Elvis Presley filmography

King Creole (1958) was Presley's personal favorite among his many films.

Elvis Presley became a film star in 1956 with Love Me Tender, and would go on to appear in a total of 33 feature films (31 musicals and two concert documentaries). Despite a strong, promising start to his acting career with films like Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, and King Creole, Presley's films, following his return from his military obligation, were made cheaply and quickly to keep costs as low as possible, whilst at the same time keeping profits high. Although critically panned throughout the 1960s, Presley's films were mostly well received by his fans, and led to Hal Wallis describing them as "the only sure thing in Hollywood." The singer would go on to star alongside several well-established actors, including Walter Matthau, Carolyn Jones, Angela Lansbury, Barbara Stanwyck, Jack Albertson, Gig Young, and Mary Tyler Moore. And others who would later become famous, like as an 11-year-old Kurt Russell, making his screen debut in It Happened at the World's Fair (1963).

Presley left Hollywood and returned to live performing in 1969, and following the success of his sell out tours and Las Vegas shows, he allowed cameras to film him in concert and backstage in the early 1970s. One of these films, Elvis on Tour, won the 1973 Golden Globe award for Best Documentary film.

Hollywood

Screen tests

Presley first became interested in acting in his youth; despite later declarations that he had no acting experience, fellow Humes High School students recall that he was often cast as the lead in the Shakespeare plays they studied in English class. He admired actors such as James Dean and Marlon Brando, and reportedly paid close attention to their performing styles long before he ever set foot on a movie set. On March 26–28, 1956, just days after the release of his first album, he did a screen test for Paramount Pictures. His first screen test, a scene from the William Inge play The Girls of Summer, resulted in drama coach Charlotte Clary declaring to her class of students, "Now that is a natural born actor". Another test was an audition for a supporting role in The Rainmaker, starring Burt Lancaster. Screenwriter Allen Weiss compared his acting to that of "the lead in a high school play." Then, to his recording of "Blue Suede Shoes", Presley gave a lip-synced performance, complete with gyrations. In Weiss's description, "The transformation was incredible...electricity bounced off the walls. ... [It was] like an earthquake". In a radio interview two weeks later, Presley excitedly declared that he would be making his motion picture debut in The Rainmaker. The part ultimately went to Earl Holliman.

1956–1958

On April 25, Presley signed a seven-year contract with Paramount and producer Hal Wallis that also allowed him to work with other studios. Wallis, who had produced classics such as Casablanca, Little Caesar, and The Maltese Falcon, had promised Presley that he would look for dramatic roles to let the singer take his acting career seriously. Wallis considered Presley for a role in The Rat Race, a film about a "naive, innocent boy" who was struggling to make it as a musician in Manhattan, but he decided against it after another studio executive said, "Elvis Presley just doesn't look like that". The film was eventually made in 1960 with Tony Curtis in the lead role. Another possible idea that Wallis mulled over was to pair Presley with Jerry Lewis. Lewis had just separated from his comedy partner Dean Martin after a successful run of seventeen movies together, but again the idea was shelved.

Eventually Wallis loaned Presley out to Twentieth Century-Fox, and in November, he made his big-screen debut with the musical western Love Me Tender. The original title—The Reno Brothers—was changed to capitalize on the advanced sales of the song "Love Me Tender". Presley was not too upset about the addition of the title song, he quite liked it, but when several more songs were added he blasted them as "garbage" and "silly songs". The film was generally panned by the critics, although a number of them viewed it in a positive light. The Los Angeles Times wrote: "Elvis can act. S'help me the boy's real good, even when he isn't singing". Despite mostly negative reviews, the film did well at the box office, generating $540,000 in its first week alone.

Although Presley was angered by the addition of songs to his film, the fans loved them. The success of both the single and EP set the tone for every Presley picture that was to follow, and the commercial success led to the release of three more Presley film vehicles over the next twenty months; Loving You, Jailhouse Rock, and King Creole. Jailhouse Rock and King Creole (1958), called for relatively dramatic performances. The erotic, if not homo-erotic, dance sequence to the former's title song is often cited as his greatest moment on screen. It was choreographed by Alex Romero after watching Presley himself. Howard Thompson of the New York Times began his review of the latter movie, "As the lad himself might say, cut my legs off and call me Shorty! Elvis Presley can act."

