Rita Hayworth's career was on the skids. What Columbia boss Harry Cohn wanted was a Rita Hayworth vehicle that would not only bring in the customers, one and all, but that ardent fans would pay to see twice. So now he was prepared to stake her career on one final fling: The Loves of Carmen (1948). He wanted Charles Vidor to direct, but Charles expressed himself uninterested in the subject. Cohn pleaded. He gave the director a rise in salary and allowed him to produce the film as well.
Based directly on the Prosper Mérimée novel, The Loves of Carmen does not make use of Bizet's well-known opera music but of a score especially composed for the production by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Glenn Ford plays Don José, Victor Jory is Garcia, while Arnold Moss makes an impressive debut as the unctuous colonel of dragoons. Vidor's direction, alas, is not very exciting, except for a withdrawal crane shot at the film's conclusion. He obviously decided to play it safe and not invest the movie with the moodily noirish effects of his "Gilda".
Mérimée and Bizet made Carmen a classic, but Columbia publicity was bent on making it literally a household word, thanks to a staggering variety of studio tie-up deals with manufacturers of such assorted items as shoes, handbags, cigarettes, hosiery, soap, cosmetics, hats, scarves, hair ornaments, castanets and costume jewelry. A fantastic seller in its own right was the "Carmen doll" ($6.98); through 30,000 retailers, it piled up $1,000,000 in orders within its first 20 days on the market. "Carmen castanets" to be used as a "wolf-call" were pushed as a national fad among teen-agers. Dance kingpin, Arthur Murray, was persuaded to teach the "Carmen Flamenco". In addition a 30-part serialization of the movie was run in 600 newspapers, while Pocket Books, Inc., issued a 25¢ edition of the Mérimée novel, plugging the movie on the cover.
But despite all this frantic activity, the film barely recovered its negative cost.
Based directly on the Prosper Mérimée novel, The Loves of Carmen does not make use of Bizet's well-known opera music but of a score especially composed for the production by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Glenn Ford plays Don José, Victor Jory is Garcia, while Arnold Moss makes an impressive debut as the unctuous colonel of dragoons. Vidor's direction, alas, is not very exciting, except for a withdrawal crane shot at the film's conclusion. He obviously decided to play it safe and not invest the movie with the moodily noirish effects of his "Gilda".
Mérimée and Bizet made Carmen a classic, but Columbia publicity was bent on making it literally a household word, thanks to a staggering variety of studio tie-up deals with manufacturers of such assorted items as shoes, handbags, cigarettes, hosiery, soap, cosmetics, hats, scarves, hair ornaments, castanets and costume jewelry. A fantastic seller in its own right was the "Carmen doll" ($6.98); through 30,000 retailers, it piled up $1,000,000 in orders within its first 20 days on the market. "Carmen castanets" to be used as a "wolf-call" were pushed as a national fad among teen-agers. Dance kingpin, Arthur Murray, was persuaded to teach the "Carmen Flamenco". In addition a 30-part serialization of the movie was run in 600 newspapers, while Pocket Books, Inc., issued a 25¢ edition of the Mérimée novel, plugging the movie on the cover.
But despite all this frantic activity, the film barely recovered its negative cost.