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With 2022 producing a new biopic drama starring Austin Butler as the King of Rock and Roll, it’s a great time to check out some of these fun old Elvis movies. They’ve aged well for what they are, contrived stories of a bygone time, and at times, Elvis sure was a sight for sore eyes.
6 Love Me Tender (1956)
It was originally entitled The Reno Brothers, but then Presley’s single Love Me Tender sold a million copies. The record-breaking sales prompted a slight marketing change and it became the first of many movies to capitalize on a popular song title.
It doesn’t matter at all that the new title had little or nothing to do with the storyline, which is an interesting one of family intrigue and brotherly competition. Presley plays the youngest brother, Clint, who stays home to take care of Mom and marries his older brother’s girlfriend when he’s assumed dead on the battlefield. The older brothers are off to war, but it gets a bit sticky with one of them in the Confederate Army and the other fighting with the Union.
5 Jailhouse Rock (1957)
This movie tells a nice rags-to-riches story that’s still fun today, and it mirrors some of Presley’s real experiences as someone who came from nothing and made it, but there were some bumps on the road to stardom. He plays a simple, blue-collar construction worker, Vince Everett, who accidentally kills a man in a bar fight and is sentenced to about a year in jail. He takes up music during his incarceration and becomes a pop star, starting a new label with his girl and hitting the big time.
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The scene where the cast is dancing in the jail to that rocking tune is iconic, and several other movies have their own interpretations. The Blues Brothers, which closes on a musical number from a prison cafeteria where the main characters are serving their time, is one famous example.
4 King Creole (1958)
Presley got a 60-day deferment from the Army draft to finish King Creole, and later on, he would say that Danny Fisher, the main character, was his favorite role to play. It could be his most critically acclaimed performance, and he got to be an actor in a movie with a plot and story instead of something built around his singing and dancing ability.
Danny Fisher is a good kid, but he gets mixed up with criminals after he drops out of school, and ends up getting a job as a singer at one of their clubs. The stakes are fairly high as Danny has to dodge not only the gangsters but also their rival wiseguys and jealous girlfriends.
3 Viva Las Vegas (1964)
This is the story of Lucky Jackson and how he went to the Las Vegas Grand Prix in his Maserati. His rival is the sinister Count Elmo Mancini and his equally mean Ferrari. The Count has money and social standing on his side, but Lucky’s got that moxie! What more needs to be said to sell this movie?
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The chemistry between the leading stars is what made this movie a critical success and a fan favorite, and its popularity also had a lot to do with the glamour of Las Vegas at the time. The scene where Presley sings the titular song was all done in one take, and it was the only time this happened in all of his movie appearances.
2 Blue Hawaii (1961)
This is one of those movies where fans and critics didn’t exactly agree, but the legacy of Blue Hawaii as a pop-culture icon and a box office smash can’t be denied. The plot is a satire of itself, a hilarious example of live-action “harem,” a genre usually reserved for anime, as the main character is surrounded by women.
Chadwick Gates, also known as Chad, is played by Presley, and after getting out of the Army he’s anxious to get back to island life. That means he has to deal with his girlfriend, his mother, and the scatterbrained clients and management at the tourist agency where he works.
1 Elvis: That’s The Way It Is (1970)
Similar to Elvis on Tour, a film that was released in 1972, Elvis: That’s The Way It Is is about putting together an album as opposed to a tour. It’s a documentary film intended to be part of the publicity for the album of the same name.
The film is meant as a way to push Elvis Presley’s return to live music after a long hiatus, and most of the footage is from Presley’s onstage performances in Las Vegas. However, there’s also rare footage from various recording studios and even an Elvis Appreciation Society convention in Luxembourg.
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