Gigot

Gigot, a mute janitor working in Paris, becomes a friend to Nicole, the small daughter of a prostitute. This clumsy, kind-hearted man, whom everyone mocks, becomes someone else entirely beside the child. Jackie Gleason plays him without uttering a word and does not turn it into a routine, which is where the feeling of the film comes from. Gleason wrote the story himself and composed the music. He wanted his friend Orson Welles to direct, and when the studio refused, Gene Kelly was chosen as a compromise. The film opened in September 1962 and failed at the box office; when Kelly later saw it in New York he found it had almost nothing to do with his own cut. Michel Magne was nominated for an Oscar for the adaptation of the music and Gleason for a Golden Globe.