\u201cPaint Your Wagon\u201d has an undeservedly bad reputation, due in large part to the popular misconception that it came out a time when musicals lost favor with the public and later reinforced by a wicked parody of its concept on \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d
\n<\/p>\n
Yes, \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d spoof was funny \u2013 but also, no, audiences did not turn off on musicals in the late 1960s. In fact, \u201cPaint Your Wagon\u201d was the seventh highest grossing film of 1969. But while audiences came out to see the film, the production\u2019s manifold troubles swelled its budget to the point that it did not make a profit in its original run \u2013 it eventually earned back its costs. <\/p>\n
So, why does \u201cPaint Your Wagon\u201d fail to get respect? For starters, the film\u2019s leads \u2013 Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg \u2013 were cast for their box office appeal and not their singing abilities. Seberg was dubbed by Anita Gordon for her one musical number, while Marvin\u2019s gravelly baritone and Eastwood\u2019s earnest but thin voice has been the subject of wisecracks for decades. Nonetheless, Marvin\u2019s rendition of \u201cWand\u2019rin\u2019 Star\u201d reached number one on the UK charts (keeping The Beatles\u2019 \u201cLet It Be\u201d stuck in the number two spot) while Eastwood would later show in his 1982 \u201cHonkytonk Man\u201d that he could sing when given the material that complimented his voice.<\/p>\n
If there is a problem, the film is often at odds with itself. The story mixes polygamy, polyandry and the waylaying of six French \u201ctarts\u201d into a hastily constructed whorehouse in a Gold Rush mining town, yet despite its smutty premise it is never vulgar or offensive. The film also pinballs between knockabout comedy, old-fashioned romance and soul crushing melancholia \u2013 for the latter, the sequences for the film\u2019s best-known songs, \u201cThey Call the Wind Maria\u201d and \u201cWandr\u2019in\u2019 Star,\u201d frame the depressing aspects of the prospectors\u2019 life with such intense emotionalism that they seem to come out of a completely different film. And the film\u2019s climax, with the buildings of the Gold Rush utopia of No Name City collapsing into the muck while a bull chases Marvin through a network of tunnels beneath the locality, takes Dadaism to a new extreme.<\/p>\n
Still, the film is enjoyable when viewed as a work of entertainment rather than a work of art. Marvin enjoys the farcical elements of the crazy plot and goes to full extremes in his comic segments while carefully dialing down his energy when his character is supposed to be serious. Seberg was never more beautiful and enchanting, perfectly embodying the earthy notion of a pioneer-era woman. Eastwood is mostly a foil to his co-stars \u2013 the straight man for Marvin and the romantic interest for Seberg \u2013 and it is interesting to see him in a vehicle where he is not driving the story with the force of his personality. Harve Presnell, who gives \u201cThey Call the Wind Maria\u201d a full-throttle rendition one expects from a big musical, and Ray Walston as a comic relief Scotsman give wonderful support to the stars, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is briefly around for a rousing bluegrass rendition of \u201cHand Me Down that Can of Beans\u201d (with Marvin and Walston dancing cheek-to-cheek \u2013 yes, that must be seen to be believed).<\/p>\n
Paddy Chayefsky, of all people, adapted this wild and wooly film from a considerably less chaotic Lerner and Loewe Broadway musical. Joshua Logan directed the film and this might be the one Logan film where you don\u2019t fall asleep 15 minutes into the production or stay awake aggravated by the artsy barnacles he hammered into the work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cPaint Your Wagon\u201d has an undeservedly bad reputation, due in large part to the popular misconception that it came out a time when musicals lost favor with the public and later reinforced by a wicked parody of its concept on \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":46116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1369],"tags":[212,1838,3591,3590,2000,3589],"class_list":["post-46115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retro-cinema","tag-clint-eastwood","tag-jean-seberg","tag-joshua-logan","tag-lee-marvin","tag-musicals","tag-paint-your-wagon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46117,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46115\/revisions\/46117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}