Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962) - film review

Kitty Wonder manages a travelling circus with her father, their main attraction being a performing elephant named Jumbo.  With the circus heavily in debt, Kitty struggles to keep the show on the road, not an easy task when her father keeps gambling away their earnings.  One day, a handsome young circus hand named Sam Rawlins turns up looking for work.  Sam proves to be not only a hardworking labourer but an adept acrobat and with his help the circus’s finances appear to improve.  In fact, Sam is merely buying up the debts and passing them onto his father, a wealthy businessman who intends to take over the circus.  By the time Kitty discovers this betrayal, she realises she is madly in love with Sam...

Doris Day’s last screen musical attracted some unfavourable reviews which caused it to bomb at the box office.  The film’s poor reception is hard to understand, particularly as it was one of MGM’s more lavish and vibrant musical offerings, with immense family appeal. Some stunning circus sequences (choreographed by the great Busby Berkeley) complement such memorable Rodgers and Harts numbers as The Most Beautiful Girl in the World and This Can't Be Love.

The film is based on Billy Rose’s 1935 Broadway production Jumbo and features Jimmy Durante, one of the performers in that original production.   What the film lacks in the way of plot is made up for in style, and who can resist Doris Day performing horseback acrobatics in a bright pink leotard?   Stephen Boyd, better suited to historical epics than musical froth such as this, is somewhat miscast as Day’s love interest (the chemistry between the two stars is conspicuous by its absence), although this hardly matters as Jimmy Durante and Martha Raye pretty well steal the show with a double act that is as touching as it is funny.  Definitely not the greatest MGM musical, but it is still a great deal of fun.

© Derek Adamson 2010

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