"Love Me Tender" (1956) - Lights! Camera! Elvis!

Episode 1. Embark on the premiere episode of Idee Fixe as Jess and Paul revisit their shared Elvis fandom with 1956’s  “Love Me Tender” (starring Richard Egan, Debra Paget and Elvis Presley). They  talk about Elvis’s foray into acting with the role he was supposedly born to play. 

Links to Ethel and the Androids Soundcloud, social media and more can be found here: https://linktr.ee/ideefixepod 

Transcript

hi everyone and welcome to idee fixe a podcast about a couple hyper fixating on obscure pop culture i'm your co-host paul ungar and i'm your co-host jess ungar for close to a decade hyper fixations and the discussions around them have taken over our daily life and what is a hyper fixation it's being completely immersed in a singular topic pop culture fandom or hobby with each episode of this podcast we'll focus on a different piece of media what it means to us and why we are so captivated by it maybe you'll be introduced to something new maybe you'll find a new appreciation for something you've experienced before welcome to the discussion welcome friends yes that was meant to be creepy that's fine you'll get to know us it's okay yeah we have a habit in this 10 years of relationship 10 years of is that a can you say that is that good grammar no no it would be a decade but in this decade of our relationship we have done a lot of talking we have done a lot of talking and we go on about a particular subject we will just we'll fixate on that but it consumes even our house the like how we shift from going from being obsessed about night vale to d and d the following month and then we've gone into stardew assassin's creed we have all these hallmarks of these different fixations that we've had over the past decade scattered throughout our house absolutely and it's uh it's become a bit of a thing i mean i'm sure it is in most households but i feel like we're pretty intense about it yeah our our living space is literally marred by battle scars of these fixations well i wouldn't necessarily say just our house but like me yeah i feel like i have a whole lot of tattoos that reflect a good chunk of our hype for fixations you and me both and that's why we thought that this would be a great podcast to go in because when we get into a fixation we we really get into just why we love it it's not like we ever get fixated on a negative experience we get into a very positive experience and we just really get into why we love it and that's something that we want to talk about and just get people introduced to a new media something maybe you haven't even thought about of maybe even being good or something to give the time of day to which is actually a pretty good seg into what our first group of episodes is yeah so with each podcast we'll do a series on a particular collection of different media that fall under uh a particular fandom or a particular subject it's a main subject that we're gonna focus on for a grouping of episodes anyway and for this one entitled lights camera elvis the many films of elvis presley yep my internal teenager is freaking out at me and crying and hiding under something yeah now this is actually one that you have this is kind of rare that your fandom for this is significantly much more intense and more long-lasting than mine and i wish i could tell you why hey you were introduced to this like i know your father is also a big elvis fan no no he is not none of my family really is i came by it individually somehow i don't know all the details i was extremely young i was maybe four i think i remember seeing him either in a movie or in a documentary and just being fascinated by him and trying to find out as much as i could about this guy and finding out he did music and hearing the music and it honest to god became an obsession just to try and find out more about him learn everything i possibly could hear watch look at everything i could possibly get my hands on that had to do with him yeah we own several books about him and from other people about him yes yes we do it's kind of crazy and i know for myself i don't know whether or not i was introduced to his music first or his movies but it was kind of sparingly his movies were a background on the tv on saturdays when i had no control uh when saturday morning cartoons were over dad took over and it was either westerns or elvis movies it was one of those two and it happened enough for me to kind of get the feeling for some of his films and i know a lot of his music i think the biggest thing was his remix of a little bit a little more conversation a little less

