Billy Rose's Jumbo

This article is about the film. For the Broadway musical, see Jumbo (musical). For the film's soundtrack, see Billy Rose's Jumbo (soundtrack).

Billy Rose's Jumbo is a 1962 American musical film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and starring Doris Day (in her last screen musical), Stephen Boyd, Jimmy Durante and Martha Raye. An adaptation of the stage musical Jumbo produced by Billy Rose, the film was directed by Charles Walters, written by Sidney Sheldon and features Busby Berkeley's choreography. It was nominated for an Academy Award for the adaptation of its Rodgers and Hart score.

Billy Rose's Jumbo
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Charles Walters
Screenplay by	Sidney Sheldon
Based on	Jumbo 1935 play by Ben Hecht Charles MacArthur
Produced by	Martin Melcher Joe Pasternak
Starring	Doris Day Stephen Boyd Jimmy Durante Martha Raye
Cinematography	William H. Daniels
Edited by	Richard W. Farrell
Music by	Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart adapted and conducted by George Stoll
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	December 6, 1962 (1962-12-06)
Running time	127 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$5,256,000[1]
Box office	$ 4 million[1]

The Broadway show Jumbo opened on November 16, 1935 and was the last musical produced at the New York Hippodrome before it was demolished in 1939. Original producer Billy Rose stipulated that if a film version was ever made based on the show, he must be credited in the title, even if he were not personally involved. Both the play and the film feature songs by Rodgers and Hart, although the film borrows two songs from their other shows. Boyd's singing voice was dubbed by studio singer Jimmy Joyce.

Plot

The Wonder Circus comes to a town in the Midwest with its featured attraction, Jumbo the elephant. Pop Wonder owns the circus, but his continued gambling losses in crap games leaves him (and the circus) with an ever-growing number of IOUs.

His daughter, Kitty Wonder, hires a newcomer, Sam Rawlins, as both a performer and tent hand. She is unaware that Sam is the son of circus mogul John Noble, whose ambition is to buy the Wonder Circus for himself. Noble has been quietly buying up the IOUs with Sam's help and abruptly takes control of the family's business, leaving the Wonders without a show.

Kitty, Pop and his longtime fiancée Lulu go off on their own, forming a traveling carnival, but it isn't quite the same. Sam, however, has fallen in love with Kitty and has a guilty conscience about what he has done. Sam splits from his father and rejoins the Wonders, bringing with him an old friend of theirs, Jumbo.

Cast

• Doris Day as Kitty Wonder
• Stephen Boyd as Sam Rawlins
  • Jimmy Joyce as Sam's singing voice
• Jimmy Durante as 'Pop' Wonder
• Martha Raye as Lulu
• Dean Jagger as John Noble
• Joseph Waring as Harry
• Lynn Wood as Tina
• Charles Watts as Ellis
• James Chandler as Parsons
• Robert Burton as Madison
• Wilson Wood as Hank
• Norman Leavitt as Eddie
• Grady Sutton as Driver
• Janos Prohaska as Circus Performer
• John Astin as Pilot (uncredited)
• Billy Barty as Joey the Circus Clown (uncredited)
• Chuck Haren as Lennie (uncredited)
• Paul Wexler as Sharpie (uncredited)
• Charlotte Austin as Child’s Mother (uncredited)

Production

MGM bought the rights to the musical soon after it reached the stage. In 1947, Charles Walters requested to direct the film, and the studio agreed. In 1950, it was announced Arthur Freed would produce and Howard Keel and Jimmy Durante would star.^[2] However, production was delayed for many years because of litigation.

Busby Berkeley emerged from retirement to work on the film, which was his last.^[3]

In May 1962, the film's cost was reported as $4.8 million.^[4]

Soundtrack

A soundtrack album Billy Rose's Jumbo of the film was issued by Columbia Records in 1962.

Reception

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther called Billy Rose's Jumbo a "conspicuously elephantine show" and wrote:

The only thing vastly wrong with "Jumbo" ... is that it is hitting the screen about 25 years late. The aura of wonder and excitement it tries to throw around old fashioned circus life, the sentiment it tries to squeeze and syphon out of an old-time circus manager, the sense of emotional exaltation it tries to pump into a dull tanbark romance—all are such stuff as was familiar in circus pictures that many years ago. Likewise, its blandly naive story of the treacherous devices by which a strong and successful circus management tries to take over a weaker one, all because it has designs on Jumbo, the headline elephant and the smaller show, is the sort that was routinely stylish around 1935—which, by chance, is the year the live original of this picture was staged in the old New York Hippodrome. Done up in color and on a wide screen, as it is done up now, and played with a little more gusto, it might have been a real sensation then. But it wasn't presented in that era. It is being presented now, and a great deal more novelty and character, more imagination and style, are required in a musical film. It is being presented when color and wide screen are so commonplace that they aren't quite sufficient to conceal a flock of minor deficiencies. And it is being presented ten years after "The Greatest Show on Earth," which is far and away superior as a film about circus life. ... Miss Day, for all her pleasant singing, is something of a bore as she plows her way through the proceedings ...^[5]

According to MGM accounts, the film earned $2.5 million in the U.S. and Canada and $1.5 million in other markets, but because of its high cost, it recorded a loss of $3,956,000. It was the last film that producer Joe Pasternak made at MGM.^[1]

The film is recognized by the American Film Institute in the 2006: AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals – Nominated^[6]

Home media

Billy Rose's Jumbo was released as a Region 1 DVD by Warner Bros. on April 26, 2005 and as part of Volumes 1 and 2 of The Doris Day Collection on April 10, 2007.

See also

• List of American films of 1962