Paint Your Wagon (film)

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Paint Your Wagon
Original film poster
Directed by	Joshua Logan
Produced by	Alan Jay Lerner
Written by	Alan Jay Lerner Paddy Chayefsky (adaptation)
Starring	Lee Marvin Clint Eastwood Jean Seberg
Editing by	Robert C. Jones
Release date(s)	October 15, 1969 (U.S. release)
Running time	164 min
Language	English
Budget	$20,000,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

Paint Your Wagon is a musical film released in 1969, adapted by Paddy Chayefsky from the 1951 stage musical by Lerner and Lowe, set in a mining camp in Gold Rush-era California. Chayefsky provided a significantly changed storyline from the stage musical version. In the film "Rumson" is simply called "No Name City", and Ben Rumson has no daughter. The former "Julio" is now an American (Clint Eastwood) and Ben's (Lee Marvin) partner (he is called "Pardner") in the gold claim.

[edit] Synopsis

The movie begins with a wagon crashing into a ravine. Whiskery gold prospector Ben Rumsom finds that of the two adult male occupants, one is dead and his brother injured with a broken arm and leg. As the man is about to buried, gold dust is discovered at the graveside. Ben stakes a claim on the land and the surviving brother is adopted as his "Pardner" while he recuperates. They then share the spoils of Ben's prospecting on the condition that Pardner takes care of Ben in his moments of drunkenness and melancholy. Pardner pines for a non-existent girl ("I Still See Elisa").

The land becomes a boom town.

"No Name City" starts as a tent city with the men partying ("Hand Me Down That Can o' Beans") followed by bouts of melancholy ("They Call the Wind Maria"). The arrival of a Mormon with two wives is taken to be unfair to the miners. The miners persuade Jacob Woodling to sell one of his wives to the highest bidder.

A drunken Ben winds up with the highest bid for Elizabeth (Jean Seberg). Ben is readied for the wedding by the other miners ("Whoop-Ti-Yay"). Elizabeth's presence comes to be a novelty in the area, causing Ben to become jealous of all the other miners. News comes of the pending arrival of "six French tarts" to a neighboring town and a plan is hatched to kidnap the women and bring them to "No Name City" ("There's a Coach Comin' In"). Ben heads up the mission and leaves Elizabeth in the care of Pardner. While Ben is gone, the two fall in love ("A Million Miles Away Behind the Door" by Elizabeth and "I Talk to the Trees" by Pardner). Elizabeth convinces them that if a Mormon man can have two wives, a wife can have two husbands.

As the town booms the arrangement with Ben, Pardner, and Elizabeth works well for a while until a group of settlers is rescued from the snow. A straight-laced family is invited to spend the winter with Elizabeth and Pardner is assumed to be her husband. Ben is left to fend for himself in town. As the gold begins to play out Ben and a group of miners discover that gold dust is dropping through the floor boards of many of the saloons. They hatch a plan to tunnel under all the businesses to get at the gold ("The Best Things in Life are Dirty").

Ben introduces one of the family, young Horton Fenty to the pleasures of Rotten luck Willie's saloon and cat house. This leads to Elizabeth dismissing Pardner from the log cabin Ben built for her. Parder takes to gambling in Willie's ("Gold Fever").

This brings the story to its climax when, during a bull and bear fight, the streets collapse into the tunnels dug by Ben and the others and the town is destroyed. At the end of the film Ben moves on to the next gold field ("Wand'rin' Star").

[edit] Background

Eastwood and Marvin did their own singing while Seberg's songs were dubbed. The early incarnation of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band had a cameo in the song "Hand Me Down That Can o' Beans". Some songs from the original musical were dropped and some were added, while others were used in a different contexts.

The film was made near Baker City, Oregon, with Joshua Logan directing.

The film was released at a time when movie musicals were going out of fashion, especially with younger audiences. Its overblown budget became notorious in the press. Eastwood was frustrated by the long delays in the making of the movie, later saying that the experience strengthened his resolve to become a director. According to Robert Osborne, Marvin was drinking heavily, which may have enhanced his screen appearance, but led to delays and many retakes.

[edit] Songs

[edit] Popular allusions

• Marvin's deep-voiced rendition of "(I Was Born Under a) Wand'rin' Star", accompanied by the film's choir, became a hit in the U.K. and Europe. His voice was described by Jean Seberg as "like rain gurgling down a rusty pipe". Interviewed on NPR, Marvin said that the song was a hit in Australia, and someone there described it as, "The first 33 1/3 recorded at 45."
• The Simpsons watch the movie at the beginning of the "clip show" episode All Singing, All Dancing. Homer and Bart rent the film, thinking it's a bloody western à la Clint Eastwood's Spaghetti Western work but are horrified when they find out the film is a musical. None of the songs in the episode are found in the original stage musical or the film, and the musical numbers generally follow a scene where two of the characters are being confrontational, dashing Homer's hopes that the film will turn violent. In the episode, the film is literally about the characters painting a wagon.

[edit] External links

• Paint Your Wagon at the Internet Movie Database