It's September twenty-first, and on this day in 1977... the Memphis Development Foundation paid sculptor Fin Parks \$151,000 to create a towering twenty-five-foot, fifty-ton bronze statue of Elvis Presley to overlook the Mississippi River. But just weeks later, the Foundation filed an \$8.4 million lawsuit against Factors, Etc., the merchandising company that, within two days of Elvis’s death, secured exclusive rights to his name and image—thanks to a deal Vernon Presley signed at Colonel Tom Parker’s urging. Under that contract, Parker would receive seventy-five percent of all profits, leaving only twenty-five percent for Elvis's estate.
