The Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt musical, which ran Off-Broadway from May 1960 to January 2002, still holds the record for the longest-running play in American history, and the longest running musical in world history. An Off-Broadway revival opened in 2006 and is still running at the Jerry Orbach Theatre.
Directed by Michael Ritchie, the film starred Jean Louisa Kelly and Joey McIntyre as The Girl and The Boy. Joel Grey and Brad Sullivan played the scheming fathers. The disc, which is scheduled for release April 14, reportedly contains two versions of the film, one with the show's iconic song "Try to Remember" at the beginning, where it appears in the stage version, and the other with the classic melody at the end, as suggested by director Francis Ford Coppola.
The film was shot in 1995 but sat on the studio shelf for five years before a very limited release. It cost a reported $10 million to make and earned just $44,757, according to the Internet Movie Database.
See Playbill.com's story about the original release.
The film used the same Arizona location where the movie of Oklahoma! was shot in the early 1950s. Although the stage musical uses only a piano and harp, the movie has lush orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick.
Watch a clip from the film: