Lyrics by
Lorenz
Hart
Music by Richard Rodgers
Produced by Joe Pasternak and Martin
Melcher for M.G.M.
Directed by Charles Walters
Starring: Jimmy Durante,
Doris
Day and
Martha Raye
Screenplay by Sidney Sheldon
Second Unit Director
Busby Berkeley
Reviews
Doris Day and her producer husband Martin Melcher tried to bring back
the classic MGM musical with
Billy Rose's Jumbo, a lavish 1962
adaptation of the legendary Broadway spectacle. If they didn't re-create
the glorious box-office results of the past, it certainly wasn't for
lack of trying -- or achievement. The main problem was that
Billy
Rose's Jumbo was an entertainment from an earlier era and lacked
appeal to contemporary audiences. Following the smashing success of
West Side Story, with its location-shot dance scenes and social
commentary, Day's film seemed like a throwback to an era that today
is sadly missed.
In 1935, producer Billy Rose was already being publicized as the "Bantam
Barnum" when he got the idea for
Jumbo during a visit to Europe,
where he saw two of the continent's famous indoor circuses. With a
generous investment from John Hay Whitney, he brought together a team
of showbiz experts: director George Abbott, dance director John Murray
Anderson, songwriters Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and playwrights
Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. They managed to coordinate over a
dozen circus acts, more than 1,000 animals, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra
and comic Jimmy Durante for an extravaganza about a romance between
the son and daughter of rival circus managers. Though it ran for 233
performances, followed by a three-month engagement at the Texas State
Fair, the show was too big to turn a profit.
Throughout
Jumbo's original run, Rose was besieged with claims
that the plot had been stolen from a variety of sources, though nobody
could make enough of a case to get even a token settlement out of
him. When he was negotiating the sale of film rights to MGM, however,
Hecht, who was angry at Rose for re-writing his script at the last
minute, told studio executives that he had, indeed, borrowed the plot
from another play. As a result, MGM dropped its offer from $200,000
to $50,000. Desperate to break even on the show, Rose had to accept.
Then the studio sat on the property for almost three decades.
Day, who worked mostly at Warner Brothers and Universal, had had several
happy experiences working at MGM when she and her husband Melcher
decided to make a big musical there, possibly to compensate for her
having lost the lead in the film version of
South Pacific to
Mitzi Gaynor. Like Rose before them, they assembled a team of experts
to bring
Billy Rose's Jumbo to the screen. Director Charles
Walters had started as a dancer and choreographer before turning to
directing with
Good News in 1947 and
Easter Parade the
following year. He and Day had teamed previously for
Please Don't
Eat the Daisies. Melcher's co-producer was Joe Pasternak, who
had made Deanna Durbin a singing star at Universal in the '30s, before
coming to MGM, where he worked with such performers as Judy Garland
and Gene Kelly. In addition to producing
Daisies for Day, he
had also produced her biggest dramatic triumph,
Love Me or Leave
Me (1955). To keep the music up to MGM standards, they had associate
producer Roger Edens, who had helped shape Garland's singing career
and supervised the music on all of producer Arthur Freed's great musicals.
And as second unit director in charge of the musical numbers, they
got Busby Berkeley to come out of retirement for what would be his
last film.
The original
Jumbo had produced three hit songs: "The Most
Beautiful Girl in the World," "Little Girl Blue" and "My Romance."
To those and other songs from the original score, Day added another
Rodgers and Hart standard, "This Can't Be Love." The numbers were
filmed impeccably, with Berkeley staging an impressive array of circus
stunts to accompany Day's first song, "Over and Over Again," and Walters
making the camera dance with the performers as he had in his earlier
films.
Although no singer, leading man Stephen Boyd had scored a hit as Messala,
the villain in
Ben-Hur, and did an impressive job lip-synching
to James Joyce's vocals. But the film's cast was dominated by the
presence of two seasoned comic performers. To play Day's father, Durante,
who played the circus press agent on Broadway, returned to the screen
after a ten-year absence. Although the role was different, he got
to re-create his most famous line from the original. When he's stopped
while trying to steal back the circus' trademark pachyderm and asked,
"What are you doing with that elephant," Durante deadpans, "What elephant?"
To play Durante's lovelorn girlfriend, Martha Raye returned to the
screen after a 15-year absence during which she had become a top television
star. The circus routines gave Raye a chance to show off her still
shapely legs, while she also shared a lyrical duet with Day that reminded
fans she was one of the best singers in the business. Raye was so
thrilled with the role that she re-located to the West Coast, hoping
her part would lead to other film offers.
Unfortunately for all concerned,
Billy Rose's Jumbo was far
from a giant at the box office. MGM gave it a big buildup, complete
with an opening engagement at the Radio City Music Hall, but fans
and critics were unimpressed. Only Raye, Durante and the elephant
got decent reviews. It took the Vietnam War and her tireless work
for the USO to rejuvenate Raye's career. But it was Day who suffered
the most from the film's box-office failure. She had been campaigning
to star in the film versions of
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
and
The Sound of Music, but lost both roles, to Debbie Reynolds
and Julie Andrews respectively. The latter film marked a resurgence
in popularity for the film musical, but it came three years too late
to help
Billy Rose's Jumbo at the box office.
The
presentation is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.2:1. The
image compositions are constantly rectangular and benefit fully from
being presented correctly on the screen. Without letterboxing, the
entire visual impact of the movie would be lost, and it would also
be difficult to make out the pachyderms. The stereo surround sound
has many old fashioned separations and is good fun. There is a mild
softness in the dialogue track but its effect is not significant.
Side three runs under a half hour but is in CLV. The picture is consistently
sharp and the flesh tones always look accurate. With the letterboxing
in place, the movie is much more bearable on home video than it is
in a theater. For example, the anticlimactic musical finale, which
has too great an emphasis on clowns to come at the end, is easier
to sit through or avoid in the home environment.
The musical, revolving around a near-bankrupt circus, contains some
top level Rodgers and Hart numbers. The spectacle, in all of its letterboxed
glory, is enlivening, and the movie leaps comfortably from circus
acts to songs to what plot there is. The performers are also a joy.
Jimmy Durante and Martha Raye can clown quite effectively without
any makeup at all. Doris Day is an ideal vocalist for the songs of
Rodgers and Hart. Last but not least there is Stephen Boyd, whose
presence is such an embarrassment (the opposite of an ideal vocalist
for the R & H songs, not that he's singing, but he still has to
do the lead-ins) that it becomes pleasurable watching how bad and
elephantine he can be. A good actor, in such a wishy-washy part, would
never have stood out so well behind Durante.
OK circus picture, at best during Rodgers and Hart songs, well-staged
by Busby Berkeley. Durante (who had starred in the 1935 Broadway production)
and Raye are marvelous. Songs include "
The Most
Beautiful Girl in the World," "
My Romance,"
"
This Can't Be Love." Also known as JUMBO.
Filmed in Panavision
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Overview
33" nowrap>
On TV
|
Tue Oct 26 08:30AM on Turner Classic Movies
Overview
Discography
|
Film Soundtrack