Trailer
Plot summary
Clint Reno is the youngest of the four brothers, and while Vance, Brett and Ray ride with the Confederate cavalry he stays on the family farm with their mother, Martha. Word reaches the family that Vance has been killed. After four years the brothers come home, and Clint's wife Cathy is the woman Vance left behind. Vance accepts the marriage, and Cathy stays true to Clint. The brothers take part in a raid on a train that carries a Union payroll of twelve thousand dollars; they do not know the fighting ended a day earlier at Appomattox Court House, and they keep the money. The government pursues them for the robbery, and Vance wants to give the money back while some of his fellow Confederates refuse.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Love Me Tender (1956)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Elvis Presley's part as Clint Reno in Love Me Tender had already been turned down by Jeffrey Hunter and Robert Wagner, both of whom thought the role too small.
SPOILER
Presley was reluctant to accept the part once he learned his character died at the end, and his then-girlfriend June Juanico talked him round by saying audiences remember characters with a tragic fate.SPOILER
After test screenings upset audiences over the death of Presley's character, he filmed a further scene and recorded an extra verse of the title track to run over the end credits.- The film was originally to be called The Reno Brothers, and was renamed after advance sales of Presley's single passed one million, a first for a single.
- Hal Wallis considered Presley for the lead in The Rat Race, about a naive young musician in Manhattan, but dropped the idea after a studio executive said Presley "just doesn't look like that"; Tony Curtis played the part in 1960.
- The climactic sequence was shot at the Bell Moving Picture Ranch in the Santa Susana Mountains, but the exact spot, known among historians as the "Rocky Hill", stayed unidentified for almost 60 years until researchers found it in early 2015.
- Love Me Tender is the only film of Elvis Presley's acting career in which he did not receive top billing.
