Gordon MacRae Had Feelin'

He Was Right for “Carousel”

Gordon MacRae is a persistent fellow. He wanted to snig "Billy" in Rodgers and Hammerstein's “Carousel”, ever since, while still wearing the uniform of an Air Force lieuten-ant, he saw the play in New York in 1945. He has sung "So-liloquy" and other songs from it in night club engagements for years and when he heard that Twentieth Century-Fox was to make a screen version, laid siege to the part.

He stirred his agent to fren-zied activity and bombarded Production Chief Darryl Zanuck, Producer Ephron and others with telegrams proclaiming his suitability. He signed for a three week engagement in a stage production of the vehicle in Dallas so that studio folk could see how well he played the part. But before the opening Curtain at Dallas, he knew Frank Sinatra had been signed for the role.

But MacRae never gave up. Dallas saw him at his very best and when the run ended, Gor-don kept the sideburns and long-ish haircut he had grown for the role so that he would be instantly available for the picture.

"I knew that I was right for 'Carousel' and that 'Carousel' was right for me," he explained later. "When things are right, they usually work out. I always felt that I would do the picture."

And, of course, he did. Sina-tra and Twentieth Century-Fox met head-on over the issue of shooting the picture in two pho-tographic systems—the new 55-millimeter and conventional Cine-maScope. The upshot was that the day before the production started at Boothbay Harbor, Me., Sinatra walked out. Twen-tieth Century-Fox first replaced him with MacRae and then filed suit against Sinatra for $1,000,000 in New York Supreme Court.

Like Director Henry King, MacRae has some feeling for New England and New Englanders. He was raised in up-state New York and attended Deerfield Academy, in Massachusetts, and admires and tries to live in New England virtues of honesty, thrift and industry.

Born of a well-to-do family, he lived a happy childhood and was absorbed with athletics, specializing in lacrosse and football. It was a singing family, too, and when Gordon decided to make this his career, he was urged only to do it well.

It is an interesting footnote that his first real break came when he replaced Sinatra, who had fallen ill, for a performance on an NBC radio show. This led to a contract and all his subse-quent success.