LOST AND FOUND: The Saga of RAINTREE COUNTY (1957)

 It isn’t often a ‘lost’ film gets a lot of apathy from the present generation, except for a handful of ardent admirers, perhaps old enough to recall with fondness a snapshot from their youth, prematurely snuffed out through neglect, or mislaid by the hands of time. Roughly 80% of all movies made during the silent era have been lost to us for all time, either through carelessness or through a seemingly inexplicable lack of interest by the film industry to preserve its own heritage. In the days before the advent of home video, such carelessness was, if not excusable, then, at least marginally comprehended. Indeed, before the creation of non-flammable film stocks, it was not uncommon practice to merely junk original nitrate elements as their state of natural decomposition threatened to incinerate not only what was in the can, but whole warehouses of ‘usable’ elements. Along the road to modern-day film preservation and restoration, several catastrophic fires ravaged what had, until the blaze, otherwise miraculously survived. Even the most keenly curated collections were not immune, as the 1978 devastating blaze inside George Eastman House – one of filmdom’s premiere facilities – attests. That fire consumed approximately 12.6 million feet of original elements from the MGM library. In the mid-1970’s Hollywood needed no help from Mother Nature to discount and decimate its own self-worth. 2oth Century-Fox’s absurdly infamous cannibalization of its own formidable archive, to have junked their entire history of original nitrate and 3-strip Technicolor elements dating all the way back to their inception as a studio, saving only a poorly contrasted, and oft mis-aligned composite for future archival reference, the rest - loaded onto a barge and sunk in the middle of the Pacific ocean, merely to clear out vault space for new product, effectively created its own dearth from disgusting short-sightedness.

The digital age has given us much cause to rejoice, though occasionally, it too remains myopic in its pursuit of re-evaluating golden age picture-making. Our subject herein is even more curious at a glance, as it neither hails from the silent era, nor is it a particularly well-regarded movie from the age of widescreen wonders, despite a magnificent central performance from one of Hollywood’s irrefutable and enduring icons. The actress – Elizabeth Taylor. The movie, MGM’s resplendently mounted super-production, Raintree County (1957), a movie billed as an ‘event’ and meant to rival Selznick’s Gone with the Wind (1939). Alas, I would not be the first to suggest that, in spite of its pedigree, Raintree County is an imperfect entertainment. And yet, there are many great things in it. One scene in particular has continued to haunt from the peripheries of my mind’s eye ever since I first saw this movie, cropped and dumped as late-night filler on a UHF channel in the mid-1980’s. The scene involves a once vainglorious scallywag, played by the incredible Lee Marvin, fatally stricken by a rebel’s sniper bullet. As Marvin leans back to accept his character’s fate, isolated and alone in a darkened forest, he lets out a primordial blast of fear, declaring with a startling quiver to the unseen soldier who shot him, “I am from Raintree County”, and then, quite miraculously, to collect and bottle this perishing disquiet, girded by the last vestiges of that self-assured Southern pride, as much a casualty, bled dry on the fields of battle as the man himself. Marvin repeats the aforementioned line of dialogue, only now, with a grave, sobering, and quietly confident rectitude, drawing one final breath to utter in a slow, soft fade into the hereafter, “…and I can lick any man in the county.”   

If only the rest of Raintree County lived up to this penultimate sad-eyed reflection on the unfathomable losses to American life, the picture might have lived on for the ages. Tragically, and almost immediately upon its release, it hastened the advancing fiscal malaise afflicting MGM, putting the final nail in the proverbial coffin of Dore Schary’s tenure as head of the largest, and one-time, most profitable studio in the picture-making biz. For years, Raintree County held the dubious distinction of being the most expensive movie ever produced on American soil. At the outset, it seemed to have everything going for it: an award-winning novel, by first-time author, Ross Lockridge Jr., and a vibrant cast to include Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, and, Eva Marie Saint. The first of only two pictures to be photographed in MGM’s experimental ultra-widescreen process, Camera 65 (the other, 1959’s Ben-Hur), Raintree County was conceived as the definitive fifties’ road show spectacular, complete with fanfare, intermission and entr’acte – a huge thing, teeming in lurid melodrama, exhilarating set pieces, and an intriguing backstory about an ill-fated/bigoted Southern belle, afflicted with demons from her past.

