Love Me Tender (1956)
Movie rating: 6/10
There’s probably no movie I know more about the production of without having actually seen than Love Me Tender. Being something of an Elvis fan, I’ve read enough biographies to be well-versed in the circumstances surrounding the King’s silver screen debut. In a pleasant surprise, the film ended up surpassing my expectations, which were admittedly low. That’s largely down to the fact that the Presley travelogue formula, which defined most of the star’s subsequent movie career, had not yet been determined. Directed by Robert D. Webb from a screenplay by Robert Buckner, Love Me Tender is different and less predictable than most of Elvis’s filmography. That alone makes it one of his more interesting films.
Paul Simpson in his book Elvis Films FAQ described Love Me Tender as “essentially a B-movie period western”, which I think is accurate. Unlike most Elvis movies, Elvis is in a supporting role here. He plays Clint Reno, who stayed home to look after his mother and the family farm while his three older brothers went to fight on the Confederate side in the U.S. Civil War. The true leads of the film are Vance Reno (Richard Egan), oldest of the Reno brothers, and his pre-war love Cathy (Debra Paget). The film begins with Vance, his brothers Brett (William Campbell) and Ray (James Drury), and fellow Confederate soldiers attacking a Union train carrying $12,000 for the federal payroll. Unbeknownst to them, the war had ended a day earlier. When the brothers return home, Vance—whom his family believed had been killed in the war—discovers that Cathy has married Clint. The rest of the movie details the ensuing love triangle as well as efforts of the U.S. government to recover the stolen money.
When Love Me Tender was released in 1956, Egan and Paget were known stars given top billing, while the film was merely “introducing Elvis Presley”. But Elvis, then at the height of his fame, ended up overshadowing everything else about the film. Despite not even appearing until 20 minutes in and playing a supporting role, it was a guitar-wielding Elvis who dominated the poster—the tagline of which touted “Mr. Rock ‘n’ Roll in the story he was born to play!” Originally called The Reno Brothers, the title was changed to Love Me Tender after the massive success of Presley’s hit ballad.
The most notable change to the movie’s content was the addition of four songs. “Love Me Tender” itself is appropriate to the story, since the song’s melody was taken from the Civil War ballad “Aura Lee”. The others, however, take the movie into laughably anachronistic territory as Elvis performs these (more or less) rockin’ tunes complete with swiveling hips. The performances themselves are not the problem: Elvis is one of the most charismatic and influential musicians ever and his singing and dancing are always a joy to watch. The problem is that they don’t fit into the surrounding Civil War-era melodrama. When you consider the outrage to Elvis’s performances almost 100 years later, it’s hard to believe Clint Reno could perform like that in the 1860s without being lynched, and where the only reaction is people happily clapping along.
Speaking of the Civil War, I have to say that the historical inaccuracy of this movie does not end with Elvis’s rocking, rolling, and swivel hips. The former Confederacy was utterly devastated at the end of the war, with colossal death tolls and destroyed infrastructure, yet there’s little evidence of that anywhere here. True, Clint performs a couple of his songs at a fair to raise money for a new school. But judging by the festive atmosphere, the South’s defeat in a total war might as well not have even happened. Of course, it goes without saying that the cause of the war, slavery, is never mentioned at all. But that’s par for the course for pretty much any American film about the Civil War prior to the 1960s and the civil rights movement.
In his book The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film, which I’ve referenced before, Bruce Chadwick places Love Me Tender in the context of a wave of films and TV shows in the 1950s and ’60s that adapted the Civil War to the contemporary popularity of the western. Much of these works stressed American nationalism and the reconciliation of North and South. Chadwick describes Love Me Tender as a “perfect example” of films in which “good rebs [reference to Johnny Reb, national personification of Confederate soldiers] were distinguished from bad rebs to show that only good rebs were assimilated in the new nation of the West.” He writes of the plot involving the stolen federal money (spoilers ahead):
When they find out the money rightfully belongs to the government, the three [Reno] brothers, who are good rebs, offer to return it. Their friends, however, want to keep their share. In an ensuring gun battle with U.S. troops, the bad rebs kill Elvis and are in turn gunned down by the cavalry. The three good rebs give back the money and return to the farm. At film’s end, they are assimilated into the new nation. The bad rebs, of course, had to be killed.
But let’s put history aside. Is Love Me Tender an entertaining film? To that I say yes, this is a solid B movie. As out of place as the songs are—again, “Love Me Tender” aside—it’s always fun to watch Elvis perform. The performances are all good. Egan is an effective leading man who ably conveys the mixed emotions his character feels upon discovering his beloved Cathy has married his brother: grief and heartbreak, yet also continuing love for both.
Paget matches him as the female lead, growing less passive as the film goes on. In the climax, she trades her dress for pants and rides a horse out after the federal soldier watching her looks the other way, helping clear the name of the three brothers Presley was reportedly smitten with Paget during filming and even proposed marriage, which came to nothing in large part because she was dating Howard Hughes at the time. It’s easy to see why he felt drawn to her. Of course Paget is beautiful, and I’m sure the cinephile Elvis playing opposite this gorgeous star in his first movie contributed to his infatuation. But when Paget first appears onscreen, my jaw dropped at how much she resembled Priscilla Presley, which had been nowhere near as apparent before when I’d seen Paget in still photographs.
And what of Elvis himself? Even authors who are major Elvis fans, such as definitive biographer Peter Guralnick, have suggested Presley can appear awkward at times and speeds through some lines. Personally, I thought any example of that was so minor I barely noticed it. For a guy who’d never acted before in his life, Presley in my view displays a natural talent for acting in his film debut, carried by his innate charisma. He effectively portrays Clint Reno as written: Simpson notes that Elvis “is appropriately sincere and sweet as the younger brother who idolizes his elder sibling.” When the character goes bad in the third act, convinced that Vance and Cathy are running off together, the intensity of his gaze makes the sense of anger believable and compensates for the script’s shortcomings.
It’s really the script that lets everyone down here. The ex-Confederates led by Mike Gavin (Neville Brand), who stole the federal money along with the three soldier brothers, are the ones who lead Clint astray and persuade him of Vance and Cathy’s betrayal. The speed with which the naïve, trusting Clint does a 180 and turns against his brother and his wife means the climax of the film isn’t as convincing as it should be. It’s hard to believe the Clint seen thus far would push around his wife, or shoot his beloved oldest brother at the urging of an ex-Confederate soldier he barely knows.
The weakness of the screenplay also undercuts the effectiveness of the love triangle, which I was honestly more interested in than I thought I would be. While Vance and Cathy’s enduring love for each other is clear and the two are given plenty of screen time, the same cannot be said for Clint and Cathy. The latter two don’t even so much as share a kiss. Meanwhile, there are plenty of scenes where Cathy tells Vance she still loves him, even as he’s determined to move past his heartbreak and depart for California, which just creates the impression Cathy is leading him on.
Still, the performances and plot are good enough, and the running time short enough at 89 minutes, that Love Me Tender is an appealing diversion. And as anachronistic as most of the songs are, they’re still entertaining. Elvis was such a talented, magnetic entertainer that seeing and hearing him do what he does best will always be enjoyable. Love Me Tender shows that even without any formal training, Elvis had real acting talent and showed incredible promise. Sadly, his time in Hollywood would never truly fulfill that promise, but that’s a discussion for another time.