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Monday, April 13, 2009

Unreleased frames

Over a year ago I wrote a post called The trailer outtakes which dealt with the trailer for Jailhouse Rock and a couple of scenes in it that didn't make it to the movie itself. Thanks to FTD I've recently learned of two soundtrack songs that were cut from films but heard in the movie trailers.

The first song I found out about is a production number from Girls! Girls! Girls! In the "Behind The Scenes" section of the booklet accompanying the classic album release it says that even though "I Don't Want To" didn't make it into the movie, the movie trailer included a portion of the song. And true enough, when I viewed the trailer on YouTube yesterday, there was Elvis on his beloved sailboat, poring his heart out:



The second song is "Lonely Man" from Wild In The Country. Both that one and "Forget Me Never" never made it into the final print of the movie, but according to the "Behind The Scenes" section "a scene showing Elvis singing "Lonely Man" in the garage sequence was used in a trailer for the film." Not finding that particular trailer on YouTube, I dug out my DVD copy of the film, took a close look at the trailer and found out that FTD had their facts right, again.

I gotta admit these two songs being filmed made me curious and I would love to find out the answers to the following questions:

1. The two trailers only shows portions of the songs being sung by Elvis. Does the complete footage exist?

2. Were any of the other songs that were recorded by Elvis but then cut from the movies also filmed? Here are those that comes to mind:

King Creole: "Hard Headed Woman" and "Danny"
Flaming Star: "Britches" and "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears"
Blue Hawaii: "Steppin' Out Of Line"
Kissin' Cousins: "Anyone (Could Fall In Love With You)"
Harum Scarum: "Animal Instinct" and "Wisdom Of The Ages"
Paradise, Hawaiian Style: "Sand Castles"
Clambake: "How Can You Loose What You Never Had"

Now, where am I going with all this? I really don't know. Maybe I'm just fascinated with the thought that there are probably a lot of treasures left in the movie vaults. After all, when it comes to unreleased recorded studio material, the search has been going on for decades. But when it comes to the pictures, well, that search hasn't even begun.

3 comments:

MĂ„rtenbrother said...

Seems like often the best songs were cut?! This would make a great compilation DVD ... if it exists!

Rocker said...

"But when it comes to the pictures, well, that search hasn't even begun. "
Well said! And that doesn't only apply to the cut out songs , but to deleted acting-scenes also.

Rick Norman said...

Well, I can tell you as much :
"summer kisses winter tears" certainly was filmed as it was only cut after preview (because of test audience laughing at the scene)
"Steppin' out of line" has a short sequence in European prints
The same with "Anyone" from "Kissin' Cousins"
Both songs from "Harum Scarum" were seen in prints distributed in the Middle East
and "Sand castles" was also present in Europe, following the "House of sand" sequence.
Having worked in the movie and tv-world for 42 years, I strongly suspect all songs will have been filmed. They were probably cut for different reasons and some reappeared in different prints to be distributed in countries that had other copyright laws or interests. FTD and EPE must be unable to clear the rights or retrieve the actual scenes, otherwise they sure would have published them in new versions of the movie DVD's.
I know they have severe problems with copy rights for some of the movie song versions and that they're trying like hell to clear those.

rick.norman42@gmail.com