Deleted Scenes from the Movies

I've always had a keen interest in the songs that were planned but not used in the final films. I began to research deleted scenes and made some interesting discoveries over the years. For instance, the 2 songs removed from GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS (Where Do You Come From and I Don't Want To) were physically spliced out of the various prints by the local Paramount exchanges. Over the past 30 years, I've handled over a dozen 35mm Technicolor prints and every single one had those physical splices in the second reel. Therefore, those cuts were made at the eleventh hour after Technicolor had made the 100 or so release prints for theatrical distribution.

A similar situation occurred with FLAMING STAR. The print that was previewed for the industry trades included at least "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" and one reviewer (I think Variety) noted that it was to be cut for general release. So that particular edit was made before Deluxe Labs made the prints for theatrical release and would only exist in that one 35mm preview version. It was most likely a separate 35mm picture and magnetic track and is probably long gone.

I've heard that some foreign prints of HARUM SCARUM contain the 2 songs that were cut near the beginning of the film, "Animal Instinct" and "Wisdom of the Ages."

I've always hoped that production files would be tracked down to determine precisely which songs were filmed but not used. With the recent loss of Elvis' personal shooting scripts (a terribly bad move by the Estates) it makes it that much more difficult to determine which scenes were actually committed to celluloid.

I spoke with someone at Warner Bros. who worked on the VIVA LAS VEGAS restoration a few years ago. He said that every scrap of film in the vaults was pulled and inspected, and there was nothing in the way of deleted footage. Was Night Life, Do the Vega or You're the Boss even filmed, or was the decision to scrap them made before the start of principal photography?

Last edited by HoneyTalkNelson on Fri Nov 09, 2012 9:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Hi Bob
yes, this topic was always interesting to me, i always thoguth about those deleted scenes
I know that in the trailer of GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS we can see Elvis sings I DONT WANT TO !!! for about 14 seconds....so it was filmed ! dont know about Where do you Come From
in Wild In The country , in the trailer we sure see few seconds of LONELY MAN !!!
About the songs from Viva Las Vegas and Harum Scarum i really dont know, never saw even 1 second of those
i would pay lots of $ for those deleted scenes, if only they exised
i also would love to know more information....
Thanks for bringing this topic again
Good Day
Lior

I think your theory on last hour changes is true and there is a clue.

Even the soundtrack album for GGG's, listed "I don't want to" and "I don't wanna be tied" as part of the soundtrack.

They were not listed seperately as bonus songs.

"Britches" was almost certainly filmed.

"Steppin out of line" as well.

"Five sleepy heads" as well.


Besides "Lonely man", one other song was probably filmed and cut too.

And there are a few more that escape my memory at the moment.

Also, on the Kissin' Cousins soundtrack Anyone (Could Fall In Love With You) is listed as a part of the ST not as a bonus song. To me this indicates it was intended for inclusion in the film, but was deleted. Probably filmed?

It may be just "recalled" memory...but I am sure I saw Where Do You Come From sung outside a cinema . I thought it was very boring at the time.

Hard Headed Woman was filmed but cut from King Creole.

Great topic!!! Here's a few...

Wasn't "How Can You Lose What You Never Had" cut from Clambake?

Also, from Flaming Star... "Britches" and "Summer Kisses Winter Tears" were cut. Maybe even film of Elvis singing "Flaming Star" exists somewhere! Maybe not.

From Wild in the Country... "Lonely Man" and "Forget Me Never"

From Blue Hawaii... "Steppin Out of Line" and "Playing With Fire"

From Kid Gallahad... "Love Is for Lovers"

Thomas, from the "Elvis Today" blog, wrote an interesting post about this:

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Movie Outtakes – The Comments

Going through my old posts preparing the “manuscript” for my book The Elvis Today Blog Vol. 1, I sometimes stumble across comments made long after a particular post was written. One such comment, from February 22, 2010, was written in conjunction with a post from February 1, 2008, in other words, two years after the post was published.

