Fine, Melancholy, Musical, Manly Fun

Let me say this right up front:

I love "Paint Your Wagon." I have the fondest personal memories of it.

Its reputation is as one of those "Wooly Mammoth Musicals" that sunk Old Hollywood as the sixties came to an end. "My Fair Lady," "Mary Poppins" and the mega "Sound of Music" were justly celebrated in the mid-sixties, but the stampede to match them ran into countercultural disgust when the inevitable copycat musicals didn't show up til the late sixties and 1970: Camelot, Finian's Rainbow, Funny Girl, Hello, Dolly, Star, On a Clear Day, Paint Your Wagon, Darling Lili.

Truth be told not all of those musicals failed "equally." Funny Girl, for instance, was a hit that launched Barbra Stresand as a movie star and won her the Best Actress Oscar first time out(she had to share it with Kate Hepburn, though.)

Darling Lili and Star weren't really much OF musicals, but together they ended Julie Andrews superstardom as surely as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music had begun it.

Finian's Rainbow was considered a "cheapjack backlot musical," but it has a lovely score, a sexy and mod Petulia Clark singing in it, and Fred Astaire, directed rather hip-ly by Francis Coppola with George Lucas assisting.

Streisand was cast too young in "Hello, Dolly" but she and wry Walter Matthau made a fine Urban Jewish Comedian pair of comedy quipsters in a hilariously forced screen romance(off screen, they hated each other, their final kiss on screen is a big, big, "inside joke.")

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And then there was Paint Your Wagon. It was a bit of a joke then: a big, expensive musical, starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood.

Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood!!!???

But that was part of the great allure of the movie. Guys would show up for Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood. The leader of the Dirty Dozen? The Man With No Name? Together for the first time? It didn't matter WHAT they were in -- we guys were there.

Jean Seberg was their co-star. She was a beautiful blonde(almost a Sharon Stone lookalike) who had debuted in the fifties and disappeared for a decade, resurfacing briefly for two big Hollywood productions -- Paint Your Wagon and Airport -- and then disappearing again (and soon becoming a sad suicide.)

Marvin and Eastwood, each possessed of a great speaking voice, really couldn't sing. Marvin's great deep voice became a tuneless croak in song; Eastwood's whispery voice became too soft, too thin. But at least they sang their songs. Jean Seberg got one song and let another woman dub it in.

Critics noted at the time that the one truly good singer in the film -- male Harve Presnell -- only got one song. But it was a biggie: "They Call the Wind Mariah," a booming paeon to male loneliness and melancholy that matched the overall thematic effect of "Paint Your Wagon."

For, with no "gay" overtones at all, "Paint Your Wagon" told a story of an emcampment of gold mining men who have no one but men for companionship, and who yearn for females of practically any type.

The first third of "Paint Your Wagon" tells its tale of those lonely men against a spectacularly moody backdrop of Panavision images of mountains, trees, meadows and rain, endless rain, cold rain, drenching rain. You can FEEL the melancholy, and Lee Marvin's character bespeaks of HAVING "melancholy" -- a depression from which he frankly pleads for the moral support of his "Pardner," Eastwood. ("Just help me through this.")

Its the moodiness and the fine music of "Paint Your Wagon" that I remember most warmly -- all those fine Lerner and Loewe tunes, buttrussed by a few brand new and kinda swingin' new ones by Andre Previn("(I got) Gold Fever," "(You Wanna See Sin of the Wickedest Kind?) Here it Is!") Lee Marvin got himself a Top Ten radio hit with his croak(backed by a soulful male chorus) of "(I was born under a) "Wandrin' Star," the kind of drifter's lament that spoke to rootless hippies and tormented Corporation Men alike in its proud-but-sad loner's credo.

By the second act, Jean Seberg has shown up and is in a Tres' 60's mod "three-way marriage" with Marvin and Eastwood. By the third act, the lonely men of the gold camp have a casino, a saloon and a house full of pretty French hookers to entertain them...and us. (In one memorable comedy bit, Lee Marvin introduces a young man to cigars, booze, and his first hooker in that order. Cut to the young guy: "The last one(the hooker) was the best, sir! The other two were quite good, but they couldn't beat that last one!" Ha.

The casino, the saloon, the cathouse, the entire TOWN, all comes a tumblin' down in a very spectacular comedy disaster movie finale.

What was not to like?

Oh...too long, I guess. Too plotless, I suppose. Too strained in its attempt to impose "hip 60's sexuality" upon an old 40's property. (It had a story by Paddy Chayefsky, of all people.)

But c'mon. Lee Marvin is hilarious in the picture, re-doing his "Cat Ballou" drunk act while tempering his usual tough guy authority with an admirable decency. Speaking of decency, a young and very handsome Clint Eastwood here plays such a nice, kind, non-violent guy that it is almost as if another actor is in the part. Old male-musical hands like Ray Walston("Damn Yankees," "South Pacific") and Harve Presnell add to the fun, and, despite the presence of Jean Seberg and those French hookers, the movie really feels like an "all-guy musical," filled with manly all-male choruses behind the title tune and the delightuf all-male dance ditty "Hand Me Down That Can of Beans"(led by Marvin and the much-missed Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.)

As posted elsewhere here, "Paint Your Wagon" wasn't really a failure. Marvin and Eastwood and the songs and the Gold Rush background brought in plenty of business -- it just cost too much in the making to turn a profit. That's another good thing about "Paint Your Wagon": all that money is right up there on the screen, with endless outdoor Oregon vistas and an entire town that was built to sink right back into the ground.

As a personal matter, I remember "Paint Your Wagon" playing a single big flagship theater(at "Reserved Seat Prices") for almost an entire YEAR. Only "The Godfather" did better at that theater in the early seventies. To today's world, "Paint Your Wagon" may be just a forgotten "Mastodon Musical" of the 60's. But back then...it was an event. A year-long event.

And I get that vibe back whenever I watch it again.