Main Cast: Elvis Presley, Lizabeth Scott, Wendell Corey, Dolores Hart, James Gleason
Release Year: 1957
Country: US
Run Time: 101 minutes
Plot
Loving You was the most autobiographical of all Elvis Presley's movies, and, not coincidentally, features the most naturalistic, easygoing performance of his early career. He plays Deke Rivers, a truck driver with a penchant for singing and a raw animal magnetism where women are concerned. He attracts the business interest of publicity agent Glenda Markle (Lizabeth Scott), who sees a potential gold mine in Deke. She hires him to appear with a band that she handles, fronted by aging country & western singer Tex Warner (Wendell Corey), who used to be romantically involved with Glenda and is now a client. Pretty soon he's pulling in bigger crowds and generating more excitement than Tex did during his best days (which drives the older singer to start drinking again), but also a lot more controversy, too. Deke is so provocatively sexual a presence on-stage that some citizens in the southern and border states where the band is working think that what he does is immoral. Girls can't keep away from him, their boyfriends despise what he symbolizes, and their parents are aghast, even as concert promoter Carl Meade (James Gleason) smells a fortune to be made from this boy. Glenda parlays these disputes and a ban on one of Deke's performances into a national television event. Amid all of this, Deke reveals the private, vulnerable side that no one ever knew -- that he's not even Deke Rivers (it was a name he took off a gravestone), but an orphan named Jimmy Tompkins, and that he's never had a home. He also reveals that he's attracted to Glenda, mistaking (with her encouragement) her interest in his talent with a personal involvement, but he's also drawn the the band's female singer, Susan Jessup (Dolores Hart), who could genuinely love him, and offers him a caring family of her own that would accept him. Deke and Glenda's conflicts are eventually straightened out, and Deke gets to say his piece and sing his music on network television. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
Loving You is one of Elvis Presley's liveliest and most interesting early films, and has a fair degree of honesty and verisimilitude as such juke-box movies go. Presley proves he can act, at least in a role that bears some resemblance to his real-life persona, and does some good songs, including the title number, "Hot Dog," "Mean Woman Blues," and "Teddy Bear," and everything surrounding him holds up. Lizabeth Scott, in her last Hollywood feature, plays a less malignant successor to the hardboiled roles in which she'd specialized in the 1940s, in films such as The Pitfall and Dead Reckoning, portraying a cool, tough publicist with the instincts of a shark, and Wendell Corey does well as her sad-eyed paramour, while Dolores Hart makes a thoroughly beguiling ingénue. Even the band as depicted here resembles any number of real-life country groups that existed at the time, right down to Paul Smith's performance as Skeeter, who fills the same comic relief role here that Pat Brady did for the Sons of the Pioneers. The fact that the Jordanaires, Elvis' real-life backing group, are cast as Deke's back-up singers only completes the picture, one of the best in Elvis Presley's output. The irony is that Presley himself almost never looked at Loving You after its original release, because of the final concert sequence: His mother, Gladys, who died in 1958, less than a year after the movie's release, played the heavy-set woman in the audience, and he could never bear to watch it. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Ralph Dumke - Jim Tallman; Ken Becker - Wayne; Jana Lund - Daisy Bricker; Madge Blake - Bit woman; David Cameron - Mr. Castle; Harry V. Cheshire - Mayor; Hal K. Dawson - Lieutenant; Charles Beach Dickerson - Glenn; William Forrest - Mr. Jessup; Joe Forte - Editor; Donna Jo Gribble - Teenager; Helen Hatch - Bit woman; Grace Hayle - Mrs. Gunderson; Yvonne Lime - Sally; Gaylord "Steve" Pendleton - Mr. O'Shea; Vernon Rich - Harry Taylor; Dick Ryan - Mack; Karen Scott - Waitress; Almira Sessions - Bit woman; Irene Tedrow - Mrs. Jessup; Skip Young - Teddy; Paul L. Smith - Skeeter; The Jordanaires - Themselves; Sydney Chatton - Grew; Jack Latham - TV Announcer
Credit
Albert Nozaki - Art Director, Hal Pereira - Art Director, Charles O'Curran - Choreography, Edith Head - Costume Designer, Hal Kanter - Director, Howard A. Smith - Editor, Paul Nathan - Executive Producer, Walter Scharf - Composer (Music Score), Walter Scharf - Musical Direction/Supervision, Wally Westmore - Makeup, Charles B. Lang - Cinematographer, Hal B. Wallis - Producer, John P. Fulton - Special Effects, Harbert Baker - Screenwriter, Hal Kanter - Screenwriter, Mary Agnes Thompson - Short Story Author
Purporting to be the soundtrack to Elvis' second film, this album collects songs used in the film on one side with new material on the other. The weakness of a couple of the movie tunes and the fact that the new songs were leftovers from the sessions used to produce Elvis' first gospel EP and latest single add up to his weakest album offering, although any album with "Got a Lot o' Living to Do" is alright. If you think of Loving You as simply an Elvis Presley album rather than a somewhat misleadingly packaged soundtrack, it was actually one of his more coherent and cohesive long-players, assembled from sessions all conducted in the first two months of 1957. By this time, he was doing precious little that was wrong, and his range and control were growing geometrically -- thus, amid some powerful rock & roll, including "Mean Woman Blues" (which could almost have passed for one of his Sun tracks), "Teddy Bear," the electric guitar-driven "Got a Lot 'o Livin' to Do," Ivory Joe Hunter's "I Need You So," and a hard, brittle-textured outtake of "I Beg of You," the King does some brilliant ballad singing on "One Night of Sin" and "Is It So Strange," and belts out one of his great blues performances on "When It Rains, It Really Pours" -- which boasts a killer Scotty Moore guitar part -- and moves into Sons of the Pioneers territory with the hauntingly beautiful Western ballad, "Lonesome Cowboy." He doesn't do badly with "Blueberry Hill," either. ~ Neal Umphred & Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
The Jordanaires (Performer), Elvis Presley (Guitar), Elvis Presley (Vocals), Elvis Presley (Main Performer), Vincent Caro (Mastering), Ernst Mikael Jorgensen (Compilation Producer), Roger Semon (Compilation Producer), Michael Omansky (Executive Director), Klaus Schmalenbach (Executive Director)
Loving You is an Americanmotion picture directed by Hal Kanter, released by Paramount Pictures on July 9, 1957. The film stars Elvis Presley, Lizabeth Scott (in her final major film role) and Wendell Corey. It is Presley's second movie, his first in Technicolor and the first with Elvis as the primary focus. The story mirrors that of his own rise to fame, and Presley's mother and father appear as extras in the audience during the final song, "Got A Lot Of Livin' To Do." After his mother's death, Presley refused to ever watch the film again.
