Focus Features

Early on the chilly evening of 15 November 1956 outside of the Paramount Theater in New York City, thousands of fans screamed for their idol Elvis Presley. He wasn’t there for a concert, but for the premiere of his film debut, a Civil War melodrama called Love Me Tender (after Elvis’ hit song). While in hindsight it seems obvious that the King was an ideal candidate to transition from recording to film, the producers were not so certain at the time: the film’s original title was The Reno Brothers and Elvis was billed third, after Richard Egan and Debra Paget. But after Love Me Tender pulled in over a million dollars on its first weekend, and audiences could barely hear the film’s wooden dialogue over the screaming teens in the audience, Elvis became box office gold, going on to make 31 feature films in the next 15 years.