A deadbeat dad gets ONE DAY to fix his legacy. Heaven's customer service is weird.
In a Maine coastal village toward the end of the 19th century, the swaggering, carefree carnival barker, Billy Bigelow, captivates and marries the naive millworker, Julie Jordan. Billy loses his job just as he learns that Julie is pregnant and, desperately intent upon providing a decent life for his family, he is coerced into being an accomplice to a robbery. Caught in the act and facing the certainty of prison, he takes his own life and is sent 'up there.' Billy is allowed to return to earth for one day fifteen years later, and he encounters the daughter he never knew. She is a lonely, friendless teenager, her father's reputation as a thief and bully having haunted her throughout her young life. How Billy instills in both the child and her mother a sense of hope and dignity is a dramatic testimony to the power of love.
Acting
Goulet's swagger crumbles beautifully.
Score
That bench scene still destroys me.
Director
Paul Bogart
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This 1967 TV version was shot on videotape with limited sets, giving it a ghostly theatrical intimacy the 1956 film lacks.
Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote 'You'll Never Walk Alone' for Julie's solo—it became an anthem for Liverpool FC and civil rights movements.
US