Schary paid handsomely for the rights to produce Raintree County - $150,000 in 1947 dollars. Alas, from here the project languished. With a preliminary budget of $6 million, screenwriter, Carey Wilson assumed the producer’s reigns, his heart set on casting Lana Turner or Ava Gardner as Suzanna Drake, the mentally ill beauty, and possibly, Janet Leigh as the long-suffering Nell Gaither, the thankless part, eventually assumed by Eva Marie Saint. As John Wickliff Shawnessey, a gentleman of quality, Wilson initially thought of Robert Walker, whose untimely death in 1951 seemed to cast a pall on the preliminary plans for Raintree County’s greatness.  And Walker’s had not been the first casualty either. As a novel, Raintree County was very close to Lockridge’s heart, the Indiana-born/Boston’s Simmons College professor, having spent 6-long-years to write it, whittling down his 600,000-word manuscript into manageable book form. Lockridge, in ill physical health in 1948, forced to grapple with even more rewrites once MGM entered into negotiations, and then, again, once Raintree County was selected for inclusion into the prestigious ‘book of the month’ club, fell into a stark depression from whence he would never recover. He committed suicide at the age of 33, putting a period to whatever hopes MGM had of procuring his participation on the movie.  The novel’s existential and philosophical debates baffled a slew of screenwriters assigned to consider the project. Regrettably, the one the studio finally settled upon - Millard Kaufman – could hardly boast a noble pedigree, having cut his teeth on the very first Mr. Magoo cartoon, and later to serve as Dalton Trumbo’s false front during the blacklist. Just prior to Raintree County, Kaufman had written the Oscar-nominated screenplay for 1953’s Take the High Ground. Even so, he completely lacked the necessary experience to adapt such a ‘huge thing’ for the screen, and, even more regrettably, his shortcomings are frequently revealed in his eagerness to merely hack out whole portions of Lockridge’s book, relying on the clumsy use of ‘montage’ to accommodate the picture’s fast-expanding runtime.

Recognizing the lack of impetus in the novel’s nominal ‘hero’, MGM considered the formidable Alec Guinness to play the part of John Shawnessey before turning to Montgomery Clift.  At this juncture in his career, Clift was already well-established, but one of filmdom’s most reluctant stars, having forsaken Hollywood for Broadway after A Place in the Sun (1951). Too bad for Clift, his finances were in a mess. And thus, he traded his abject contempt for the picture-making biz, and a story he deemed “a soap opera with elephantiasis” for a solid paycheck.  Prior to Clift’s signing on, Schary suggested Van Heflin or Gene Kelly for the lead. But Wilson had another idea. Following Lockridge’s suicide, found dead from carbon monoxide asphyxiation in his garage, Raintree County might just as easily have died on the vine…or rather, at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Lacking Lockridge’s input, Cary Wilson wrote his widow that Raintree County would go into moratorium for a period of 2 years while he endeavored to do justice to “the quality of the writing”, and, at an enviable budget of almost $6 million – a princely sum the postwar MGM had no stomach to expenditure at the present time.

Thus, time passed. Schary replaced Mayer as the de facto ‘head’ of the studio. The stars assigned to the picture were kept ready to commit at a moment’s notice. Still, nothing happened. Curiously, Raintree County is not the type of movie one would immediately identify with Dore Schary, who much preferred darkly intimate B-budgeted noir thrillers and message pictures to A-list, big and bloated Hollywood costume fare. Nevertheless, Schary could not ignore the fact Metro’s theatrical reissues of Selznick’s Gone with the Wind in 1947 and 1954, bought outright from Selznick’s partner, Jock Whitney for a whopping $2.8 million, had enjoyed even greater popularity on these subsequent outings, thus dismissing the time-honored Hollywood fallacy about ‘Civil War pictures’ never making money. The ‘then’ perceived problem with GWTW was it had been shot in the traditional Academy ratio of 1.33:1, thus to render its reissues as appearing somewhat dated in this era of bigger than Cinemascope and Cinerama spectacles - a situation Metro egregiously attempted to ‘rectify’ by optically reformatting Selznick’s masterpiece to conform to the more acceptable 1.75:1 aperture.  But now, Schary wanted his own day for a Southern dance, and Raintree County, with its obvious similarities, seemed to neatly fit this bill.