The post, titled Lost In The Vaults – Movie Outtakes, referred to an article in Elvis Monthly from September 1994. In it, Ernst Jorgensen writes about the possibilities of movie outtakes, such as the original ending of Love Me Tender as well as “Summer Kisses Winter Tears” from Flaming Star.

The comment, posted by Norton McColl who ran an Elvis fan club in Brazil for many years, goes likes this:

One thing I learnt is that most of Elvis movies presented in Brazilian movie theatres had alternative scenes. Here it goes. KING CREOLE has shown the alternative hotel scene where Elvis and Susan Hart actually got inside the room. GI BLUES had the alternative TONIGHT IS ALL RIGHT FOR LOVE (Vienna Woods) scene which is completely different than the one released later. SPEEDWAY had the FIVE SLEEPY HEADS scene where he actually sings to 5 babies. HARUM SCARUM had two extra scenes included which are ANIMAL INSTINCT with a black panther circulating and WISDOM OF THE AGES where Elvis bows to the King at the end of this latter song.
I do not know for sure whatelse we could see in the movie theatres in the 50´s and 60`s. I wish we had VHS sets at that time. But it looks like they always use South America to show alternative scenes. The same happened with Hammer horror movies productions whose bloody scenes in full colour were later cut from released VHS's and DVD's.

And a couple of days later, editing a post called Unreleased Frames from April 13, 2009 dealing with songs shown in trailers but not in the movies themselves, I noticed a comment written two weeks later by a guy named Rick Norman along the same lines:

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.

It's interesting that both Norton McColl and Rick Norman mentions the inclusion of “Animal Instinct” and “Wisdom Of The Ages” in prints of Harum Scarum shown in South America and the Middle East, respectively. Maybe one day they'll turn up in on a compilation DVD together with the other songs mentioned above. And wouldn't it be something if it would include “Hard Headed Woman” from King Creole as well as the Clambake number “How Can You Loose What You Never Had?”
Posted by Thomas at 9:17 PM

Last edited by JimmyCool on Thu Sep 09, 2010 2:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Great topic!!! Here's a few...


From Kid Gallahad... "Love Is for Lovers"

There is no evidence that Elvis ever recorded a song called "Love is for Lovers". It is likely the titled demo for the film which was rejected by Elvis.

Great topic!!! Here's a few...


From Kid Gallahad... "Love Is for Lovers"

There is no evidence that Elvis ever recorded a song called "Love is for Lovers". It is likely the titled demo for the film which was rejected by Elvis.

Thanks! I had read that "supposedly" Elvis sang it as a duet with one of the Jordanaires.

It may be just "recalled" memory...but I am sure I saw Where Do You Come From sung outside a cinema . I thought it was very boring at the time.

Years ago and I mean years...., my dad bought a little cassette tape recorder for me and every time an elvis movie was broadcast on tv that I did not have the soundtrack to, I would put the recorder close to the tv speaker and record songs from the Elvis movies........I said that to say this......I remember recording "Where Do You Come From" from the TV and listening to it in all it's badly recorded quality until I could find a used copy of the soundtrack LP. Therefore I am convinced that somewhere there are copies of "Girls, Girls, Girls" that have this scene in tact...........if only they could be located. This would be a fantastic discovery along with the alternate ending of "Wild In The Country". Also, hasn't Ernst stated that he has seen the scene of "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" from Flaming Star? Where did the source for the movie version come from? Was it an acetate or from the movie print? I can't remember and do not have time to check my notes.

Thanks Deke for confirming Alzheimer's hasn't set in! (yet)

Fantastic thread!

I recall back in the eighties while watching "Girls! Girls! Girls!" at my Uncle's home (he was American) and I was waiting for the "Where Do You Come From?" scene, but it never appeared and I was disappointed.
Somehow I remembered back then that "I Don't Want To" was cut from the final print, but didn't know they also cut "Where Do You Come From?" (at least from certain prints). Strange sources I must have been using then...

I've seen the "Tonight's All Right For Love" scene as well as the snippet for "I Don't Want To" in the trailer for "Girls! Girls! Girls!" and the excerpt of "Lonely Man" in the "Wild In The Country"-Trailer and I was fascinated!

I'd love to see all of those deleted scenes.