In Presley's first picture, Love Me Tender, he acted in a supporting role as part of a larger story for the first and last time in his film career. His second film, Loving You, sets the precedent for the remaining two films he would make before going into the army, Jailhouse Rock and King Creole, that of a rising young singing star, and of the effects that fame has on him and the people around him.
Plot
Elvis Presley plays Deke Rivers, a delivery man who is discovered by publicist Glenda Markle (Lizabeth Scott) and country-western musician Tex Warner (Wendell Corey). Deke is a handsome young man with a fast car and even faster fists, but what really sets him apart is his voice and charisma. One day he's seen singing, and word quickly spreads of his talent throughout the small town in which he works.
Markle and Warner, believing in his potential, want to promote the talented newcomer to fame and fortune, giving him every break they feel he deserves. At first, Warner, a washed-up country music entertainer, sees Deke's addition to the act as merely a side act, and that Warner will return to the limelight. He learns the painful truth after Glenda tearfully tells him that the promoters she works with don't want Warner anymore...and that Deke is their only shot left at the big-time.
Deke, who has been resistant of the duo's efforts, agrees to join their traveling show after Glenda arranges to have him fired from his job. One day, while in a malt shop, Deke is approached by Wayne (Ken Becker), a young punk trying to get him to sing for his date. When his request is gently rebuffed by Deke's friend Skeeter, Wayne shoves him to the floor. To keep peace, Deke agrees to sing, drawing the applause of the patrons. When he finishes, he asks Wayne what he does for a living. Wayne tells Deke he works in automotive accessories with his father. Deke tells Wayne that he gets paid to sing, and he feels that Wayne should properly pay him by putting a new set of seatcovers on his car. Wayne asks him what color he wants, figuring yellow as his color of choice. Enraged at the implication that he's a coward, Deke viciously beats Wayne until he passes out slumped on the jukebox. However, Deke is not charged by police in the incident.
Romantic complications arise as Susan (Dolores Hart), another singer in the group, offers him devoted admiration as Glenda leads him on with promises of a golden future. However, Deke has major trust issues. He sees his singing as a hobby, and not a future, resisting Glenda's efforts to bring him forward, such as pandering to audiences. Glenda desperately tries to get close to him but to no avail. Fed up with what he feels are constant efforts by others to use him, Deke drives off one day, missing a gig.
Upset with what she feels was a careless abandonment, Glenda finally learns the truth when Deke takes her to a small burial ground one evening, after she demands an explanation for the missed gig. They come upon a stone bearing little more than the name "Deke Rivers", but the implication is clear...the real Deke Rivers was a lonely drifter buried by his friends, showing parallels between the two. Deke reveals to Glenda that he was brought up in an orphanage for most of his childhood, and that his real name is Jimmy Tompkins. He goes on to tell her that never having experienced the love of a family, he made a decision to break out one day and make it on his own. He happened on the gravestone, and said that he became Deke Rivers there, "burying" Jimmy Tompkins at the site.
Weeping at the depth of Deke's sad past, Glenda tells him that it's time for him to grow up and stop running away, and that his role in the show is the closest he will likely ever come to family. She reveals that she had him fired because she truly believed in him...something he's never really known. Hearing the truth in her words, Deke agrees to return to the show, which grows in popularity due to Deke's success.
The soundtrack includes five songs composed expressly for the movie, from the writers providing stock for the Colonel's publishing company, Hill and Range. Mostly functional as per the requirements of any musical, in this case they give Presley numbers to perform during the film. A sixth song intended for but not appearing in the movie, "Don't Leave Me Now", was included on the album; a re-recording would appear on the EP with the soundtrack songs for his next film, Jailhouse Rock.
The practice of RCA augmenting soundtrack recordings with extra songs from non-soundtrack studio sessions to bring up the running time of the LP to acceptable lengths would become a commonplace occurrence with Presley soundtracks through the 1960s.
The album was reisued for compact disc in an expanded edition on April 15, 1997, appending eight tracks to the original album. All tracks derive from the same sessions, with three alternate takes, the remaining track from the "Just For You" EP, three single sides including "Tell Me Why" which would wait almost nine years to be released, and a remake of the Sun master"When It Rains It Really Pours" also released much later, on the 1965 LP Elvis for Everyone. On January 11, 2005, Sony BMG reissued the album again, remastered using DSD technology with the six bonus tracks appended in standard fashion. A two-disc set was released on the Follow That Dream collectors label on January 12, 2006, with the bonus tracks and numerous additional takes.
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