Flaming Star (1960) on Netflix
Pacer Burton, half Kiowa and half white, lives with his family on a Texas frontier ranch. As Kiowa raiders strike homesteads, Pacer and his half-brother Clint are pressed to pick a side.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb6.5/104,536 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
Pacer Burton's mother is Kiowa and his father is a Texan rancher. With his half-brother Clint, Pacer lives with the family on a ranch on the Texas frontier. A band of Kiowa from nearby begins attacking homesteads, and many white settlers at The Crossing refuse to have anything to do with the Burton family. Both brothers are pressed to pick a side. Pacer feels the pull of both his mother's Kiowa world and his father's white one.
Cast
- Anne Bentonas Dorothy Howard
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Flaming Star (1960)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- South Africa banned Flaming Star in 1961 because Elvis Presley played the son of an American Indian woman and a white man; 20th Century Fox appealed the next day and the ban was lifted only on the condition that the film not be shown to the country's indigenous population. It then opened in segregated theaters, starting in Durban.
- A publicity still from Flaming Star became the source for Andy Warhol's Elvis silkscreens, among them Single Elvis, Double Elvis, Eight Elvises and the largest, Elvis Times Eleven, now at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Sales of at least 11 of them passed $380 million by May 2021.
- Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando were originally slated to play the brothers before 20th Century Fox decided to cast Elvis Presley in the lead. Determined to be taken seriously as an actor, Presley asked for roles with fewer songs.
- Barbara Steele was originally signed to play the love interest but was replaced during filming by Barbara Eden after studio executives decided Steele's British accent was too pronounced, though Steele claims that she had quit.
- The film was permanently banned in cinemas in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, where colonial government officials feared it could reignite racial tensions in the aftermath of the Mau Mau uprising.
- Director Don Siegel shot tests with Elvis Presley wearing dark contact lenses for the role, but discarded them after deciding they detracted from Presley's acting too much.
- Flaming Star was to have four songs, but Presley demanded two be removed, leaving just the title song and a short number at the opening birthday party scene. It was the last of his films with so few songs until 1969's Charro!, his next western.
- Presley's theme song was later rerecorded as Flaming Star with the same words and melody; RCA released his original Black Star version in 1991, and scholar Chris O'Leary suggests it may have influenced David Bowie's final album, 2016's Blackstar.
