Love Me Tender

He’s back!

In a brief time, Elvis conquered music, and television, based on the fact that his appearances on any variety show would top the ratings for the week. With those two mountains climbed that made one pop culture mountain left for Elvis to conquer: Hollywood.

I know what you are probably thinking, as Elvis made a lot of movies and the legacy that you are thinking of is that they were usually very bad. I think if someone was to come up with an equation where a lead actor received points based on performance and overall quality of the film, Elvis might have one of the lower point totals, or at least make the bottom percentile, especially when you look at the 1960’s where every movie he made was worse than the one before.[1] If the Golden Raspberries existed in the 1960’s, Presley might have swept the decade.

An Elvis movie always followed the same formula, he would be involved in some profession that looked unnatural for him, he would flirt and sing with the lead female, he might get into a fight or two, usually throwing very unbelievable punches, get the girl and sing a few more songs along the way. Presley’s 1950’s music created a generation gap, but that same group that still loved Presley in the mid-60’s were now the uncool ones, and all a mid 1960’s kid had to do was see one of his movies to see that he was not somebody he or she identified with. Literally his films degenerated into a sliding scale of crap.

However that would be much later, as in 1956, not only was Elvis ready to give Hollywood a try, the world wanted him to take that step. Planet Earth wanted a lot more of Elvis and as such, we have to talk about his movie debut, because this is where the next number one song was prominently featured.

In his first film, Elvis plays Clint Reno, in a film adaptation about the real life Reno Brothers who were robbers at the end of the American Civil War.[2] Like most biographical movies, the plot bore little resemblance to what actually took place but the general movie going public are not avid historians and the movie drew good reviews and was a hit at the box office.

The original title of the film was to be “The Reno Brothers”, but as advanced sales of “Love Me Tender” reached a million, a song was used in film, the studio elected to capitalize on Presley’s emerging stardom and change the film’s name. Incidentally, this would mark the only time that Elvis would not take top billing in a movie, but it was his face all over the movie posters, and not that of Richard Egan, who actually was the lead actor.[3]

The song itself actually fit well into the movie (though I personally detest westerns with songs crowbarred into it), as it was adapted from the Civil War hymn, Aura Lee.[4] The man who reworked the song for Presley, Ken Darby, had a monster year overall, as he would also win the Academy Award for Best Score for his work in the film, King and I[5]

More importantly, the song showed that Elvis Presley could deliver a ballad as good as anyone, and with his raw sex appeal, the women who were delighted when his hips swayed, wanted immediately to sway into his arms. Since he was already an idol anyway, why not capitalize on ballads such as this, and here we have our first case where a song topped the music charts, propelled television ratings when he sang it on the variety shows and filled a movie theatre; a perfect three for three on the modern pop culture mountain top.[6]

Safe to say that 1956 was the year of Elvis Presley wouldn’t you agree?

Other Notable Songs that charted but did not go to number one in this time period: November 24, 1956 – December 7, 1956

12/1/56: Oh, What A Night, by the Dells did not go to the main chart but did go to #4 on the R&B Chart.

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[1] Pauly Shore, Tom Green and Hulk Hogan are three people off the top of my head who would be lower on the food chain. I am sure there are more, but these are the three I thought of right away. And your triumvirate of poor acting would be?
[2] This is the first and only time that Elvis portrayed a historical figure.
[3] Egan actually had a solid movie career in the 1950’s and early 60’s, but Elvis’ popularity was so big, that the first thing that many websites or print articles mention about him is that he was a “co-star” in Elvis’ first movie.
[4] Did you ever see the Simpsons episode where Homer and Bart are shocked to see Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood sing in “Paint Your Wagon”? I had the same reaction too. Westerns and Musicals should never go together!
[5] He would also win the award in 1959 (Porgy and Bess) & 1967 (Camelot).
[6] Have we reached the point where the Internet is the fourth? Oh, and no Broadway never counted!