Flaming Star

Synopsis

Elvis Presley plays Pacer Burton, the son of a Kiowa mother and a Texan father working as a rancher. His family, including a half-brother, Clint, live a typical life on the Texan frontier. Life becomes anything but typical when a nearby tribe of Kiowa begin raiding neighboring homesteads. Pacer soon finds himself caught between the two worlds, part of both but belonging to neither.

Primary cast

Background

The film rights for Flaming Star had been circulating around Hollywood since 1958 when 20th Century Fox finally decided to cast Presley in the lead role. Originally Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando were lined up to play the brothers. The Executive producer was Buddy Adler, but he died a week before the start of filming, his duties taken by David Weisbart.

Presley's previous film, G.I. Blues, had been a success at the box office and had led to one of his best selling albums to that point. However, determined to be taken seriously as an actor, Presley asked for roles with fewer songs. Flaming Star was initially to include four songs, but after Presley demanded two of the songs be removed, it ended up with only the title song and a short number at the opening birthday party scene.

Barbara Steele, a British actress originally signed to play the love interest, was replaced during filming by Barbara Eden after studio executives decided that Steele's accent was too pronounced. (Steele claims she quit.)

The film was released only one month after G.I. Blues but did not achieve the same degree of box office success, reaching number 12 on the Variety box office survey for the year. Presley's next film, Wild in the Country, also failed to impress fans or critics, and Colonel Tom Parker used this to persuade Presley that his audience didn't want to see him in straight acting roles. This led to musical-comedies such as Blue Hawaii and Kid Galahad, which set the precedent for most of his roles for the rest of his career. No longer would Presley be considered a serious actor.

Publicity stills of Elvis from the film were used by Andy Warhol to create several silkscreens, among them "Double Elvis", (many of which exist, one of them in particular selling for $37 million in 2013 at Sotheby's), "Triple Elvis", of which two are said to exist, one fetching $81.9 million in 2014 at Christie's, "Eight Elvises", which sold privately in late 2008 for $100 million and of which only one copy exists, several single Elvises and "Elvis 11 Times".