when they had the remix of it that came out yes and that's kind of when i became aware of them but for people who maybe aren't aware of who elvis is and just somehow have missed that large chunk of pop culture he was a very famous rock and roll icon uh through the 50s 60s and 70s not a whole lot of the 70s a good chunk a good chunk up until the later yes and was also a movie star for roughly just a little bit close to 12 years 13 years yeah 12 to 13 years in which he did just about 30 films 32 films which is insane and per year more than tom cruise at his cruisiest uh what we could figure was on average he did about three movies a year and that was in his garbage phase i'm going to call it yes and there's something just so interesting in these movies that since we've been together they've been an ongoing conversation as we kind of make a like we go through these films almost like once every one to two years and kind of re-evaluate our opinions on these movies and it's just such a weird setup of this weird deal they had with an executive at paramount studios and this deal he had with his very his very shady manager yes colonel tom parker and just how this all came to be is just so weird but we don't want to get in on all those details what we want to get into is the movies and we're going to start off with this debut film and that is love me tender released november 15th 1956. okay here's what we're gonna start doing with these movies just because i've noticed a trend with them and they are so bonkers we're gonna read the taglines for each of these movies so in this case elvis first movie he's fresh-faced he's just made it into the media he's getting big and his hips are not safe for tv absolutely not i'm pretty sure this was after he got censored by ed sullivan yeah on a very popular variety tv show yes he was only allowed to be shot from the belly button up because him swaying his hips and this is something that he is known for he does it in every single film actually not every film most most actually i forget that every once in a while there is a weirdly serious film where there is zero to zero to little singing true and a lot of hip movements this was not safe for tv it was deemed too sexual yes but first time uncensored you can see the hips and the tagline of this movie are you ready jess i am so ready and i want to preface here that the copywriting in the 1950s and 1960s appears to be either insanely blunt or lazy and i feel like mad men really just lied to me so without further ado take line it's mr rock and roll in the story he was born to play oh the irony because in this movie he is actually not even the top build actor he is the third and was shoehorned into this movie once he was signed on so let's get a little bit into the movie and then we'll get into a summary so this was directed by robert d webb whom we did a little bit of research on and didn't do much else so we won't worry about that uh was starring robert egan deborah padgett and third yet most important elvis presley had a budget of 1 million and made 9 million domestic and made back that 1 million within the first weekend it released now for the summary in the civil war vance reno played by richard egan led a band of confederate raiders along with two of his brothers they go on a mission to steal an enemy payroll drop and a daring train robbery but unknown to him the war ended the day before they get away with the money about twelve thousand five hundred and ye old bucks and learn there's no more fighting to be done with the war over the soldiers divide the money amongst themselves and head off their separate ways the reno boys head home with vance excited to see his sweetheart and finally propose to her that's kathy played by deborah paget but not before finding out from a local he was mistakenly reported as dead we all heed you dead mr vance getting home vance finds out that kathy thinking he was dead married his younger brother clint played by elvis the hips that don't quit pressly months earlier as vance kathy and clint struggle with this tenuous love triangle their problems are exacerbated with the pinkertons coming looking for the men who stole their money elvis sings

and boy does he because he has three songs in this movie one of them being the titular love me tender and then three others so he's got four because he's got two on the porch with ma and a really awkward kathy and then two more at the raise the money for the school thing the the fair i think it's a fair fair there was they definitely shoehorned and wrote some extra segments once elvis was signed on to this film and it shows cause sometimes the pacing just straight up stops to have elvis sing and then the plot continues once you get like you know your five minute long music video yeah yeah the fun facts on this though are pretty good i really like these um did you know elvis learned everybody's lines by rote that's actually pretty intense for like a first first time actor like i get being that nervous but that's actually pretty impressive i think it was basically just to learn like when he was supposed to speak so he knew when everybody else was done speaking when his turn was yeah this was his one and only film where he was supposed to be playing a historical figure the reno brothers were actually a historical ye old western thieving band of thieves yeah they were bandits they were yeah they're a yield gang that did a lot of like heists and holdups and robberies which was an interesting thing to figure out um and it's the first film starring elvis and the only one that he didn't receive the top billing for he was third billing which was also interesting and it was produced by 20th century fox yeah so as part of their deal with paramount he was actually loaned out to fox because they didn't have a script ready for him at that time which was he did one movie per year with paramount and was allowed to do other movies at other studios for a certain rate it was very weird and hal wallace and tom parker really just very weird businessmen well all things considered the fact that elvis was just okay with a 50-50 split in terms of his earnings between himself and the colonel just boggles my brain and to hear his explanation of the fact that he was okay with that because he attributed his success and fame to tom parker's efforts i that's not how business works but whatever i mean he did he did well for himself at the in the in the end of things he actually didn't well he did well enough but he spent more than he made that's the anyway that's a fact for the end of his life but okay so now that we know kind of what the movie's about we know some fun facts i have seen this movie more times than i can count on any one of my digits on any appendage what did you think of the film now i thought for a survey a iconic musician going in making their first major film this was a really weird rule because first off it's a historical western yes he doesn't play the lead nope he is actually largely an kind of an unlikable character the thing about that yeah the thing about vance is the van vance played by richard egan is this stereotypical western proto-hero type he has a jawline you can use as a ruler and yes and yeah abs you could probably wash your entire life's worth of laundry on and they'd still be good yeah and elvis himself good looking guy that is undeniable young elvis yeah no we're not we're not taking old elvis into the account here just old hey

