Walk The Line

While growing up in the Great Depression era, Johnny Cash takes an interest in music and eventually moves out of his Arkansas town to join the air force in Germany. While there, he buys his first guitar and writes his own music, and proposes to Vivian. When they got married, they settled in Tennessee and with a daughter, he supported the family by being a salesman. He discovers a man who can pursue his dreams and ends up getting a record with the boys. Shortly after that, he was on a short tour, promoting his songs, and meets the already famous and beautiful June Carter. Then as they get on the long-term tours with June, the boys, and Jerry Lee Lewis, they have this unspoken relationship that grows. But when June leaves the tour because of his behavior, he was a drug addict. His marriage was also falling apart, and when he sees June years later at an awards show, he forces June to tour with them again, promising June to support her two kids and herself. While the tour goes on, the relationship between June and John grow more,and his marriage to his first wife ends. June finds out about the drugs, and help him overcome it. True love and care helped John eventually stop the drug usage, and finally proposes to her in front of an audience at a show.

J.R. Cash takes an early interest in music while growing up on an Arkansas cotton farm in the Great Depression. He is very close to his elder brother Jack, who dies in an accident involving a table saw in 1944 when J.R. is out fishing. His guilt about this event is not helped when his father blames him as well, so it comes as a welcome escape when he is old enough to enlist in the air force and is sent to Germany. Inspired by a film he sees there, _Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951)_ (qv) he composes a song, "Folsom Prison Blues." Leaving the air force Cash marries and attempts to succeed as a door-to-door salesman in Memphis, Tenn. but his heart is in music and he succeeds in an audition with Sam Phillips at Sun Records. Soon Johnny is touring and meets June Carter, who has been a country star since childhood. Although they are drawn to each other, they are married to others. Touring takes a toll on Johnny's marriage, and in the 1960's he becomes addicted to amphetamines. His marriage ends and June helps him beat the drug dependency. Reading fan letters from prisoners inspires Cash to perform a concert at Folsom Prison, which leads to a very successful album. June finally accepts Johnny's proposal of marriage given as they perform together on stage in Ontario in February, 1968.

Johnny Cash grew up in Arkansas, and served in the Air Force in Germany, where he bought a guitar. He returned from the war and married. Singing and playing with two other men, he cut a record in Memphis. His reputation growing from airplay and live performances, Cash became a star, touring with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and others. On tour, he suffered the effects of drug addiction. He also met June Carter, who would later become his wife. Responding in part to the fan mail he received from prisoners, Cash played a legendary concert for the inmates at Folsom Prison in California.

A woman's love, given reluctantly, saves a man from addiction and self-destruction. Traces the life of Johnny Cash from his boyhood, with the loss of a brother and the loss of his father's affection, to 1968 when his outlaw side and his unhappiness give way to the twin triumphs of his concert at Folsom Prison and June Carter's acceptance of his marriage proposal. Along the way there's his first composition, first recording, first marriage, daughters, being smitten with June, divorce, pills and booze, an empty life, and the Carter family's nursing him back to health. June eases Johnny out of a ring of fire.