1960s

His first film after his return from the Army, G.I. Blues (1960), directed by Norman Taurog, set the tone for Presley's Hollywood output in the 1960s. Presley fans loved the mix of songs, romance and humor, and, perhaps surprisingly considering his experiences during the 1950s, critics were also warming to the new formulaic approach and clean-cut characters. Presley was not so thrilled, and thought many of the songs in G.I. Blues made no sense to the plot. He was concerned about the number of songs in it; unlike his earlier films, which consisted of fewer songs usually resulting in only an EP release, G.I. Blues had enough to release a full LP in its own right. As described by critic Al Clark, it was the "first in a series of nine bland Presley vehicles directed by Taurog, and the film which engendered a career formula of tepid, routine comedy-musicals." Presley at first insisted on pursuing more serious roles, but when two films in a more dramatic vein — Flaming Star (1960) and Wild in the Country (1961) — were less commercially successful, he reverted to the formula. So formulaic that his output has been called "Elvis movies," and a genre unto themselves. The majority of Presley's movies aimed for little more than reliable returns on modest investments and the promotion of their accompanying soundtrack albums. To maintain box office success, he would later even shift "into beefcake formula comedy mode for a few years." For most of the 1960s, during which he made 27 movies, there were few exceptions, such as the non-musical western, Charro!

Presley's movies were generally poorly received—one critic dismissed them as a "pantheon of bad taste." As a typical comment put it, the scripts "were all the same". It was further noted that the songs seemed to be "written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll." Indeed, for Blue Hawaii, "fourteen songs were cut in just three days." Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style, says that Presley hated many of the songs chosen for his films; he "couldn't stop laughing while he was recording" one of them. In Sight and Sound (1959) Peter John Dyer wrote that in his movies "Elvis Presley, aggressively bisexual in appeal, knowingly erotic, [was] acting like a crucified houri and singing with a kind of machine-made surrealism." Hal Wallis, who produced nine of Presley's films, also had a reputation for such prestige productions as Becket (1964), starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, and he received 16 Academy Award nominations for his movies. But Wallis's goals were clearly very different for his most reliably profitable star: "A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood," he said. Presley later branded Wallis "a double-dealing sonofabitch", realizing there had never been any intention to let him develop into a serious actor. Critics maintained that "No major star suffered through more bad movies than Elvis Presley." According to Priscilla Presley, in the late 1960s, "He blamed his fading popularity on his humdrum movies" and "... loathed their stock plots and short shooting schedules." She also notes: "He could have demanded better, more substantial scripts, but he didn't." Wallis defended his actions decades later, telling critics, "Elvis was a great entertainer, a great personality. . .and that is what we bought when we bought him. The idea of tailoring Elvis for dramatic roles is something that we never attempted because we did not sign Elvis as a second Jimmy Dean. We signed him as a number one Elvis Presley."

For all that, Presley's films were indeed commercially successful, and he "became a film genre of his own." On December 1, 1968, the New York Times wrote: "Three times a year Elvis Presley ... [makes] multi-million dollar feature-length films, with holiday titles like Blue Hawaii, Fun in Acapulco, Viva Las Vegas, Tickle Me, Easy Come, Easy Go, Live a Little, Love a Little and The Trouble with Girls. For each film, Elvis receives a million dollars in wages and 50per cent of the profits ... [E]very film yields an LP sound-track record which may sell as many as two-million copies."

David Winters' Choreography and dancers have contributed significantly to the success of a number of Presley's films.

David Winters of "West Side Story" fame worked with Presley as a choreographer on four of his movies Viva Las Vegas, Tickle Me, Easy Come, Easy Go and Girl Happy.. Ann-Margret, who co-starred in Viva Las Vegas with Presley, introduced him to Winters, and recommended Winters as the film's choreographer, Winters' first feature film choreography job. Ann-Margret was Winters' dance student at the time. The dynamic combination of Presley, Ann-Margret and Winters' choreography helped make Viva Las Vegas Presley's most successful film at the box office, returning more than $5 million to MGM, more than double the average gross on most other Presley movies of that decade. Winters also convinced the studios to let him use his own dancers in Presley's movies, most of whom were also Winters' dance students, including Teri Garr, who later received an Academy Award nomination for Tootsie. Garr, who was brought in by Winters to dance in Viva Las Vegas, appeared in eight other Presley films.

The silver screen gave many of his fans around the world their only opportunity to see him, given the almost complete absence of international appearances by the singer. (The only concerts Presley ever gave outside of the United States were in three Canadian cities in 1957.) Still, as film critic and historian David Thomson asked, "Is there a greater contrast between energy and routine than that between Elvis Presley the phenomenon, live and on record, and Presley the automaton on film?"

Change of Habit (1969) was Presley's final non-concert movie. His films were no longer profitable, for by the late 1960s the Hippie movement had developed and musical acts like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone, Grateful Dead, The Doors and Janis Joplin were dominating the airwaves. Therefore, Presley shifted his career back to recording and touring after these pictures. The highlights of this period include the television specials "68 Comeback Special", and "Aloha From Hawaii".