yes we are just taking a look at young elvis good looking dude yes elvis next to richard looks like this weasley bean skinny kid and on top of that he is young like he's playing what's supposed to be a younger character and his immaturity shows so much because his brothers come home from war and he like goes on like the same way like a kid would like how many people did you kill he's like stabbing around with the sword he's like talking about like hey look at this is this blood on here and it's just like this really weird character because he does have these other moments where he acts super mature and like reasonable and then on the flip side he just is led by his emotions and it makes some very terrible decisions throughout this movie where like he goes from being like oh i love my wife to one person going like hey your wife might still like your brother to him just turning into almost like deranged by the end of it yeah i know like for me watching this as knowing some of elvis's other movies like i think i've seen fun in acapulco more times i'm not sorry like not even from you that was just the one that was on reruns so often that like those songs are seared into my mind

and the dissonance between having seen those not only the fact that they're in colors and elvis is usually wearing something brightly colored and like you know he's charismatic and he's not he's never been next to someone else that made him look so small and meek yep and in this it was just so weird seeing him in this role because any other big musician any big celebrity transitioning into media would not pick a role where they are i'm gonna say sort of unlikable for a large part like he's a secondary character that's not introduced until close to halfway through the movie and while he has a few endearing moments they're usually very closely tied to him singing he then may like he's just does some really unlikable things yeah it's a very daunting role to use as a a way to dip your feet into acting i found because the intensity of what happened in there is it like you had mentioned before he starts off he's really young he's the naive younger brother that youth is very prominent and again like you said it took one person to say like hey your wife might be being unfaithful to him go completely unhinged and do some really awful things and spoilers i doubt you guys are going to actually watch this not many people will although honestly i do recommend it yeah this movie's close to uh like 60 years 66 76 86 96 2006. 2016. yeah it's just about almost 70 years old yeah there's a um trigger warning there's a little bit of i don't want to say yeah it would be domestic violence i guess yeah because clint actually lets loose sun on kathy at one point and it's not it's not fun to watch it's actually very hard but it's very believable and you can feel the emotion kind of coming off them also it makes even hardened criminals uncomfortable to like they are uncomfortable with how irrational he is acting and yet they still use him to try and peg off clint like i just i don't know why they keep on letting clint be with these people because that was one comment you kept me yeah who keeps leading leaving it with the bandits yeah vance comes home and he's trying to lead a normal life with his other brothers and then when he realizes he decides that he's going to try and leave town leave clint and kathy to their happy life because he's obviously making everyone uncomfortable by being alive and again you see elvis you see him and like you know emotions aside you know who you're picking yes yeah so when the other confederate soldiers who are also being hunted down by the pinkertons looking for the money yeah show up they're a little bit more grizzled their rationality to jump to crime to solve their problems is a little too quick and his brothers keep on leaving elvis alone with these criminals and i just don't get it at one point he loses a gun because someone's like you're being irrational the criminals get the gun and give it back to him and again it's just yeah so the unhinged guy is on our side so he can have the gun this definitely won't come back to haunt us well it didn't haunt them really no no because as it goes on eventually there's a bunch of shenanigans of vance is trying to give the money back but the criminals believe that he's hidden it along with kathy and there's this he said she said and no one is willing to believe the other party and it leaves with the finale of elvis being coerced by the criminals who they his brothers keep on leaving alone with who have armed this child