By August 1955, Raintree County had definite commitments from its new cast and crew: David Lewis, to produce, Millard Kaufman to write the screenplay, and stars Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, who had made a memorable ill-fated couple in George Steven’s A Place in the Sun (1950). Clift had, in fact, just signed a 3-picture deal with Metro. As the particulars of this arrangement began to take shape, Eva Marie Saint accepted unrewarding supporting role for an impressive $100,000, with rising newcomer, Rod Taylor actively campaigning to play the part of boastful and devious entrepreneur, Garwood B. Jones. Also brought in, Nigel Patrick as the fastidious Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles, academic mentor/philosopher and passionate suitor to the married, Lydia Grey (Myrna Hansen). Alas, a little of the classically-trained Patrick went an awfully long way. One of the ‘shortcomings’ of the movie, Raintree County, is that it desires to include much of Lockridge eloquently written, extensively explored philosophical debate. As cinema has always had a hard time expressing intangibles on the screen, Professor Stiles becomes the orator of their thoughtful meditations, the character expanded to allow for these length recitations.

One of the movie’s sincere flaws is that Patrick, although seemingly relegated as a tertiary figure in the credits is instead ever-present and, at intervals, a rather painfully self-inflated bore, repeatedly to delay the action and provide needling commentary on the actions of the rest of the cast. This, I suspect, is meant to be clever. But it fails miserably to go beyond the ‘hook and worm’ stage for philosophical debating, in fact, to render Prof. Stiles as nothing more fascinating than a dogmatic drip. Used far less often, but to far better effect is the aforementioned Lee Marvin as Orville 'Flash' Perkins. Marvin is mesmerizing as the shamelessly boastful, hard-drinking cock-of-the-walk who meet his match during a foot race against the seemingly innocuous and mild-mannered Johnny, thereafter, to doff his cap with a modicum of respect each time their paths cross, usually adding, “There goes the fastest man in Raintree County.” Virtually all of the scenes in which Marvin’s ‘Flash’ appears crackle with a spark of raw animal energy, otherwise absent and sorely missed.

The casting of Montgomery Clift as our heroic ‘good guy’ – incapable of being unfaithful to his deeply troubled wife with a former flame, who repeatedly throws herself at his head – is a man, less to be admired than repeatedly discontented by and disconnected from as his Johnny stumbles into one unprepossessing plot entanglement, followed by more of the same. Neither does Clift make his mark as the presumed ‘stud’ of the piece, nor does he distinguish himself as the very fine actor he was, his performance here, never going beyond the well-meaning milquetoast. Perhaps, it was the hellish automobile accident on the evening of May 12, 1956, right in the middle of shooting, that changed the trajectory of Clift’s interpretation of the part. Indeed, the wreck nearly cost Clift his life. Rumors have since varied and distorted the particulars from that fateful night. For certain, Clift left a party given by Elizabeth Taylor and then hubby, Michael Wilding. Rather inebriated, Clift barely had time to make it a mile down the road before slamming full-force into a telephone poll. Discovering the wreck, Taylor reported climbed into the car to coddle Clift’s semi-conscious and badly bashed-in face, cheek bones shattered, jaw fractured in three places, and broken nose, at one point, sliding her fingers between his lips to dislodge several teeth imbedded in his throat. To say the accident was a life-altering experience for Clift is putting things mildly. Indeed, while production on Raintree County was suspended for nearly 2 months to accommodate the actor’s recovery, Clift endured nightmarish reconstructive surgeries. The left side of his face remained permanently paralyzed from the accident, almost completely to deprive Clift of his trademarked youthful vigor and good looks, further to augment and distort his already well-known backstage insecurities as a bisexual leading man. To adapt, though never entirely conceal the ravages from this ordeal, cameraman, Robert Surtees shot many of the subsequent scenes involving Clift from the left side – where the lesser damage had been sustained. Even so, those with morbid curiosity left unsatisfied crowded in to view Raintree Country from the vantage of challenging themselves to discern scenes shot before the smashup from those immediately following it: a perverse blood sport. Regrettably, it isn’t hard to spot Clift’s post-surgery performance, so wooden and frightfully fragile, one can almost see the actor’s ego crumbling before our very eyes.  Worse, Clift’s boyish good looks seem to have evaporated into an instant facsimile and middle-aged wax works from Madame Tussaud’s.