Years ago I copied every single Elvis song-performance from his movies (from "We're Gonna Move" to "Let Us Pray") onto separate VHS-Tapes... boy, what a trip it was!! But it was fun to watch and after that I didn't feel like watching the rest of the movie (the so-called "plot") anymore...

I've been out of the "Elvis world" for the past decade or so and I'm just getting back into things. As you might guess, I'm a bit out of the loop so far as recent developments and discoveries. I've just joined this site and it looks to be a GREAT resource for real information on Elvis and his career.

I've been a fan since the summer of 1968. I was first introduced to Elvis when my brother gave me a well used copy of Golden Records Volume 1. I was hooked at 7 years old! I would beg my parents to take me to see his movies when they opened in the theaters. (Alas, I was only successful once. My mom gave in and took me to see STAY AWAY JOE when it opened locally. Not exactly the best one to see in the movies, but it was a BIG treat. I can still remember the opening panoramic shots on that huge CinemaScope screen!) When I saw the Singer special in December, I was a fan for life. I got every new album and single and played them to death.

At that time, the main visual exposure to Elvis was through showings of his movies on TV. In New York, the 4:30 movie would often run an Elvis week and that was the only way to see his work. For that reason, the films have always held a soft spot for me. I realize they're not terribly good, but it's all that we had.

To illustrate the kind of impact they had made, when I saw Elvis at the Garden in 1972 (5th row, center stage) my main impression was the thrill of seeing a movie star on that stage. Imagine that!

I've always had a keen interest in the songs that were planned but not used in the final films. I began to research deleted scenes and made some interesting discoveries over the years. For instance, the 2 songs removed from GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS (Where Do You Come From and I Don't Want To) were physically spliced out of the various prints by the local Paramount exchanges. Over the past 30 years, I've handled over a dozen 35mm Technicolor prints and every single one had those physical splices in the second reel. Therefore, those cuts were made at the eleventh hour after Technicolor had made the 100 or so release prints for theatrical distribution.

When I worked on THIS IS ELVIS in 1981, we were contacted by a private collector who claimed to have a 35mm print with the 2 songs intact. Unfortunately, the producers were not really interested so that contact wasn't pursued, much to my disappointment.

A similar situation occurred with FLAMING STAR. The print that was previewed for the industry trades included at least "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" and one reviewer (I think Variety) noted that it was to be cut for general release. So that particular edit was made before Deluxe Labs made the prints for theatrical release and would only exist in that one 35mm preview version. It was most likely a separate 35mm picture and magnetic track and is probably long gone.

I've heard that some foreign prints of HARUM SCARUM contain the 2 songs that were cut near the beginning of the film, "Animal Instinct" and "Wisdom of the Ages."

I've always hoped that production files would be tracked down to determine precisely which songs were filmed but not used. With the recent loss of Elvis' personal shooting scripts (a terribly bad move by the Estates) it makes it that much more difficult to determine which scenes were actually committed to celluloid.

I spoke with someone at Warner Bros. who worked on the VIVA LAS VEGAS restoration a few years ago. He said that every scrap of film in the vaults was pulled and inspected, and there was nothing in the way of deleted footage. Was Night Life, Do the Vega or You're the Boss even filmed, or was the decision to scrap them made before the start of principal photography?

I'm trying to find a copy of ELVIS: FRAME BY FRAME to see if that book answers any questions. In the meantime, are there any other articles I should seek out to answer my questions on the deleted movie footage?

Many thanks for any help and advice!

Bob

Nice post Bob,welcome to the forum

Hi Bob

Thanks for your post,some interesting information that you provide such as the 'Girls Girls Girls!' picture which "were physically spliced out of the various prints by the local Paramount exchanges",I had not heard that before.


From the words of Elvis himself speaking about the movie 'Flaming Star':

"You know,they do some queer things with soundtracks,take the picture 'Flaming Star' for instance,now when that movie was made,there were four songs in it,now I considered they all should go out. I considered this was a dramatic role,and I wanted to keep it that way. For days and days I fought,and in the end they did cut out two of 'em. Do you they had me singing one of them on the back of a horse-Beeches or somethin' but that did get cut finally,and also another one ("Summer Kisses, Winter Tears"),but it still left two,an if'd had my way there'd have been nothin"!