1970s

Presley's last two theatrical films were concert documentaries in the early 1970s. In 1974 he lost the opportunity to co-star with Barbra Streisand in a big-budget remake of A Star Is Born when Parker demanded 50 percent of the profits from the production along with other extravagant financial demands. Joe Esposito also recalls that Presley was unsure about the project himself because he did not want to play a loser. With Kris Kristofferson as the male lead, the film became a major hit.

The type of Elvis Presley film varied widely, from the drama of Jailhouse Rock (1957) and King Creole, the latter directed by Michael Curtiz and based on the Harold Robbins 1952 novel A Stone for Danny Fisher, to the light comedies Kissin' Cousins (1964) and Tickle Me (1965). A quote attributed to Elvis Presley in the documentary This is Elvis alleged that some of the films even made him physically ill.

Top grossing movies at the box office

Based on the Box Office Report database, the top grossing Elvis Presley movies based on the yearly Top 20 box office rankings were:

1. Viva Las Vegas (May, 1964, MGM), no. 11 on the list of the top grossing movies of the year in the U.S., $38,606,833
2. Jailhouse Rock (October, 1957, MGM), no. 12, $32,272,038
3. Blue Hawaii (November, 1961, Paramount), no. 13, $36,553,229
4. G.I. Blues (August, 1960, Paramount), no. 15, $33,780,877
5. Loving You (July, 1957, Paramount), tied for no. 15, $30,617,062
6. Girls! Girls! Girls! (November, 1962, Paramount), no. 19, $27,659,406
7. Love Me Tender (November, 1956, Twentieth Century Fox), no. 20, $35,903,060
8. Girl Happy (1965, MGM), no. 25, $22,862,091
9. Kissin' Cousins (1964, MGM), no. 26, $20,981,974
10. Roustabout (1964, Paramount), no. 28, $22,480,687

• Please note that these figures have been adjusted for inflation.

Awards and nominations

Elvis on Tour (1972) won the 1973 Golden Globe award for Best Documentary film. Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese was the montage supervisor for the film. Andrew W. Solt was a researcher on the movie.

Elvis Presley won a 1966 Golden Laurel Award for best male performance in a musical film for Tickle Me (1965). This was the only acting award that he received during his movie career.

For Viva Las Vegas (1964), he received a 3rd place prize 1965 Laurel Award for best male performance in a musical film. Viva Las Vegas also was runner-up in the category of the best musical of 1964 in the 1965 Laurel Awards.

Girls! Girls! Girls! was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical at the 1963 ceremony. Elvis Presley received a 2nd place Laurel Award for the best male performance in a musical for his acting role in this movie.

Screenwriters Gene Nelson and Gerald Drayson Adams were nominated by the Writers Guild of America for the best written musical for their screenplay for Kissin' Cousins (1964).

Anthony Lawrence and Allan Weiss were nominated for the award for Best Written American Musical by the Writers Guild of America for writing the script for the 1964 film Roustabout (1964).

The G.I. Blues soundtrack album was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 1960 in the categories Best Sound Track Album Or Recording Of Original Cast From A Motion Picture Or Television and Best Vocal Performance Album, Male. Edmund Beloin and Henry Garson were both nominated in 1961 by the Writers Guild of America for G.I. Blues in the category of Best Written American Musical.

The Blue Hawaii soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1961 in the category of Best Sound Track Album Or Recording Of Original Cast From A Motion Picture Or Television. Hal Kanter was nominated by the Writers Guild of America in 1962 in the category Best Written American Musical for the Blue Hawaii screenplay.