and this angry child this very angry child to shoot his brother and he does he shoots his unarmed brother has a shooter's remorse immediately and then when the criminals go to check what they assume is the body elvis starts shooting at them which is enough to kind of distract them enough until the cavalry shows up and finally saves the day but one of the criminals shoots back killing elvis in his debut movie which he was born to play that's the irony of it but oh okay however his death scene i gotta say for somebody who's just started in film and has zero experience that death scene is actually really really good like i did it it gets you oh yeah though i think the worst thing about this movie is that it was the second that elvis was signed on to it it went from a b movie status to an a movie status the budget was increased the script was rewritten to give him more parts and the singing and dancing was added into the movie which are it's very obvious where those rewrites happened the singing literally stops the progression of plot happening like all together there's no plot that happens while elvis is singing elvis is actually a good actor in this yes and if you took those elements out if you took like some of the rewrites and maybe you leave in the original time he plays love me tender because it's orchestrated fantastically throughout the film yeah they have like you know sort of a elated version they have a lower version they have a nice slow rendition of it and it's used fantastically as a score so leaving the one time he's playing love me tender and it's something that he was playing like you know when vance came home it's something that was plain to kathy in the family it was like a welcome home guys let's just have a chill time on the yeah on the porch and like it used to be yeah and you take out every other bit of him singing he does not need to sing you just do that one little bit and that movie would have actually been a pretty dang decent western it's a pretty good western movie it has the emotional impacts it has train robberies it has moral dilemmas it has another triangle yeah and actually surprisingly good set design like nothing looks cheap compared to other movies that are coming out i think the only thing there is you're getting into the era of technicolor and black and white and they are a black and white film yes yep i think you can get away with more if you do that when there's a lack of color you can get away with a lot of that a lot of that you can get away with lesser quality things essentially like it's you can't see all the detail also film is grainier a whole other slew of reasons so on my million three watch which is what this was there are things i have learned one being i do not like deborah paget and that is not me modern human watching old movie this is me modern human having a load of experience with older movies because my dad exposed me to rat pack movies and cary grant movies bing crosby movies whole nine yards i i know what leading ladies from that era are like i don't like deborah paget in this film in this particular this is i think the only one i've ever seen her in yeah now in this yeah kathy has um i won't say absolutely zero agency but very little agency she is either pining over fans air is being kind of cold to clint or trying to get to one of the two there is very little that she does that is her taking action in the story well now i wouldn't say that um there is the part where she does go into the stable steal the money from jethro that that's true and stick it in her bra and then make make some poor union soldier feel very uncomfortable about the notion of having to touch a brazier and he's like i wonder what let's just say i checked you and i'll just leave you and let you leave like well go ahead search me well if if anybody asks you tell them i searched i don't want to get no trouble and just like that was neat that was a good okay that was that was good i you're right what bothered me was her first line was as breathy as a windy day and it just bothered me it was so overly funny i don't i don't even know how to explain it it was just so gross i don't know it it irks me every time i hear it it's just like calm down great yes he's alive awesome you're married please remember this because you have her realization that he's alive and how she says vance and then you have the comparison of how i think everyone else should have acted which is the way clint greeted vance which is like this but which i just think like be excited don't sit there and be like oh i just did my underwear leave like what i did i hated it no i think that that largely comes down to uh webb as a director of like how he directed that character i suppose but i have to admit during this time of movies seeing my fair share way too many westerns dad it was quite often that a lot of in the 50s 60s a lot of female characters were written or given a lot to do in that front yeah i don't know she was just one of those overly breathy could faint at any moment if she tilts her head back anymore i don't know i don't i don't like her particular brand of leading lady and she also has like permanent bedroom eyes and that also weirds me out a bit but that's just my opinion so having returned to this movie again and this is almost on the bi-annual re-watch list yes what were your thoughts would this be something that you would recommend to check out i would say so if you're at all curious as to what a very young elvis would be like in his very first acting role and also how he acts out dying which like i said is phenomenal absolutely 100 definitely i would recommend it at least once just to see and i know for myself it is something that there's while the consequences of elvis being in that movie are a little jarring with the ultimate one that stands out to me being his singing transparent ghost overlaid on the ending of the movie which was added in in post of him singing love me tender because the fans were so upset about the fact that this character died so they added in this horrible transparent version of him singing over the final scenes of the movie and now something that i learned watching this is elvis is actually blonde and the ghost had black hair and it adds this weird supernatural like continuity yeah like well like

