Carousel ***** (1956, Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Cameron Mitchell) – Classic Movie Review 2,192

The vivacious vintage 1956 musical film Carousel stars Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, who act and sing their socks off as the layabout carnival barker Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan, the shy young woman he marries but mistreats.

Director Henry King’s vivacious vintage 1956 musical Carousel reunites the appealing stars of Oklahoma! (1955) as Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones act their socks off and sing their hearts out as the swaggering layabout carnival barker Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan, the shy, pretty young woman he marries but mistreats.

As the movie opens, Billy has been dead for 15 years, but he’d like to head back to Earth briefly to assist in rectifying a problem with his wife and child there. But first he has to get the go-ahead from the heavenly starkeeper (Gene Lockhart), to whom he tells his story.

It is a great, big and bubbly but essentially serious-minded film of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s entrancing stage musical. This is a lavish 20th Century Fox production with lovely performances, invigorating dancing choreographed by Rod Alexander and exciting exterior filming work by cinematographer Charles G Clarke on New England locations, where the story is located in a fishing village. Agnes De Mille choreographs Louise Bigalow’s ballet, derived from her stage original.

And of course the evergreen numbers include some of the best show tunes ever written: ‘If I Loved You’, ‘June Is Bustin’ Out All Over’, ‘What’s the Use of Wondrin’ , ‘When the Children Are Asleep’ and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Even though it didn’t generate the number of popular hits that some of the other Rodgers and Hammerstein shows did, Rodgers considered Carousel his favourite score.

Rodgers and Hammerstein based their show on Ferenc Molnár’s play Liliom, filmed in 1930 as Liliom with Charles Boyer. The screenplay adaptation is by Phoebe Ephron and Henry Ephron, with the latter as the film’s producer.

Also in the cast are Cameron Mitchell as Jigger Craigin, Gene Lockhart as Starkeeper/ Dr Selden, Barbara Ruick as Carrie Pipperidge, Robert Rounseville as Mr Enoch Snow, Metropolitan Opera star Claramae Turner, as Julie’s cousin Nettie, who sings You’ll Never Walk Alone, Audrey Christie as the shrewish carousel owner Mrs Mullin, Susan Luckey, John Dehner, Jacques D’Ambroise, Frank Twedell, Richard Deacon, Dee Pollock, Sylvia Stanton, and Tor Johnson.

Put in the shade by Fox’s concurrent smash hit The King and I, Carousel was a box-office failure, though a critical success and the soundtrack album became a best seller.

Originally cast stars Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland backed out shortly before production. MacRae received an emergency phone call to replace Sinatra while appearing in a nightclub act with his wife at Lake Tahoe. Familiar with the Broadway show, he reported to the set within three days.

Two songs from the show, ‘You’re a Queer One, Julie Jordan’, performed by Ruick and Jones, and ‘Blow High, Blow Low’, performed by Mitchell and a male chorus, were recorded, but are not in the final film, though they are included on the soundtrack album.

The original stage production opened at the Majestic Theatre in New York on April 19 1945 and ran just over two years for 890 performances.

Shirley Jones, born on 31 March 1934 in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, is still busy working in 2021. She starred in Oklahoma! (1955), Carousel (1956) and The Music Man (1962) and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry (1960).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,192

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