Paint Your Wagon

Underappreciated, hilarious and a spectacular example of the 1960's American musical, PAINT YOUR WAGON is a gold rush of classic stars and old fashioned spectacle.

And those songs!

Lerner and Loewe have always been a personal favorite, since my parents introduced us to the film version of "Camelot" on the big screen at a very young age.

This 1969 film adaption of their 1951 Broadway musical is wholly different from the stage version, with five new songs and a greatly expanded story line.

As the only "M" rated studio musical of the era, it also takes a broad swing at some more adult issues, tame by today's standards, but bold for the day.

It was adapted for the screen by Paddy Chayefsky, known for "Network" and "The Hospital", both blistering with satire and cutting observations, making him a fascinating choice for the material.

Lee Marvin (The Dirty Dozen, Prime Cut) shows massive movie star power, taking on a singing role and proving that he's a far better actor than a singer. Marvin is hilarious in a role that feels like a spiritual cousin to his performance in "Cat Ballou" a few years earlier. Famously, Marvin only drank real liquor during the filming, so anytime you see him drinking from a bottle of booze, that's real liquor. Director Josh Logan (Camelot) addressed many on-set stories of he and Marvin getting into fist fights with a letter that said, "Lee Marvin is a very close friend of mine and we will stay friends for many years to come. It is true that we have had a few mild discussions, never any violent ones. Lee Marvin is a great Southern gentleman. Therefore, when he is sober, it is absolutely impossible for him to have done such a thing, and when he is drunk, which he is once in a while I must admit, he is really drunk. He staggers and careens in such a way that he wouldn't have the aim."

Marvin plays Ben Rumson, a haggard, drunken Michigan prospector who, by chance, discovers gold alongside a very unlikely partner, dubbed Pardner by Rumson and perfectly played by Clint Eastwood. This was Eastwood's follow up to "Where Eagles Dare". Talk about range! He's great, showing off perfect comic timing as the straight man to Marvin's Ben. Pardner doesn't drink, smoke or gamble when we first meet him.

The two's gold find sparks a massive California gold rush, which Logan and his production team stage in a full blown, actually built l(ong before CGI) town in the middle of the forest. It's a mind blowing set, perfectly designed by John Truscott (The Spy Who Loved Me, Camelot) and photographed by William A Fraker (Bullitt, Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

There are many scenes with Fraker's camera sweeping up into the air to photograph a massive line of covered wagons or the entire town nestled in the wilderness that make you step back and wonder at the sheer size of the production. They don't make them like this anymore!

Ben and Pardner soon meet Elizabeth (Jean Seberg) when she is auctioned off by her visiting Mormon husband as if she's part of a mining claim. Of course, a very drunken Ben wins the bidding in one of the funniest scenes in the film. Marvin is laugh out loud for the entire sequence, playing the comedy broadly and to perfection as a newly awake Ben is trying to wrap his mind around an actual woman being in No Name City.

The story line from there unspools in as many different directions as a 2 hour and 45 minute running time allows. The film meanders but never bores.

Highlights abound, including Harve Presnell, the only true singer in the cast as Rotten Luck Willie, belting out "They Call the Wind Mariah" to perfection during a long rainy spell. I had the chance to play golf with and hang out for a weekend with Harve at a Corporate event in 1999. He was a gentleman, funny and gracious with stories about the films he was in, including "Saving Private Ryan" the year before. I asked him about the stories of Lee Marvin and he shared some legendary anecdotes, all portraying Marvin as a first class actor, who liked to have a very good time.

When Ben decides to hijack a wagon train full of French prostitutes and deliver them to No Name City, one of Lerner and Lowe's best uproarious songs takes off, "There's a Coach Comin' In". It may be in the same vein as "The Wells Fargo Wagon" from "The Music Man", but the parcels in question are decidedly different.

Eastwood and Marvin both provide their own singing voices, Eastwood is especially good in the leisurely "I Talk to the Trees". Marvin actually had a #1 single in the UK in 1970 with his song "Wandering Star". While Marvin talks through some of it and then softly sings the rest, the song is a stunner, especially when that massive chorus comes in to support him.

Both of the actors are far superior to the other non-singing actors who were cast in movie adaptions of the same era. Rex Harrison was horrible muttering his way through 1967's "Doctor Dolitttle" and the less said about the great Peter O'Toole and his 1972 bomb, "Man of La Mancha", the better.

Jean Seberg is dubbed for her songs, but veteran Ray Walston belts out several tunes like the "South Pacific" veteran he is as Rumson's buddy, Mad Jack Duncan.

PAINT YOUR WAGON was truly the end of an era. It was the seventh biggest film of the year, but films like "Easy Rider" and "Midnight Cowboy" dominated the changing tastes of audiences. The number one film of the year was also a western, but a very different, antihero take on the genre, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".

WAGON remains a sealed time capsule of another time, when huge budget studio musicals with major stars would play for over a year in theaters, complete with Overtures and Intermissions, an event.

I miss those days.

You can still get a taste of them by sitting down with the biggest screen you have and letting the down home humor and huge orchestrations of Lerner & Loewe's songs lull you down a nostalgic road.

Funny and soaring with plenty of heart, this one gets a nostalgic B.