This was one of the first movies I ever saw. I really liked it too, and it starred Elvis Presley.

Johnny (Elvis) is a showboat singer with a gambling problem. The showboat, lucky for him, has a casino and he’s always betting – and losing. He’s on a losing streak and he’s tried everything to win, but he just can’t seem to do it. So, he goes to a Gypsy who tells him that he will become rich with a redheaded girl by his side. There is only one problem with this – he’s got a girlfriend, Frankie (the lovely Donna Douglas from The Beverly Hillbillies) and she’s not a redhead. But, lucky for Johnny redhead appears on the boat the next day – Nellie Bly (Nancy Kovack), a showboat girl who has recently come back from her attempt on Broadway. Well, Johnny meets up with her at the Roulette table and what do you know, Johnny wins! He hatches a plan – he’s not going to dump Frankie by any means, but he’ll just use Nellie to help him win. The story goes on and with a few plot twists here and there, it ends with Frankie and Johnny together, just like they are supposed to be.

This is one of Elvis’ later movies; 1966 was its’ release and by this time, I think Elvis was starting to get annoyed with these ridiculous B-movies that he was doing. This is understandable (especially when I watched Clambake – but again, another time), and Frankie and Johnny wasn’t the greatest thing in the world. It is based off of the song, ”Frankie and Johnny” in which Frankie and Johnny are a couple (duh) and they go out one night, Johnny gambles and loses and then Nellie Bly comes in and well, his luck heats up. Another girl sees this, tells Frankie and she comes in toting a gun to shoot Johnny for two-timing her because Johnny is “her man and he’s doing her wrong”. Johnny gets shot and yea –that’s it. This song is performed in the movie as a performance that the showboat singers put on (shocker, right?), but the movie is a little different than that. Johnny never “makes love” to Nellie as the song says (though, the context of this could be different since the song was written in 1899 and has variations of it since and I am unsure of the variation they actually use in the movie) and he never has intentions of really leaving Frankie. He’s just using Nellie to gain a fortune in the casino. The only time he really makes mention of perhaps leaving Frankie is when he tells Nellie (though, it’s actually Frankie due to the fact that both her and Nellie – along with another girl name Mitzi – are wearing the same costume) they’re going to take every casino by storm. Though, no matter how you may look at it (if Johnny really did want to leave Frankie for Nellie at that point – or any point – in the movie or that he never had intentions of really leaving her), Johnny and Frankie still end up together; and neither dies in the end, (Even though he was shot in the heart)

I know it's a really old movie, and I don't even know why I liked it so much, but I did.