Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962) – full review!

Directed by Charles Walters (Lili (1953)) with a Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur (The Scoundrel (1935)) play that was adapted by Sidney Sheldon (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)) this below average Musical does features a lot of good circus action. It also marks the last film of this type which features Doris Day. Stephen Boyd plays her eventual love interest; Jimmy Durante plays her father and Martha Raye plays Durante’s long term fiancée. Dean Jagger also appears as a rival circus owner. Its Score which is largely forgettable except for the (Richard) Rodgers & (Lorenz) Hart song “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” was nominated for an Oscar the last that George Stoll (Anchors Aweigh (1945)) would earn. The film’s title refers to the star of the show a very talented pachyderm or more specifically an elephant. Billy Rose was the owner of the original musical extravaganza on whose 1934 show (starring Durante?) this film is based.

Pop Wonder (Durante) runs a poor man’s traveling circus that barely manages to keep ahead of its creditors. In fact if it weren’t for his daughter Kitty (Day) his assets including his best & favorite attraction Jumbo would have been taken away long ago. But Kitty’s got just enough charm to assuage their pursuers until they can pack up and move on to the next town. Unfortunately the Wonders haven’t been able to pay their employees so one by one they’re losing their performers to a rival better funded circus owned by John Noble (Jagger). It’s not that the Wonder Circus isn’t a pretty good show capable of selling out the house; it’s the fact that Pop can’t resist losing the day’s take in a local crap game afterwards. So Kitty pretty much runs things as best she can. The fortune teller Lulu (Raye) is Pop’s longtime girlfriend to whom he’s supposedly been engaged for 8 years. Pop is both a clown in the circus and it’s master of ceremonies while Kitty performs on a horse and fills in anywhere else when necessary. Billy Barty (uncredited) is featured briefly in one scene.

One day a handsome circus tramp (a traveler who drifts from job to job in different circuses) named Sam Rawlins (Boyd) arrives. Though Kitty initially dismisses him preferring to hire employees with staying power Sam proves invaluable when the Wonder’s tightrope walker disappears. So he becomes part of the circus. Naturally a budding relationship develops between Sam and Kitty especially after Sam helps Kitty recoup most of the $800 that her father had lost shooting craps enabling her to pay and thus retain most of the circus’s staff. Somehow without any money Pop finds a way to purchase the cannon he’s always wanted and attempts to launch Lulu across the ring; it doesn’t work. What Kitty doesn’t know is that handyman Sam is actually John Noble’s son who is using his father’s cash to buy up all the Wonder’s bills. Grady Sutton appears briefly and nearly unrecognizably as a hay seller. Noble covets Jumbo and hopes to gather enough of Wonder’s debt to takeover his circus and own the elephant that Wonder refuses to sell. Of course Sam’s relationship with Kitty grows making him feel guilty and just about the time he decides to quit working for his father Kitty finds out and is disillusioned when he’s nowhere to be found.

*** SPOILERS ***

Without their circus or Jumbo Pop Lulu & Kitty form a small one cart vaudeville type show traveling and swindling their way around the country to survive. One day Sam catches up with them to re-declare his love for Kitty. The fact that he’s somehow managed to (buy from his father &) bring Jumbo with him seals the deal. With the elephant and an added performer in Sam the four person Wonder circus quickly grows to be bigger and better than the original show by the film’s end.

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