Elvis' first movie was titled, The Reno Brothers, but when his record Love Me Tender became the first million-seller in history, the producers changed the title to that. The single record would ultimately sell two-million copies.

Elvis was paid $100,000 for it. Elvis’ role of Clint Reno was originally turned down by Robert Wagner and then Jeffery Hunter because of it being ‘too small’.

Elvis himself didn’t want to do it because he didn’t want to die at the end as the script called for. But his then girlfriend, June Jaunico, convinced Elvis that people remember the tragic heroes more than the live ones.

Elvis had first met his co-star, Debra Paget on the Milton Berle TV show, where Elvis became smitten with her. Now he was to play her husband in this post-civil war drama. However, Debra was dating Howard Hughes at the time, so their relationship, though very friendly, remained platonic.

However, the 20-year-old Elvis remained smitten and spent hours parked outside Debra’s family house to watch for her and see who arrived there.

According to his bodyguards, from then on, Elvis spent his life looking for Debra Paget look-a-likes. He found almost an exact copy in his future wife Pricilla, who, when she found out about Elvis’ obsession with Debra, did what she could with hair and makeup to look like Debra.

In 1997, Debra said that Elvis proposed marriage to her, but she was in love with Hughs.

Elvis arrived on the set of Love Me Tender with all the lines memorized. Not just his own, but everyone else’s. Later he said, “I spent the whole first day of filming, behind two mules plowing a field.

Indeed, the audience watches 18 minutes of Elvis’ three older brothers at the end of the war coming home. He old brother can't wait to marry his boyhood sweetheart Debra.

When they finally arrive at the farm, they talk with their mother outside. And then, far in the background. two mules enter the screen, followed by Elvis. When his mother calls to him, the camera moves to a medium shot of Elvis. He stops the mules, takes a few steps closer to the camera, smiles and runs off towards his brothers.

Quickly, Elvis' older brother is told that, thinking him dead, Elvis got married to Debra. And that's the fly in the buttermilk that creates the movie's main drama. In most theaters, the constant screaming of the teenage girls continued from there till the end of the movie.

Though Elvis had announced on a radio interview that he wouldn’t sing in the movie because he wanted to become a dramatic actor, his agent, Col. Tom Parker made sure there were four songs in the movie besides the title song.

So finally, when Elvis is introduced in the movie, and after two dialogue scenes, the teenage girls get what they came for; Elvis on the front porch, singing a bouncy, hoe-down song, We're Gonna Move (to a better home). His brothers join in as his mother and Debra enjoy. The Elvis' goes into the title song.

The movie is a good drama, with Elvis going insane with jealousy, slapping around his wife for infidelity and taking a shot at his brother for betraying him.

At one point in the story, Elvis' pulls out a pistol from a drawer to go see who's outside. His mother says, "Put down that gun, Clint." On the first take, Elvis, who was always respectful of his real mother and totally into the moment, put the gun down and blew the take. Other then that, his bodyquard friends say, "We never saw Elvis blow a line in all his movies." If you watch his movies, you'll see that Elvis is also perfect at lip-syncing his pre-recorded songs.

At the test screening Elvis asked his mother how she liked it.

She was crying and said, “I didn’t like you dying in it.”

“Ah, come on, mom. It’s just a movie.” 

“No, Elvis. That’s not what I mean. I didn’t like your character, Clint, dying.”

Indeed, as Elvis is dying in Debra's arms, his brother says, "Everything's gonna be alright."

Elvis looks at Debra, looks at his brother, knowing they'll be together, and echos, "Everything's gonna be alright," and dies. If you've been with Clint through the whole movie, you'll be moved, too.

All the others at the test screenings didn't like Clint dying, either. So the studio had another day of filming with Elvis singing new words to Love Me Tender. They superimposed that shot over the shot at his grave-site with the mourners walking away. When he finishes singing, Elvis gives a wonderful smile, which makes it all the more heartbreaking that this nice boy got needlessly killed. 

At the time, 200 – 300 prints of a move were made, but for Elvis’ movie 575 prints were made. A record for 20^th Century Fox. The entire cost of the movie was recouped in two weeks and it became the 23^rd highest-grossing film of the year.

According to Shelly Winters:

"Right after that, I was in a screening room with Hal Wallis and Elvis sitting next to me. We watched Love Me Tender, so Wallis could decide whether or not to put Elvis and Sammy Davis, Jr. in The Defiant Ones, about two convicts chained together on the run.

"When the movie was over, Wallis said, 'Good job, Elvis. You can star with Sammy in The Defiant Ones.'

"Suddenly a loud voice come from the back of the room. 'Oh, no he’s not. There’s more money to be made with musicals.' It was Col. Tom Parker. Elvis slouched down in his seat."

Elvis was also offered the role of Tony in West Side Story, but Tom Parker did not like the six month filming schedual. "We could make three movies in that amount of time."

Producer / director Howard Hawks offered Elvis the role of Colorado Ryan in Rio Bravo with Elvis' hero Dean Martin. But Parker asked for too much money and Elvis' name in the starring position. Neither Hawks nor John Wayne would stand for that. The role went to Ricky Nelson.

However, on his 3rd movie, King Creole, Elvis showed the critics and his fans, that he had real acting chops.

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Forbidden Power wins 39 international awards, including:

2018 - Best Picture out of 1,000 entries at the Hollywood BITB International Film Festival. 

2019 - Best Science Fiction Feature Film - Oklahoma BB Film Festival. 

2019 - Best Thriller - London Flicks Film Festival.

2019 - Best Original Screenplay - Florence Film Awards Italy.

2019 - Best Feature Film - New York Cinematography Awards. 

After a one-night affair with a mysterious woman, a young man wakes up alone with sexually transmitted powers.

He searches for the woman to find out the source of her power and why she chose him.