In 2004, Jailhouse Rock (1957) was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Co-stars	Notes
1956	Love Me Tender	Clint Reno	Richard Egan, Debra Paget	Elvis' first movie role. It's the only film in which Presley did not get top billing (he came third after Egan and Paget). This was also the only film he made where his character was killed on screen.
1957	Loving You	Jimmy Tompkins (Deke Rivers)	Lizabeth Scott, Wendell Corey, Dolores Hart	The first Elvis film in color. Presley's parents were cast as audience members. After his mother's death in 1958, Elvis never watched this movie again.
	Jailhouse Rock	Vince Everett	Judy Tyler, Mickey Shaughnessy	Judy Tyler and her husband were killed in a car wreck on July 3, 1957, just days after filming ended. A devastated Elvis refused to watch the movie as a result. Composer Mike Stoller appears in the movie as the band pianist.
1958	King Creole	Danny Fisher	Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau, Dean Jagger, Dolores Hart	Presley's favorite of the films he made. This was also the last Elvis movie filmed in black and white and his last movie before going into the Army. The movie was loosely based on a 1952 novel A Stone for Danny Fisher by Harold Robbins.
1960	G.I. Blues	Tulsa McLean	Juliet Prowse	The 32nd Armored was Presley's regiment when he was in the Army, so it was used for the film. Incidentally, this was Elvis' first movie after his Army release. The soundtrack album went to No. 1 on Billboard and spent over two years (111 weeks) on the Billboard charts.
	Flaming Star	Pacer Burton	Barbara Eden, Steve Forrest, Dolores del Rio, John McIntire	Andy Warhol's famous diptych of Presley as a cowboy came from a shot in this movie. This is the second movie that Elvis' character dies, but after the outcry following Love Me Tender, Elvis rides into the wilderness to die.
1961	Wild in the Country	Glenn Tyler	Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld, Millie Perkins	Millie Perkins broke her arm when she had to slap Presley's character.
	Blue Hawaii	Chad Gates	Joan Blackman, Angela Lansbury	The soundtrack for this movie became Presley's most successful chart album. It spent twenty consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard Top LP's chart in 1961-1962. Golden Globe and Tony Award winning actress Lansbury co-starred as Elvis' mother, although in reality she was only nine years older than he was.
1962	Follow That Dream	Toby Kwimper	Arthur O'Connell, Anne Helm	This was Shot in Citrus County, Florida and Levy County, Florida.
	Kid Galahad	Walter Gulick / Dustin Holmes / Kid Galahad	Charles Bronson, Gig Young, Lola Albright, Joan Blackman	This is a remake of a 1937 film.
	Girls! Girls! Girls!	Ross Carpenter	Stella Stevens, Jeremy Slate, Laurel Goodwin	The only one of his feature films to be nominated for a Golden Globe.
1963	It Happened at the World's Fair	Mike Edwards	Joan O'Brien, Gary Lockwood, Vicky Tiu	Kurt Russell makes his movie debut (uncredited)—the kid who kicks Elvis in the shin.
	Fun in Acapulco	Mike Windgren	Ursula Andress, Elsa Cardenas, Alejandro Rey,	Teri Garr makes an uncredited movie debut as an extra.
1964	Kissin' Cousins	Josh Morgan / Jodie Tatum	Arthur O'Connell, Glenda Farrell, Jack Albertson, Pamela Austin, Yvonne Craig	Filmed after Viva Las Vegas, this is Elvis' first dual role. Presley loathed the "strawberry blond" wig he had to wear as the hillbilly cousin in this film, in part because it made him look as he had before deciding to dye his hair black in 1957. The film and soundtrack would be The King's final work preceding the arrival of The Beatles.
	Viva Las Vegas	Lucky Jackson	Ann-Margret, Cesare Danova, William Demarest	Filmed before Kissin' Cousins. Elvis had an off-screen romance with his co-star Ann-Margret. This would be Presley's most successful film at the box office, returning more than $5 million to MGM on an investment of less than $1 million due to the dynamic combination of Presley, Ann-Margret and David Winters' choreography. Winters' first of four films he choreographed for Elvis. However, $5,000,000 would still be short of the box office returns of The Beatles' first movie which premiered two months after 'Viva'.
	Roustabout	Charlie Rogers	Barbara Stanwyck, Leif Erickson, Joan Freeman	Presley insisted on doing his own stunt work, including a fight scene in which he incurred a head wound. The film and soundtrack would be Presley's first work following the arrival of The Beatles.
1965	Girl Happy	Rusty Wells	Shelley Fabares, Harold J. Stone, Mary Ann Mobley, Nita Talbot	Shelley Fabares' first of three films she co-starred in with Elvis. Elvis would get so disgusted at the music he was given to sing, he wouldn't return to the studio for another session for eight months.
	Tickle Me	Lonnie Beale / Panhandle Kid	Julie Adams, Jocelyn Lane, Jack Mullaney	This is the only movie for which Presley did not record a new soundtrack; all songs had been recorded between 1960 and 1963 and already released.
	Harum Scarum	Johnny Tyronne	Mary Ann Mobley, Fran Jeffries	Col. Tom Parker wanted a talking camel in the movie.
1966	Frankie and Johnny	Johnny	Donna Douglas, Harry Morgan, Sue Anne Langdon	This is one of several movie variations based on the mid-19th century song of the same title
	Paradise, Hawaiian Style	Rick Richards	Suzanna Leigh, James Shigeta, Donna Butterworth	This was 10-year-old Donna Butterworth's second and final film.
	Spinout	Mike McCoy	Shelley Fabares, Diane McBain, Deborah Walley, Carl Betz	The final film of veteran actress Una Merkel; President Lyndon Johnson visited Elvis on the set of this film.
1967	Easy Come, Easy Go	Lt. (j.g.) Ted Jackson	Dodie Marshall, Pat Priest, Pat Harrington, Jr., Elsa Lanchester	The ship featured in the first part of the movie is the USS Gallant, an ocean-going minesweeper.
	Double Trouble	Guy Lambert	Annette Day, John Williams, Norman Rossington	This was the only movie Annette Day ever made.
	Clambake	Scott Heyward / 'Tom Wilson'	Shelley Fabares, Will Hutchins, Gary Merrill, Bill Bixby	The red sports car in this film is a 1959 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Racer.
1968	Stay Away, Joe	Joe Lightcloud	Burgess Meredith, Joan Blondell, Katy Jurado	Elvis as an Indian rodeo rider. Filmed after Speedway
	Speedway	Steve Grayson	Nancy Sinatra, Bill Bixby, Gale Gordon, William Schallert	The film features cameos by several professional NASCAR drivers. Filmed before Stay Away, Joe.
	Live a Little, Love a Little	Greg Nolan	Michele Carey, Rudy Vallee, Don Porter, Dick Sargent	Albert, the Great Dane in the movie, was played by Presley's own dog Brutus. Presley's father Vernon is featured as a model for one of the photo shoots. Final film before taping of the '68 T.V. Special
1969	Charro!	Jess Wade	Ina Balin, Victor French	The only Presley film in which he was not filmed singing. The only movie in which Presley wears a beard. Gunsmoke and Rawhide producer Charles Marquis Warren was the director and screenwriter.
	The Trouble with Girls	Walter Hale	Marlyn Mason, Sheree North	The only Presley release that was part of a double bill—with The Green Slime (1968). Anissa Jones, best known for playing Buffy on the television program Family Affair, stars in her only motion picture. Upon completion, Presley begins recording non-soundtrack material at American Sound Studios in Memphis.
	Change of Habit	Dr. John Carpenter	Mary Tyler Moore, Barbara McNair, Edward Asner	Featuring Mary Tyler Moore and Ed Asner less than a year before their success on TV with Mary Tyler Moore Show. His only movie for Universal Studios. Playing a doctor who falls for a nun, this would be Presley's last feature film role.
1970	Elvis: That's the Way It Is	Himself	The Imperials, The Sweet Inspirations	Concert documentary; shot during Presley's third season in Las Vegas.
1972	Elvis On Tour	Himself	J.D. Sumner & The Stamps	Concert documentary; 1973 Golden Globe winner for Best Documentary film (it tied with Walls of Fire [1971]).

