The cinematic career of Elvis Presley began in 1956 with the musical western “Love Me Tender”, so named after the famous ballad “Love Me Tender”, which the king of rock and roll recorded specifically for his debut film. However, the audience (especially young people) did not go to this film because of the dramatic component of the screen story, referring to the legendary times of the American Civil War. They were eager to see this movie to be in the dark of the cinema with their idol. And they saw his rock and roll majesty on the screen, and not one of the Reno brothers, whom, according to the film’s slogan, they should have loved dearly.
And such films where Elvis, with rare exceptions like “Loving You”, in general, had nothing to play, only showing his radiant image on the screen, were the majority of those three dozen works that make up his filmography. But Elvis himself wanted more. He wanted to demonstrate his remarkable artistic talent on the big screen, as such pop stars as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra were able to do earlier.
After a triumphant return from two-year army service in Germany in March 1960, Elvis’s name reappears on cinema posters. First, Presley starred in the comedy musical “Soldier’s Blues” specially written for him, where his hit repertoire of that time was widely presented. And after that, in December 1960 “The Flaming Star” was released – a western that brilliantly presented the dramatic talent of Elvis, who played the role of a laconic half–breed here, standing up for the honor of his mother. This extraordinary tape by Don Siegel (familiar to fans of westerns, primarily through his work with Clint Eastwood) will be discussed further.
In general, initially the film, which was based on K. Huffaker’s novel “The Flaming Spear”, was planned to be released in 1958, the year the novel was published. And the performers of the roles of the two main characters (the Burton brothers) were to be Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando. But the script “The Brothers of the flaming Arrow”, made by the wonderful master of his craft Nanneli Johnson, required too much money. As the screenwriter later recalled, the 20th Century Fox studio “said they couldn’t do it because it would be too expensive for a western, and a western can’t afford such expenses.”
The postponement of the project (albeit not in a long box) also led to the loss of performers and super–demanded stars – Frank Sinatra, for example, in 1960 appeared in the title role in the movie Ocean’s Eleven, and Marlon Brando in Sidney Lumet’s film “From the breed of Fugitives” (by the way, for the main role Elvis Presley was also considered for this film according to the script of the incomparable Tennessee Williams, but his strict manager Colonel Parker did not give his consent).
But after watching the Flaming Star, it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Elvis as her young hero. After all, Presley was able to merge with his character in such a way that his Pacer Burton more resembles an impetuous pacer (as the hero’s name translates) than a rock and roll star. By the way, this movie was supposed to be released under the name “Black star” and Elvis even recorded the title track with the same name before it was decided to adjust it to “Flaming Star”. An Indian legend about the “Flaming Star”, which appears to the Kiowa Indians as a sign of imminent death, was also coined under this name.
This star invisibly appears to the hero’s mother, the Indian Neddy, who has lived in the white world for a long time and, it seems, everyone around her took her for her own. But, when her tribesmen begin to destroy the settlements of farmers, ruthlessly cracking down on their inhabitants, Neddy and her son turn out to be strangers in the eyes of their neighbors and cause only burning hatred. In the role of Neddy, the Hollywood superstar of the 1920s – early 1940s Dolores del Rio appeared on the screen. The classic of world drama George Bernard Shaw once aphoristically formulated:
“The two most beautiful things in the world are the Taj Mahal and Dolores del Rio!”
And the colleague of the Mexican beauty on the movie screen, the great Marlene Dietrich, according to her daughter, confessed: “Dolores del Rio was the most beautiful woman to ever set foot in Hollywood.” However, by the time filming began, the golden age of both Hollywood and Dolores herself was already in the past, she had not acted in a movie for more than a decade. Perhaps the participation of Elvis in this project, who became the screen son of one of the most charming women in world history, helped convince her to return to the cinema.
The producer of this dramatic film story (sometimes translated as “The Flaming Star”), scripted in the prairies of Texas (although the shooting mostly took place in Utah and California) was the same David Weissbart, who once produced the cult “Rebel without a Reason” with James Dean, who passed away early, and Presley’s first film “Love me tender”. And, of course, the participation of a rock and roll star in the film assumed that Elvis would perform songs that he and director Siegel wanted to minimize. And the producer of the tape noticed:
“We don’t have the courage to imagine him without any songs at all. We left them where they sound natural.”
In the end, only two of the four numbers remained, and the first of them at the very beginning of the tape was made in such a way that it removes all the characteristic elements of Elvis’s performance presentation as much as possible. And in the first few minutes, the viewer has a persistent impression of some kind of secondary and even boredom from what is happening. But it is worth overcoming this deceptiveness and the film will reward you with experiences to the fullest. And you will see Elvis in all the splendor of his acting talent.
