Carmen Jones Overview:

Carmen Jones (1954) was a Musical - Drama Film directed by Otto Preminger and produced by Otto Preminger.

SYNOPSIS

A sizzling screen version of Bizet's Carmen updated for an all-black cast, including an especially sizzling Dandridge. Soldier Belafonte falls for Dandridge, a seductive factory worker. The lovers flee after the soldier kills his sergeant, but Carmen's taunting faithlessness drives her lover to a crime of passion. Hammerstein provided lyrics for Bizet's melodies, and Preminger added the snap.

(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion).

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Carmen Jones was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1992.

Academy Awards 1954 --- Ceremony Number 27 (source: AMPAS)

AwardRecipientResult
Best ActressDorothy DandridgeNominated
Best Music - ScoringHerschel Burke GilbertNominated
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BlogHub Articles:

You Otto See It: Carmen Jones (1954)

By Google profile on Nov 9, 2008 From Out of the Past - A Classic Film Blog

About MeBlogger, Out of the Past - A Classic Film Blog and more. Please add my Google profile to your circles. I do love de movie Carmen Jones. It's de best dat Preminger got! Carmen Jones (1954 or 55) is by far my favorite Otto Preminger film yet. I just adore this film. What's not to love? It's a... Read full article


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Quotes from

Joe: Thanks, but I don't drink.
Carmen Jones: Boy, if the army was made up of nothin' but soldiers like you, war wouldn't do nobody no good.


Frankie: Somethin' tells me Chicago's gonna be real good for you.
Myrt: Somethin' tells me you gonna be real bad for Chicago.


Frankie: We'll be livin' off the fatheads of the land.


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Facts about

Leontyne Price was originally assigned to dub Dorothy Dandridge's singing voice, but fell ill and was replaced by Marilyn Horne.
Otto Preminger wanted to film on location in Chicago and South Carolina, but studio records show the movie was shot entirely on the Fox lot. One notable exception was the children's chorus scenes that were shot on location at a working dynamite factory. The parents, of course, were present, many of them sitting on boxes of explosives - idly smoking.
Although the original Broadway production had used a standard pit orchestra with Georges Bizet's orchestrations for the opera "Carmen" slightly altered by orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett, the film score was created by Herschel Burke Gilbert, the Music Director (a term he always insisted was the correct one, not "Musical Director), using a full symphony orchestra (ranging from about 90 to over 105 pieces), which enabled him to present the music with the sensibility of most of Bizet's original 1875 orchestrations as they were meant to be heard, although modified to fit the story line and transitions of the film. Because of Marilyn Horne's coming into the singing cast quite late in the production, and because of a number of unrelated delays, Gilbert had to leave the production shortly before it was completed, as he had a commitment for an original score of another film. Dimitri Tiomkin, a Fox Studio senior, as it were, stepped in to put together the last bits of recording and supervising the last music editing. Technically, especially given his seniority at Fox and his stature in the industry, he could have insisted hi
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Best Actress Oscar 1954






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National Film Registry

Carmen Jones

Released 1954
Inducted 1992
(Sound)




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Also directed by Otto Preminger




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Also produced by Otto Preminger




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Also released in 1954




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