the audience applauded

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Which is arguably the case with most Elvis Presley movies, where he plays himself, sings a few songs, and the movie depends on the rest of the cast. This is a costumer set in the indefinite past, where everyone is first aboard a riverboat and then in New Orleans.Elvis plays a performer in a riverboat musical entertainment show, with a blond girlfriend who acts with him. Trouble is, he is a compulsive gambler in debt to a number of people on the riverboat, including his thuggish boss. Being a superstitious sort, he consults with a gypsy stationed offshore, who tells him he needs a redhead woman companion to start winning at gambling. He finds one...namely the girlfriend of his boss, and the inevitable complications come from that.This is basically like any other such musical, meant to be amusing without pretense of deep meaning. And in that, the movie works.

The saga of Frankie And Johnny gets a lighter telling in this Elvis Presley film. Elvis plays an entertainer on a Mississippi riverboat circa the turn of the last century with a real gambling problem. His partner in the act is Donna Douglas late of the Beverly Hillbillies who would only marry him if he gives up his ways. Want to bet on the chances that that would happen?Donna and the King work for Anthony Eisley whose number one girl Nancy Kovack, the infamous Nellie Bly has returned and an old gypsy said that a redhead would bring Elvis fabulous good luck. But that causes problems with both Eisley and Douglas.A few new numbers were written for the film, but Frankie And Johnny has mostly traditional ballads of the era such as Down By The Riverside and When The Saints Go Marching In. All done in a New Orleans Dixieland style, most agreeable with Presley.Some others in the cast are Harry Morgan as Elvis's accompanist, Audrey Christie as Morgan's wife, Robert Strauss as Eisley's dimwitted bouncer, and Sue Ane Langdon who spends the entire film absolutely plastered. Watching her complain about not being able to get and hold a man all I could think is that if she drew a sober breath once in a while she might have a chance.Fans of the King should like this one.

Frankie and Johnny wasn't half bad as Elvis pictures go- which means it was half- watchable as a movie and not just a typical kitchy vehicle to ogle the King. The musical performances we're good and the sets and costumes interesting-the high point in the film is the last performance of Frankie and Johnny--Elvis actually comes off pretty suave at times as a river boat gambler and his character played well off a nubile, young Donna Douglas. Harry Morgan does a good job as Elvis' older, more wary sidekick and the rest of the cast work well and don't detract/subtract from the main action which is of course- Elvis. Not a bad way to kill an afternoon or round off an evening of insomnia.

Romping, colorful Presley vehicle with plenty of songs and good comedy from Harry Morgan and Donna Douglas. Johnny (Presley) is a riverboat gambler who becomes convinced that a redhead is his good luck charm -- problem is, Frankie (Douglas) is a blonde! She goes after him with a gun, and the rest is in the song (a personal favorite of Elvis', I understand). Edward Small's production clearly outclasses the Sam Katzman drek Presley would soon be floundering in. Some fairly elaborate musical numbers well-executed, quality photography and decent directing. DVD is a good one, buy it Elvis fans.