Top 10 Things Walk the Line Got Factually Right & Wrong

Even the best biopics take certain liberties with the truth. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the Top 10 Things Walk the Line (2005) Got Factually Right & Wrong.
 
For this list, we’ll be looking at the critically-acclaimed 2005 biographical drama, “Walk the Line” and fact-checking the narrative told in the film against the real life story of Johnny Cash.

Considering the nature of this list, a spoiler warning is in effect. 
 

Johnny Cash wrote more than his fair share of popular songs throughout his career, but the credit for this particular hit does, in fact, go to his talented wife! In one particular scene from the film, we find June plucking at her autoharp. Though not instantly recognizable in its unfinished state, she’s working on “Ring of Fire”. Carter supposedly took inspiration from a book of Elizabethan poetry, in particular, a line comparing love to a “ring of fire”. Co-written by Carter with Merle Kilgore around the time she was falling in love with Cash, the song was first recorded by June’s sister Anita. After it failed to make a significant impact however, Johnny re-recorded it and added the now instantly recognizable mariachi-inspired horns. 
  

True to life, “Walk the Line” depicts Johnny Cash as having serious issues with substance abuse. When it comes to the specifics of when and how he overindulged however, the filmmakers do take a few liberties. Roughly two-thirds of the way through the film, an intoxicated Johnny Cash goes drunkenly stumbling through the woods, eventually passing out. In a rather serendipitous moment, he’s woken up in the morning by the sounds of construction being done on a nearby house. And wouldn’t you know it, the house, which instantly catches Johnny’s eye, is for sale. If the whole thing seems too good to be true, that’s because it is. This great moment was, in fact, dreamed up by the screenwriters. 
  

In 1954, Johnny Cash married Vivian Liberto. In the movie, we don’t see them date, but as Vivian says over the phone when Johnny talks about marriage, they apparently only dated for a month before he was deployed overseas. Now, you’d be forgiven for assuming that this an exaggeration to help convey Johnny’s passionate and impulsive nature to the viewer. But that’s actually what happened! In reality, Vivian and Johnny only dated for three weeks, and proceeded to get hitched shortly after Johnny was honorably discharged. Unfortunately, not everything about their relationship was so accurately portrayed. Their children have been vocal about the unflattering (and they claim, misleading) light in which their mother was portrayed, as well as their parents’ marriage as a whole. 
 

Early in the film, we see Johnny Cash, unhappy in his life as a door-to-door salesman, look wistfully into a recording studio. It lights a fire in him and pushes him to try to make something happen with his own music. Rather than go through conventional channels however, he just waits out in front of the studio. It’s a bold move worthy of the big screen, but the real Johnny Cash was a bold man. Much like in the film, Cash got his foot in the door by waiting at Sun Records for owner Sam Phillips to arrive in the morning. In reality however, this wasn’t his first attempt. Sam had already previously turned him away and said “no” multiple times by phone. 
 

As most people know, Johnny Cash was something of an outlaw: he spent a few nights in jail, though he never served prison time.  And nothing cements your outlaw credibility like performing at a prison. In “Walk the Line”, Cash is shown fighting tooth and nail to be able to play at Folsom Prison for the inmates who’ve been writing to him. Unfortunately, this story is false, but not for the reasons you might suspect! Johnny did, in fact, want to play the prison; the part that’s untrue is that anyone tried to stop him. You see, Cash had already established performing at prisons as his thing long before he set his sights on Folsom. Unlike in the film, everyone involved was happy to have it happen. What Johnny did have to fight for though, was the idea of recording the performance and releasing it as a live album. 
 

Considering Johnny Cash’s hard-partying ways, it’s not difficult to imagine him having passed out onstage at some point in his career. In the film, just such an episode occurs while performing in Las Vegas with his band and June Carter. Johnny’s behavior and stage presence become increasingly erratic, and he’s clearly struggling to sing coherently. After knocking over the microphone, he collapses, apparently having suffered from an overdose.  It’s a scene that certainly fits the narrative, but despite his lifestyle, Cash is not known to have ever passed out onstage -not in Las Vegas or anywhere else. Be that as it may, he was known to play intoxicated and he did famously smash the stage lights while performing at the Grand Ole Opry.
 

A tractor is a serious piece of farm equipment. In the film, a visibly inebriated Johnny tries to get his tractor up a hill and instead goes rolling back into the water; it’s a turning point in his story. Sadly, this particular incident isn’t just true, but was also actually toned down. In real life, he drove the tractor off a cliff in a suspected suicide attempt and required rescusitation. And that’s not the only such accident. Though not shown in the movie, in 1965, Cash caused a forest fire in California that destroyed hundreds of acres of forest; he almost died. Cash blamed the accident on a mechanical issue with his truck, but his nephew, who was with him at the time, blamed substances.
  

When it comes to relationships, it’s almost impossible to portray them accurately in a biopic. They’re simply too nuanced and ever-changing for a filmmaker to be able to successfully boil them down into a reasonable running time. Johnny Cash and his dad surely butted heads over the years. What father and son haven’t? But theirs was not nearly as strained a relationship as the film suggests. For starters, his father, Ray, was actually there when Johnny performed at Folsom Prison; Johnny introduces him to the audience! But, most importantly, Cash remembered his father fondly later in life and, in interviews, never characterized him as abusive or negligent like he’s depicted in the movie.
  

In “Walk the Line”, Johnny Cash makes a big show of proposing to June Carter onstage while they’re touring together. It comes towards the end of the film, after he’s gotten clean. June is clearly caught off-guard by the very public proposal, but, after having turned him down so many times before, she accepts. It’s a heartwarming moment, and one that’s largely true to actual events. Johnny did in fact propose on-stage. Except he didn’t interrupt his performance of “Jackson” to ask, he popped the question after performing it. Despite that minor discrepancy, he did refuse to continue the show until she said yes. Also, there wasn’t a kiss; true to his word, when he got the answer he wanted, he reportedly replied “Okay, next song”. 
 

In 1944, Jack Cash, who was 4 years Johnny’s elder, died in a tragic accident that, like in the film, involved him being fatally wounded when working with a tablesaw. He was just 14 years old at the time. In the film, it’s shown to have happened at a sawmill, but Jack worked at a high school. Unfortunately, Ray Cash blaming Johnny for Jack’s death also seems to be inspired by the true story. In Johnny Cash’s biography, his daughter Kathy says “Grandpa always kind of blamed Dad for Jack’s death” and that as a result, her father “had this, just real sad guilt thing about him his whole life.” Thankfully, there’s no proof that Ray actually made his sentiments as overt as in the film