References

• Bronson, Fred (1985). The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. Billboard. ISBN 0823075222.
• Brown, Peter Harry, and Pat H. Broeske (1997). Down at the End of Lonely Street: The Life and Death of Elvis Presley. Signet. ISBN 0451190947.
• Caine, Andrew (2005). Interpreting Rock Movies: The Pop Film and Its Critics in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0719065380.
• Clark, Al (2005). "G.I. Blues", in Time Out Film Guide (11th ed.), ed. John Pym. Time Out Guides. ISBN 1904978878.
• Falk, Ursula A., and Gerhard Falk (2005). Youth Culture and the Generation Gap. Algora Publishing. ISBN 0875863671.
• Guralnick, Peter (1999). Careless Love. The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. Back Bay Books. ISBN 0316332976.
• Guralnick, Peter, and Ernst Jorgensen (1999). Elvis Day by Day: The Definitive Record of His Life and Music. Ballantine. ISBN 0345420896.
• Kirchberg, Connie, and Marc Hendrickx (1999). Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, and the American Dream. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company. ISBN 0786407166.
• Lisanti, Tom (2000). Fantasy Femmes of 60's Cinema: Interviews with 20 Actresses from Biker, Beach, and Elvis Movies. McFarland and Company. ISBN 0786408685.
• Marcus, Greil (1980). "Rock Films," The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, second edition. Random House. ISBN 0394739388.
• Ponce de Leon, Charles L. (2007). Fortunate Son: The Life of Elvis Presley. Macmillan. ISBN 0809016419.
• Presley, Priscilla (1985). Elvis and Me. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0399129847.
• Thomson, David (1998). A Biographical Dictionary of Film (3d ed.). Knopf. ISBN 0679755640.
• Victor, Adam (2008). The Elvis Encyclopedia. Overlook Duckworth. ISBN 1585675989.