Love Me Tender (1956)

Unaware that the war between the States is over, a group of Confederate soliders led by Vance Reno (Richard Egan) and his brothers (William Campbell, James Drury) rob a train and get away with a Federal payroll and divide the money among themselves. When they return home, they find out that they were thought killed in the war and Vance's fiancee (Debra Paget) has married his young brother (Elvis Presley). Notable as the film debut of the new rock and roll sensation Elvis Presley, it's a rather middling western but pleasant enough. Presley's acting is still rather crude (he wouldn't come into his own as an actor until KING CREOLE) and he sings four songs but his anachronistic hip swiveling and pelvic thrusts only serve to remind us, this is Elvis, not an 1865 farm boy. But playing his mother, Mildred Dunnock's reactions to his hip shaking are priceless. This would be the last and only time that Presley wasn't topbilled in his movies. The Reno Brothers were a real band of Civil War robbers and the film is highly fictionalized and the brothers' criminal activities are downplayed. Directed by Robert D. Webb (BENEATH THE 12 MILE REEF). With Bruce Bennett, Robert Middleton, Neville Brand and Barry Coe.