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Carousel Overview:

Carousel (1956) was a Musical - Drama Film directed by Henry King and produced by Henry Ephron.

SYNOPSIS

Time (and a spectacular new Broadway staging) has been kind to the memory of this widescreen, deluxe Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. MacRae brings a blustery energy to the role of Billy Bigelow, an ill-fated carny barker. The troubled soul finally settles down with a good woman (Jones), and then gets killed during a robbery. But the angels are merciful and Bigelow returns to Earth to make good with his wife and daughter. The Broadway musical was based on a Molnar play, Liliom. In 1930, Frank Borzage produced a screen version starring Charles Farrell. Fritz Lang filmed a French version in 1935 (his first film after fleeing Nazi Germany), which starred Charles Boyer.

(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion).

Carousel BlogHub Articles:

Carousel (1956)

on May 21, 2014 From Journeys in Classic Film

Either Oklahoma! set the bar so high I’m unable to watch the other Rodgers and Hammerstein movies in their proper context, or there’s just several subpar shows which were adapted to film.  The King and I, for all the problems I had with it, held my interest in the areas of set design a... Read full article

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Carousel Quotes:

Starkeeper: Simmer down now, Billy; you're forgettin' - here there *is* no time; this is the beginning and the end.
Billy: [singing] Longing to tell you, but afraid and shy / I let my golden chances pass me by. / Now, I've lost you / Soon I will go in the mist of day / And you never will know / How I loved you / How I loved you.
Julie Jordan: [singing] And, what's the use of wonderin' / If the endin' will be sad? / He's your feller and you love him / There's nothin' more to say.
Carrie Pipperidge: [singing] When I marry Mister Snow / The flowers will be buzzin' with the hum of bees / The birds will make a racket in the churchyard trees / When I marry Mister Snow.
Billy Bigelow: To be perfectly honest with you...
Starkeeper: I WOULD be, if I were you.
Billy Bigelow: All right - I didn't mind livin' off her
[Julie's]
Billy Bigelow: cousin Nettie. It was just having nothin' to do that drove me crazy.
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Carousel Facts
For the film's premiere screening, a "double system" was used - that is, the film, projected at a 2.55:1 ratio, was shown in a reduction print, but the 6-track stereo soundtrack, which would not have fit on a reduction print, was played on a separate magnetic strip of film.
While appearing in a nightclub act with his wife at Lake Tahoe, Gordon MacRae received an emergency phone call to replace Frank Sinatra as Billy Bigelow in the film version of Richard Rodgers's and Oscar Hammerstein II's stage hit Carousel, after Sinatra walked out on the filming when he discovered that every scene was to be filmed twice - once for regular CinemaScope and once for CinemaScope 55. Within three days MacRae, who was already familiar with the Broadway show and had wanted to play the role, reported to the set. Ironically, the producers then discovered a way to shoot in CinemaScope 55 and then convert it to regular CinemaScope without filming the movie twice.
Frank Sinatra was cast as Billy, but backed out because each scene had to be shot twice (once in 35mm, once in 55mm). Three weeks after he left, they found a way to film the scene once on 55mm, then transfer it onto 35mm.
This film was originally meant to be filmed in both standard 35mm CinemaScope and CinemaScope 55 (55mm). Early in production it was discovered that both prints could be made from the one negative, and so it was filmed in 55mm CinemaScope only. Standard 35mm CinemaScope prints were made for release, and like The King and I, this film was never shown theatrically in the 55mm format.
The musical "Carousel" was adapted from Ferenc Molnar's 1909 play "Liliom". Instead of the original Budapest setting of Molnar's play, Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics) transformed the story's location to a New England fishing village.
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