Jupiter's Darling

Jupiter's Darling (1955)

The Love Story of the Beauty and the Barbarian! Clash of Armies! Underwater spectacle! Never before such sights to see!

Rome is on the verge of being conquered by Hannibal. While Rome's ruler, Fabius Maximus, plots a defense against Hannibal's armies, Fabius' fiancée, Amytis, is curious about the fearless conqueror. Amytis travels to Hannibal's camp just to get a look at him, but she ends up being captured. However, she is instantly smitten by the Carthaginian commander, so she tries to shift his attentions away from Rome -- and to her instead.

Date of release
1955-02-18
TMDB
4.8 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 35m
Genres
Music, Adventure, Romance, History
Director
George Sidney

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Florida

Jupiter's Darling is a 1955 American Eastman Color musical romance film released by MGM and directed by George Sidney filmed in CinemaScope. It starred Esther Williams as the Roman woman Amytis, Howard Keel as Hannibal, the Carthaginian military commander, and George Sanders as Fabius Maximus, Amytis's fiancé.

Production

The film was based on a 1927 play Road to Rome. It was bought by MGM in April 1933 who announced they would make a movie from the play, potentially as a star vehicle for Clark Gable. In June the studio listed the project among their upcoming productions. Rights appear to have lapsed because in April 1939 MGM announced they had purchased the property again as a vehicle for Gable and Myrna Loy with Joseph L. Mankiewicz to produce.

In January 1950 MGM announced that Charles Schnee had just completed a script for Clarence Brown to direct and that they hoped Kirk Douglas to star. However no film resulted.

In January 1954 MGM announced they would turn the play into a musical called Jupiter's Darling starring Esther Williams and Howard Keel. MGM said because of this casting, Jane Powell was to go into Athena which had been intended for Williams, Ava Gardner would replace Powell in Love Me or Leave Me, and Lana Turner would replace Gardner in My Most Intimate Friend.

In her memoir, Williams said she had been on maternity leave for three months, being pregnant with daughter Susan, and had assumed that she would go straight to work on the film Athena. She, along with writers Leo Pogostin and Chuck Walters, created the premise for Athena during the filming of Easy to Love, and Walters finished the script while Williams was on leave.

Howard Keel later said the studio decided to change the title from Road to Rome so audiences did not think it was a "Road" picture. He suggested Hannibal's Darling which led to the title of Jupiter's Darling.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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