I believe it was fortunate that Frank Sinatra did not play the role of Billy. He would have been miscast. I am a big Sinatra fan but this role was not for him. He could handle the songs but he did not look like a Billy (too thin, too weak, etc).
sharePersonally, I think it would have been the music that would have been most troubling for Frank Sinatra. While he was a very good pop singer, he did not have the vocal quality to sing the near-operatic music. As far as the role itself is concerned, I think he would have been much more believable as the hardened, sarcastic, bad Billy than Gordon MacRae was. MacRae was too "nice" to be really believable in the role, which I think is a huge failing of the film.
shareI agree, much as Gordon MacRae was fine he just seemed a bit misscast to me in this role. I cannot quite pin down why, maybe he was just not quite rogueish (sp?) enough for the role and it affected the final film.
MacRae pretty much played him as a lout who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, a "big-talker" who couldn't articulate his sentiment, a boor who needed redemption, which I think was a dead-on portrayal.
shareAuthor and musical theatre director Scott Miller has written several books analyzing specific musicals. He covers Carousel in his first, From Assassins to West Side Story. In this chapter, he mentions several times that he doesn't like the movie version.
I enjoyed his writing enough to correspond with him. In one of my letters, I asked what he had against the Carousel film version.
He answered that, even without all the changes the movie made to the script and music, the performance of the two leads was at fault. Although there's no mistaking McRae or Jones' singing talent, he felt that they played their roles exactly as they played their Oklahoma roles, glossing over any darker aspects of their characters. He felt that Jones just played Julie as a sweet girl without any hint of any demons that make it so hard for her to discuss her feelings, and McRae just played Billy as "a swell guy" without much hint of any underlying anger. Compare that to, say, the actor playing Billy on the 1994 revival cast album, who always seems to have an undercurrent of anger and frustration in his dialogue and singing.
In his chapter on Carousel, Scott dissects the main characters at length. One thing he stresses is their extreme youth. (Which is why, as much as I adore Hugh Jackman, I think it would be a mistake to cast him in a remake.) Julie's only a teenager and Billy's probably no more than his early twenties. Their youth and immaturity help contribute to their inability to express themselves and their bad choices. (There's also the hint that they've both had some troubled times in their pasts. Why else would Julie be so mistrustful of opening up to people? Why else would Billy have so much anger and latent violence in him, and also have such a hard time expressing himself? Billy flat-out states that he was treated like an outcast in his childhood much as Louise was. And Julie, Scott Miller states, seems to have a "rescue complex"...she sees herself as Billy's only hope, so she stays with him even though he mistreats her.)
So...maybe Sinatra, who was no stranger to playing characters with dark sides, COULD have pulled it off (although he, too, was too old for the part).
I care about "Scott Miller's" opinion about as much as he cares about mine.
sharePrimarily, I feel Hammerstein's script is to blame, and secondly the direction. I've always been uncomfortable with the dialog. It was never believable that people would speak so oddly, and I don't think the actors quite understood just what they were saying or why they said it half the time. Hammerstein tried too hard to recreate a New England dialect, and it failed miserably, coming out completely unnatural. Jones and McCrae were both perfect for the parts, but the script did them in. Their acting was pretty bad, but not by any fault of their own.
shareActually Sinatra in his prime was perfectly suited to the demands of this music, the acting is debateable though. He first recorded Soliloquy as far back as 1946, but his definitive version is the incredible performance that closes "The Concert Sinatra" album of 1963. For anyone who likes Rodgers & Hammerstein, this album is a must have.
sharePersonally I don't think anyone other than Gordon MacRae could have played Billy the way he was meant to be played. So I'm glad Frank backed out of the production.
shareI wish that John Raitt has played the part, but Sinatra couldv'e been interesting, as he was a better actor tha Gordon Macrea.
"What do you want me to do, draw a picture? Spell it out!"
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Um...seems like you think the part of Billy must be played by a husky-built operatic singer is because you have a fixed idea of Gordon McRae playing him.
As far a the acting goes, I actually think Frank Sinatra might have been better and more believable. He always played a somewhat wimpy, fast talking, weaselly guy in films and Billy's character was certainly that. Very easily misled.
As far as the singing...I dunno. Gordon McRae did sing his parts so definitively it's hard to shake that loose and imagine them any other way. But maybe Frank could have made it work.
p.s. Oh, crap just thought of checking YouTube. There are Frank Sinatra versions of him singing If I Loved You and You'll Never Walk Alone. They are very nice. But lacking emotional conviction like almost all Sinatra songs.
(the one exception for me is It Was A Very Good Year. The words to that song seem happy and pleasant, but Sinatra makes them seep with sadness and regret. Some true honesty in that performance, I think.)
In a sense it was unfortunate that Sinatra walked away from Carousel, because he could have been very good as Billy Bigelow. Gordon MacCrae was good, of course, both in his singing and acting. Sinatra would have brought something different, I'm sure -- and, as mentioned, he was no stranger to this Rodgers and Hammerstein soundtrack. His recordings of If I Loved You, You'll Never Walk Alone and Soliloquy at Columbia remain among the finest versions of these songs. His vocal range, warmth and depth in full flourish here. Whilst later recordings at Capitol and Reprise are no less remarkable and engrossing -- namely on The Concert Sinatra and a lovely duet with Shirley Jones on If I Loved You on the Frank Sinatra Show. This, hinting at what could have been. But what it is, is a fine screen musical in most every way.
sharebsharporflat says...about Sinatra: "But lacking emotional conviction like almost all Sinatra songs." Are you kidding me??? You actually believe Sinatra lacked emotional conviction in his songs??? WOW!!! You sure don't know Sinatra!!!
FAS1
bsharporflat says...about Sinatra: "But lacking emotional conviction like almost all Sinatra songs." Are you kidding me??? You actually believe Sinatra lacked emotional conviction in his songs??? WOW!!! You sure don't know Sinatra!!!
FAS1
Sinatra would have been all wrong anyway.
"In my case, self-absorption is completely justified."
I'd have cast Elvis Presley.
shareHe'd have been too old, for one thing, 41 and looking older when the movie was made. And the leads in this story should be *young*, the mistakes they make are the mistakes of youth. Sure a twenty-year-old might be stupid enough throw over his job to marry a girl he just met, but a man in his forties? Plus he would have had trouble with parts of the score and that would have ended with the score being changed to make him sound good, he's too modern and too New York for the setting, he wasn't a good enough actor for the etc. I mean he could have played Billy the blowhard, but could he pull off the repentance at the finale? Sinatra never repented anything as long as he lived!
McRae didn't embody the character's youth or emotional range either, but the fact is, that Hollywood didn't have a semi-operatic singer who was good-looking, sexy, in his early twenties, and a really good actor on staff at that time.