Wild in the Country is a 1961 American musical-drama film directed by Philip Dunne and starring Elvis Presley, Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld, Millie Perkins, Rafer Johnson and John Ireland.
Based on the 1958 novel The Lost Country by J. R. Salamanca, the screenplay concerns a troubled young man from a dysfunctional family who pursues a literary career.
A court releases him on probation into the care of his uncle in a small town, appointing Irene Sperry (Hope Lange) to give him psychological counselling.
Wald always intended to cast Elvis Presley in the lead and originally wanted Simone Signoret to appear opposite him.
Other filming locations in Napa Valley include the Silverado Trail between Calistoga and St. Helena, the Cameo Cinema (then The Roxy), an old movie theater still in operation in downtown St. Helena where the dance hall scenes with Elvis and Tuesday Weld were filmed, and the hills and farmland behind what is now Whitehall Lane Winery just north of the town of Rutherford.
Dunne recalled, "For his love scenes with Hope Lange, he couldn't get the right tempo so, I had him listen to Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto.
"[15] The Ink House was used as the house and backyard where a drunken Glenn Tyler tries to hose down Irene Sperry through the porch window, and the nearby 1885 barn is where Irene Sperry drives her DeSoto in to attempt suicide when she is so distraught over her suspected romance with Glenn and the scandal it has caused.
This was Elvis' last dramatic lead role until Charro!, as his next film, Blue Hawaii, was his first big budget musical-comedy and was a box office sensation.
All his subsequent movies were largely formula musical-comedies which were quite lucrative but never gave him the chance to develop his potential as a serious actor that was very apparent in Wild in the Country.
Presley began an off-screen romance with Hollywood "bad girl" Tuesday Weld but the relationship was short-lived after Elvis's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, warned him against his involvement, fearful it would harm his image.
In the original script and rough cut of the film, Lange's character, Irene Sperry succeeds in her suicide attempt.
[18]: 143 Despite being cut from the film, "Lonely Man" was actually the first song from the score to be released, appearing on February 7, 1961 as catalogue 47-7850b, the B-side of Presley's chart-topping hit single, "Surrender.
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote: "Nonsense, that's all it is—sheer nonsense—and Mr. Presley, who did appear to be improving as an actor in his last picture, is as callow as ever in this.
It is difficult to accept the character as a 'potential literary genius' and, for that matter, the lovely and sophisticated Miss Lange as a lonely, learned widow with surprisingly few male admirers but a penchant for resurrecting lost, young, boyish souls.
"[21] Charles Stinson of the Los Angeles Times called the film a "fairly acceptable melodrama", crediting a "sharp and unpretentious script by Clifford Odets, who adapted it from a novel by J. R. Salamanca.
Presley gives an unassuming, sub-sub-Brando performance—even a likeable one in the hotel love scene: but one can't help feeling he was infinitely better off in every way prior to this misguided bid for class.