While appearing in a nightclub act with his wife at Lake Tahoe,
Gordon MacRae received an emergency phone call to replace
Frank Sinatra as Billy Bigelow in the film version of
Richard Rodgers's and
Oscar Hammerstein II's stage hit
Carousel (1956), after Sinatra walked out on the filming when he discovered that every scene was to be filmed twice - once for regular CinemaScope and once for CinemaScope 55. Within three days MacRae, who was already familiar with the Broadway show and had wanted to play the role, reported to the set within three days. Ironically, the producers then discovered a way to shoot in CinemaScope 55 and then convert it to regular CinemaScope without filming the movie twice.
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