The CCC Movie Group is open to all! Watch the movie(s) on your own, then join the group on Zoom at 7:00 pm on “Movie Mondays” to discuss.  Please contact Lynn Horton for the Zoom link, if you have questions, or if you have difficulty accessing the movie!

Monday, January 27: Carousel

(1956) American drama-fantasy musical film based on the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical of the same name, which in turn was based on Ferenc Molnár’s 1909 non-musical play “Liliom.” Starring Gordon MacRae as Billy Bigelow and Shirley Jones as Julie Jordan, the film was directed by Henry King, with a screenplay by Phoebe Ephron and Henry Ephron. As with the original stage production, the film contains some of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s most famous songs and perhaps the most serious storyline of all their musicals. The plot of this story has an “Our Town” quality – Fifteen years after his death, a carousel barker is granted permission to return to Earth for one day to make amends to his widow and their daughter. Frank Sinatra was originally cast to play Billy Bigelow and recorded the songs that he was to sing in the film. It had been reported that Sinatra withdrew from the film in objection to the requirement that each scene be filmed twice, one for regular CinemaScope and the other for CinemaScope 55, but according to Shirley Jones’ 2014 autobiography, Sinatra quit because his wife Ava Gardner threatened infidelity if he failed to accompany her on her film set. Gardner was in the late stages of filming “The Barefoot Contessa.”