Love Me Tender (1956 film)

On April 2, Wallis offered Presley a contract for one motion picture, with options on six more. Wallis considered Presley for a role in The Rat Race, a film about a "naive, innocent boy" who was struggling to make it as a musician in Manhattan, but he decided against it after another studio executive said, "Elvis Presley just doesn't look like that". The film was eventually made in 1960 with Tony Curtis in the lead role. Another possible idea that Wallis mulled over was to pair Presley with Jerry Lewis. Lewis had just separated from his comedy partner Dean Martin after a successful run of seventeen movies together, but again the idea was shelved.

On April 10, Presley confidently announced during a radio interview that his debut feature would be The Rainmaker with Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn. However, despite this belief, and due to Wallis being unable to find a project "good enough for the debut of Elvis Presley", he was loaned out to 20th Century Fox on August 13 and began work on Love Me Tender on August 22. Presley's role had originally been turned down by both Jeffrey Hunter and Robert Wagner In little more than a month Presley had recorded all the songs for the film and had finished filming his scenes.

When Presley appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show during a break in filming the movie, on September 9, he performed "Love Me Tender" for the first time. Presley would later express regret at making the film, and was disappointed that the additions of songs had set up the future of his Hollywood career. Presley would later tell his friend Cliff Gleaves that he found this type of reaction from his cinema-going fans embarrassing, and that it had prevented him from being accepted as a serious actor.

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