Love Me Tender
Directed by Robert D. Webb
Written by Robert Buckner; story by Maurice Geraghty
1956/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Amazon Instant
Clint Reno: [In a rage] Go on, say it Cathy! Say you don’t love him. You can’t, can you? You think I couldn’t feel it? With you lying awake beside me every night? Wishing I was Vance! Wishing you’d waited for him and never married me!
Elvis Presley’s first movie is a bit of a mess. The singer looks and sounds good but that’s about it.
Vance Reno (Richard Egan) and his brother Brett are Confederate raiders who have been ordered with their unit to rob a large Union army payroll which is being delivered by train. They are successful but then find that the Confederacy has surrendered and there is no one left to turn over the loot to. They decide they are within their rights to keep the cash as spoils of war. They divide it among them and go their separate ways.
With his share, Vance buys presents and wedding clothes for his much-antipated nuptials with sweetheart Cathy (Debra Paget). When he gets home, he finds that Cathy’s entire family was killed, that she has gone to live on the Reno place and, believing Vance to have been killed, has married his youngest brother Clint (Elvis). Cathy has not stopped loving Vance but Vance nobly admits defeat and prepares to take off for California. Before this can happen, the feds come looking for the loot and a misunderstanding has Clint become insanely jealous and go looking for blood. With Mildred Dunnock as Ma Reno.
It is hard to decide who is the worst and most stilted of two actors, Elvis or Debra Paget. There are something like four hastily inserted songs for Elvis. He looks just ludicrous performing them with trademark hip gyrations in his 1860’s garb. In short, the movie is pretty bad. He is a gorgeous young man though and if you don’t look at the picture, the songs come off wonderfully.
Clip
