Billy Rose's Jumbo (film)

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Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962) is a musical film, produced by MGM and starring Jimmy Durante, Doris Day, Martha Raye, and Stephen Boyd. It featured Busby Berkeley's choreography. It was nominated for the Academy Award for the adaptation of its Rodgers and Hart score.

The title came from the original Broadway show on which the film was based, and which opened on November 16, 1935, and was the last musical produced at the New York Hippodrome before it was torn down in 1939. Billy Rose produced the original stage version, and stipulated that if a film version was ever made, he would have to be credited in the title, even if he were not personally involved with the film.

Both play and film feature songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, although the film borrows two songs from other Rodgers and Hart shows other than Jumbo.

Despite the fact that the score contained such Rodgers and Hart standards as "My Romance" and "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World", neither the original play or the film were especially successful. The film was Doris Day's last screen musical.

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

On 2 April 2007, Robert Osborne of TCM, introducing the MGM film Fearless Fagan (1952) directed by Stanley Donen, said that Donen was due to direct Jumbo right after Singin' in the Rain in 1952. However, MGM decided the script wasn't ready, and Jumbo wasn't filmed until 1962 with a different director and stars.

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