everyone's hair is black in the afterlife apparently but with those aside it's actually a pretty fun movie it's it's an interesting movie it's a decent western and if there was like the web cut of like him just going like no i don't want a superstar in my movie and just like cutting out these different scenes i could see that being a genuinely better movie and i just i don't have the time patience are really the want to do that but like i would watch it if somebody did it

i mean in and of itself richard egan was a headliner in his time as well he did really big titles at the time he played spartacus for pete's sake like he also played king leonidas at one point which was a really big deal and honest to god if you have two seconds and morbid curiosity go to imdb look up richard egan you will not be sorry you might be confused with how you feel about dudes after that if you weren't already you won't be sorry just do it but that being said richard egan in this movie is a phenomenal lead and that movie makes me want to go check out other movies he isn't never mind elvis like like you said you could take him out just for richard egan even i would want to go hunt out a couple of his movies just to really get a cause he's like uh this is gonna be so weird to say he is like a sexy charlton heston that's not a weird thing to say this is the last time that we ever have an elvis movie with another lead yeah yeah and so it makes it just it stands out on that as well it's a it's a decent movie that happens to have elvis singing in it wait a minute okay no it's actually not the only movie we have where he's not the only lead because it be because there is also change of habit at the latter end where he shares the screen in equality with mary tyler moore i forgot about that because i forgot that she also had the she was also big at the time that that was released okay as well okay well i have to eat my words so quickly i won't even be able to edit that out

but final verdict i'd say check it out absolutely check it out you can find it for video rental through i think the only place that i could find it was the uh youtube rental you can still find the occasional copy from resellers on amazon but if you just check out enough video stores maybe one day you'll stumble across a dusty copy of love me tender worst case scenario you can do what i did as an eager young preteen who was too embarrassed to say anything out loud steal a paper and check the tv guide in there or watch the tv guide station if you happen to be lucky enough to have a tv that still has cable yeah we just dated ourselves a lot with those suggestions kids are gonna go look it up on the tick tock or whatever

can you imagine just different versions of hey it's a sunday go to meet-and-suit that has to be by far my favorite phrase to come out of this is elvis looking at this fancy suit and he says the words a brand new sonic going to meet ensued and that is my favorite thing to come out of this movie and the fact that it has now been added into the vocabulary of this house absolutely in phrases such as it's a pandemic nobody's expecting you to wear your sunday go to meet-and-suit and nobody will so what movie do we have coming up next uh if i'm not mistaken paul that would be loving you i think you're right jess i'm excited not as excited as i will be for jonas rock but still excited i am excited to get there but one-on-one it's the movies that we have to get through to get there that just make make it to when we get to those gems that much more meaningful that is true thank you very much for joining us on this journey through this hyper fixation of elvis movies we'll be back next episode to talk about the movie loving you by elvis big thank you to ethel and the androids for the use of their song used to know you for the intro and the outro you can find the link to their soundcloud in the show description as well as all our links to our social media and thanks for tuning in and listening to our podcast if you like the show be sure to review and subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice