I just love Gordon as well -- yes, THAT'S a singer!!
Did you know that originally, Frank was to play Billy Bigelow in Carousel, not Gordon MacRae? Shirley Jones tells it, the film is going to be shot with the new CinemaScope 55 technology, this required filming scenes twice, the second for wide screen. The first day on the set, Shirley is standing there, Frank shows up ... when he finds out he is going to have to do everything twice, he gets seriously angry, "I am not getting paid to do two ******* movies!" and walks off. Shirley then makes a call to her friend MacRae to please, come take the role, do the movie.
Gordon MacRae was an Army Air Force navigator during WWII, his pilot being Walt Lux, a close friend and neighbor of a cousin and her husband. We all lived in the same, small, Southern Wisconsin town. Gordon was appearing at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, and my cousin, through Walt, invited him over for dinner prior to his Friday night show. Natch, I was also invited along with my date for the evening. My date and I stayed for cocktails and conversation but left before dinner because we had tickets to his show and dinner was included.
Gordon put on an excellent show, and came down off the stage and sang at out table. He was as down-to-earth and friendly during that evening as any one could expect. A genuinely nice guy.
Now for the rest (sad part) of the story. That same Walt Lux flew for American Airlines. It was his DC-10 that went down outside of O'Hare in the '70's. It lost one of it's engines and landed near a trailer park close to the airport. Everyone on board lost their lives.