Carousel

Carousel follows Billy Bigelow, a charismatic carnival barker in a small Maine coastal town, who falls in love with Julie Jordan, a mill worker. Their marriage is troubled by his temper and his inability to hold down work, and when he joins a robbery plot to provide for the child Julie is expecting, the scheme goes wrong and he dies. Fifteen years later, stranded outside the gates of the afterlife, Billy learns that his widow and the daughter he never met are struggling. Granted a single day back on Earth to help them, he tries to make amends and offer his daughter the guidance he could not give her in life.

The film is an adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical, directed by Henry King and written and produced by Henry Ephron and Phoebe Ephron. It sits between The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) and The Bravados (1958) in King's filmography. Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones lead the cast as Billy and Julie, with Cameron Mitchell, Barbara Ruick, Claramae Turner and Robert Rounseville in supporting roles.

Released by 20th Century Fox in February 1956, the film had a budget of 3 million dollars and took about 4 million dollars worldwide, a modest return. On IMDb it holds a 6.5 rating from roughly 7,200 votes, while on TMDB it has a 5.3 from a much smaller base of 87 votes; a critics' rating of 6.8 from 7 reviews puts it somewhat above the audience scores.