I have the book ELVIS: FRAME BY FRAME by Bill Bram if you would like any info from that book? Bill has a very nice article in the latest Elvis The Man And His Music magazine,with regards to deleted scenes from the picture 'Wild In The Country' and some never before photo's. If you look here : viewtopic.php?f=8&t=52067 there's some info regarding deleted scenes from 'Wild In The Country"

Here for info and photo's of the deleted 'Hard Headed Woman' production number and 'Danny' from King Creole : viewtopic.php?f=8&t=44952 .With regards to 'Danny' see the King Creole FTD book.

'Steppin' Out Of Line'

Ben Wiseman : "Yes 'Steppin' Out Of Line', as you know, was taken out of the movie"

1. Chad signals to the group at the Island Inn to start playing,and The opening few bars to the number can be heard.(This brief section is not the movie version,and was probably recorded at Paramount Studios)
2. Chad enters the dance floor with Ellie Corbett, where a very abrupt edit occurs,and a lip sync error. Almost straight away they both leave the dance floor, and as he attempts to control her, he states "You know your Steppin Out Of Line"
3..Once Chad sits Ellie back down at the table,There is a reference from Enid Garvey, "That was wonderful young man" ,which is confusing ,as nothing has happened. The Lyrics would fit in with scene concerned.

Davide

I wish they would have cut A Cane And A High Starched Collar. But I'm glad they left the title song in. Having Flaming Star sung over the opening credits set the tone nicely.

I really appreciate all the thoughtful responses, thank you!

I spent a great deal of time researching the films of Abbott and Costello for a book I co-authored in the early 90's. From my experience, the only way to really determine what was filmed (other than photographic evidence) is with the final draft shooting script or the daily production reports. I'm still greatly disappointed that the Estate sold all of Elvis' personal scripts which were ultimately destroyed in a fire. What an incredibly shortsighted move!

Does anybody know if the scripts were scanned or copied before they left Memphis? I sure hope so!

Bob

Great topic.
For years I wondered about cut outs.
There should be a lot of cuts out there, unless they rewinded the tape after a mistake. Somebody should know???
All the best.

I really appreciate all the thoughtful responses, thank you!

I spent a great deal of time researching the films of Abbott and Costello for a book I co-authored in the early 90's. From my experience, the only way to really determine what was filmed (other than photographic evidence) is with the final draft shooting script or the daily production reports. I'm still greatly disappointed that the Estate sold all of Elvis' personal scripts which were ultimately destroyed in a fire. What an incredibly shortsighted move!

Does anybody know if the scripts were scanned or copied before they left Memphis? I sure hope so!

Bob

When did this fire take place? Where?

The person that bought the scripts had them in a house in Malibu that was destroyed by fire a few years ago.

Anybody has any update on the lost movie cuts?

Anybody has any update on the lost movie cuts?

They're still lost.
The "Tonight's all right for love" scene is circulating with Dutch and French subtitles, obviously coming from a Belgian print of the movie.

If memory serves me right, there was a similar thread on this Board a few years ago:
I can confirm that Speedway released in Asia/ India did have " Five sleepy Heads" in the movie: I did see it when it was first released around '68.
The print that was re-released after '77 was sadly in very poor condition and had lost quite a bit of running time.

Here in Brazil, I have a big friend of mine and his name isWalteir and he does remember watching "Animal Instinct" and "Wisdom Of The Ages" in the Harum Scarum movie.

Also, a friend from Asia many years ago told me about the "Five Sleepy Heads" footage.

EDIT: jbgude,

I had not seen your post above. So my friend from Asia is probably correct about "Five Sleepy Heads"

Here in Brazil, I have a big friend of mine and his name isWalteir and he does remember watching "Animal Instinct" and "Wisdom Of The Ages" in the Harum Scarum movie.

Just an update: today I met this friend of mine at the Elvis Experience Brazil and he confirmed to me once again about these songs in the Harum Scarum movie.