category on February 8, 1960, but that it was later moved to its current position beside The Beatles’ star beneath the metallic “Hollywood Goddess” gazebo at Hollywood and La Brea.
That cluster of icons says a lot. The kid who terrified parents in 1956 now lies on the pavement next to the band that supposedly dethroned him, both swallowed by the same tourist ritual of selfies and souvenir snow globes.
It is hard not to see the relocation as symbolic: the city re-arranging its gods to fit a newer, neater origin myth for pop culture.
Why Hollywood locked the King into terrazzo so early
By 1960, Elvis was only 25, but his impact was already volcanic. A history of his Army induction points out that his two years in uniform marked a clean break between the wild early rock and roll records and the more polished, often softer material that came later.
By the time the Walk of Fame committees were picking names, Elvis had stacked up chart-topping singles, scandalized television censors, and made his film debut in “Love Me Tender.” For the Hollywood establishment, putting his name in the sidewalk was not just an honor – it was a way of freezing a once-scary phenomenon into something literally concrete and civic.
You could argue that the Walk of Fame star marks the moment the entertainment industry stopped treating Elvis as a threat and started treating him as a brand: a safe, bankable symbol that could sell postcards even while the real man was out of sight in a foreign barracks.
The sound of 1960 Elvis: the star before the comeback
Musically, 1960 is a pivot. Just weeks after returning from the Army, Elvis entered RCA’s Studio B in Nashville for the sessions that became the album “Elvis Is Back!” – recorded between March 20 and April 4 and released in April 1960 as his first stereo LP.
On that record you hear a different kind of power: less rockabilly thrash, more range, more control, a singer comfortable sliding between blues, pop ballads and smooth crooning. It is a mature voice that still carries the bite of the Sun Records years, but wrapped in big-league production.
Here is the twist: by the time those sessions started, his Hollywood star was already in the ground. The sidewalk honor is technically for “Recording,” yet it was granted before he cut the music that would define his post-Army career.
Myths, misprints and why Elvis stories never stay tidy
The muddle over Elvis’s star – two possible dates, shifting locations, plaque wording versus official listings – is not a one-off. Elvis tales almost never stay nailed to the facts for long.
Take the famous story of him buying a Cadillac for a woman at a Memphis dealership. A detailed investigation published on this very site shows how a documented gift to a 33-year-old bank teller morphed over time into a gauzy fable about a nameless elderly lady staring wistfully at cars she could never afford.
The same machinery is at work with the Walk of Fame. Fans and civic boosters both like their legends simple: one perfect date, the star right where it always was, the King graciously waving at the cameras. The truth is messier, and far more revealing – Hollywood was engraving a rebel into its pavement while he was still being shouted at by drill sergeants an ocean away.
Why that 1960 star still matters
So when did Elvis get his Hollywood star? On paper, February 8, 1960. If you are holding his personal plaque, February 9 carries the weight. Either way, the honor landed in that tiny window when he was no longer the swiveling scandal of 1956 but not yet the Vegas god in a white jumpsuit.
That strip of terrazzo is more than a tourist stop. It marks the instant America’s most explosive rock and roll figure was turned into a permanent civic monument, even as his music and his life were heading into far stranger territory. In a sense, Hollywood was already writing the epitaph for the wild young Elvis, literally under our feet.
