From No. 1 Hits to Rotten Reviews: The Short, Strange Film Career of Mac Davis

When the Spotlight Shifted

Mac Davis was Broadway-smiley, Top-40 catchy, and a songwriter behind Elvis hits — a familiar face with an easy charm.

But when the country-pop star stepped into leading-man territory in films like Cheaper to Keep Her (1981) and The Sting II (1983), critics and audiences were blunt: the movies — and Davis’s big-screen star turn — mostly failed to convince.

This is the story of a late-1970s music star who never quite found the cinematic role that matched his stage persona.

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From Chart-Toppers to Movie Billing

Mac Davis made his name as a songwriter and crossover pop-country star — penning tunes for Elvis Presley and scoring his own No. 1 single with “Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me.”

By the late 1970s he’d parlayed that success into TV with The Mac Davis Show and guest acting gigs, setting the stage for a more serious Hollywood leap. Audiences liked him. Executives saw a sunny, bankable smile. The problem was that Hollywood gave him the wrong movies.

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Cheaper to Keep Her (1981) — The Miscast Rom-Com

Davis’s first starring vehicle cast him as a divorce investigator in a bawdy comedy about alimony and gender wars.

Critics were merciless. Leonard Maltin labeled it a “BOMB,” and Gene Siskel called it “a pathetic comedy.” The jokes were crude, the tone mean-spirited, and Davis — affable but out of his depth — had nothing to play but exasperation.

Audiences stayed away, and the film faded fast. It’s remembered today mostly as a curiosity, a misfire that left Davis carrying the blame for a script that couldn’t be saved.

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The Sting II (1983) — The Impossible Sequel

If Cheaper to Keep Her was bad luck, The Sting II was a trap.

Universal decided to revive the beloved 1973 Oscar-winner with an all-new cast. Jackie Gleason stepped in for Paul Newman, and Davis inherited Robert Redford’s role. The sequel was meant to feel breezy; instead, it felt haunted.

Variety complained that the new leads “come nowhere close” to the originals, and other critics echoed the sentiment. Fans didn’t want new faces pretending to be old legends. Davis, never a con-man by temperament, seemed miscast — more Texas troubadour than slick grifter.

The film opened soft, vanished quickly, and any shot at a Davis movie career vanished with it.

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Critics, Audiences, and Impossible Comparisons

For Cheaper to Keep Her, reviewers said the material was beneath him.

For The Sting II, they said he was beneath the material.

Either way, Davis couldn’t win. The public knew him as a laid-back, humorous musician — not a comic anti-hero or a master schemer. Hollywood kept asking him to be something else, and audiences never followed.

Neither film built the word-of-mouth that could have changed the narrative. When people remember Davis now, they remember songs and smiles, not screen roles.

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Why the Transition Failed

1. Weak projects. Both of Davis’s starring films were poorly conceived. Cheaper to Keep Her relied on dated, sexist humor, while The Sting II chased a brand name instead of a story.

2. Persona mismatch. Davis’s warm, everyman charm fit variety TV, not cynical comedies or crime capers.

3. Inevitable comparisons. Redford and Newman’s shadows loomed large; no sequel could escape them.

4. Timing and marketing. His fame peaked just as Hollywood was turning toward high-concept blockbusters. A singer-songwriter’s gentle charisma couldn’t compete with Stallone and Cruise.

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Back to the Music

After The Sting II, Davis drifted back to what he did best — songwriting, television, and stage. He worked steadily, appeared on Broadway, and remained beloved in Nashville.

When he passed in 2020, obituaries focused almost exclusively on his music: the Elvis songs, the solo hits, the warm TV persona. His movie career, short and strange, barely registered.

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A Lesson, Not a Tragedy

Mac Davis’s film career is less failure than cautionary tale: proof that even charisma and fame can’t overcome bad material and mismatched roles.

He wasn’t the first musician Hollywood miscast, and he won’t be the last. His brief movie moment stands as a reminder that not every spotlight translates — some are meant for the stage, not the screen.

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