Raintree County is perhaps one of the last ‘unhappy’ accidents to hail from those retro-gala days in Hollywood when stars could – and did – behave badly, but were to be repeatedly forgiven for their indiscretions as their star power preceded even the iron-fisted common sense of the moguls, usually able to better manage their talent behind the scenes. Upon his return to the production, Montgomery Clift alcoholism began to get the better of him, indulging in a dangerous cocktail of prescription drugs to stave off his pain, but further to deplete his resilience, while leaving him somewhat bug-eyed, looking haggard and listing to one side.  When Clift failed to show up for work one day, director, Edward Dmytryk hurried to his star’s hotel room, discovering the actor passed out with a cigarette burned clear down to his fingertips. On the bureau, Dmytryk also found a handsome leather-bound case, bursting with drug paraphernalia, pills, potions, and, syringes. From this disturbing revelation, Clift’s behavior on set only became more erratic and bizarre. He reportedly ate raw meat, soaked in butter and pepper with his fingers, and, on more than one occasion, stripped naked, streaking through town, forcing Dmytryk to place a guard on his hotel room to prevent further such spontaneous outbursts. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Taylor held up production when her desire to be cinched into period costumes to show off her already tiny waist resulted in her collapse from hyperventilation, treated with a bottle of Clift's Demerol. Regrettably, the incident also resulted in tachycardia (a potentially dangerous arrhythmia), to delay production by yet another week, and this, on a shoot that was already heartily behind its preset schedule. In addition, Taylor frequently arrived late to the set after a night of carousing with her latest fling, producer, Michael Todd – soon to become the third Mr. Elizabeth Taylor! More than a bit of a vulgarian, but a masterful showbiz promoter besides, Todd was well-known to lavish Taylor with expensive gifts throughout the shoot, his private plane making frequent trips to Danville to surprise her with his latest baubles and beads.

Raintree County was extensively shot on location in Dunleith and Elms Court antebellum mansions, Windsor Ruins, in Natchez, Mississippi, Reelfoot Lake in northwest Tennessee near the Kentucky border, the Liberty Hall Historic Site on Wilkinson Street in Frankfort and other settings in and around Danville. For the more elaborate set pieces, MGM relied on a tried-and-true maxim – shoot it on the backlot – with various free-standing sets given a once-over re-dressing by art directors, William A. Horning and Urie McCleary, and, set decorators, Hugh Hunt and Edwin B. Willis. If anything, these sets, easily identifiable to anyone who has seen more than three or four MGM movies in their lifetime, herein are too pristine and clash with the more earthy splendor of the actual locations. In their desire to resurrect and reconcile the pre-war atmosphere of moonlight and magnolia with its post-war rot and decay, Raintree County’s artistic merits are a queer amalgam of the old, and the more recent, attempting to turn back the clock to fit in.  Given the expense and presumed ‘prestige’ of the production, Dore Schary was determined Raintree County should be unlike any other MGM movie produced to date. To this end, he had a ‘new’ widescreen process, MGM Camera-65 developed, running a 65-millimeter film negative through an anamorphic widescreen lens. The process would later be re-christened as Ultra Panavision 70, and was notable for yielding a 2.76:1 image imbued with remarkable clarity. Regrettably, the plans to distribute an actual 70mm print of Raintree County were streamlined as Todd’s own production of Around the World in 80 Days, had managed to monopolize all of the 70mm projectors in existence at the time. Thus, a reduction print on standard 35mm film stocks was created for Raintree County’s theatrical release – including the road show. And therein lies a confusion that has since dogged the memory of many a theater-goer from the 1950’s, ardently to attest to have seen Raintree County in 70mm at their local Bijou, a misrepresentation to be further compounded by the fact the initial 188-minute roadshow, to have had the briefest run, contained a main title credit, attributing the picture’s presentation to MGM Camera 65, “a window of the world”.

In its earliest days, Panavision created a system of presentation with a camera negative that virtually mimicked Todd-AO with the addition of an anamorphic squeeze of 1.33:1. With the recommended projector aperture of 2.21:1, MGM’s rechristened Camera 65 could ostensibly produce a thoroughly impressive 2.94:1 image on the screen. Distinctly, Ultra Panavision 70 later adopted anamorphic squeezes of 1.25:1 for an image in the 2.76:1 ratio. For MGM, the plan had always been to debut their remake of Ben-Hur (1959) in this new widescreen process to put all others to shame. That Raintree County would become the first movie to be photographed (if not shown) in Camera 65, therefore served as something of a ‘dry run’ for Ben-Hur’s big launch. While MGM had embraced Darryl F. Zanuck’s Cinemascope throughout the 1950’s, they were never altogether satisfied with the results, chiefly, the horrendous distortions it created in close-ups. And while Todd-AO had corrected these anomalies, it also photographed 30fps, yielding ultra-clarity in its image, but making it virtually incompatible for reduction printing. Hence, MGM’s technical advisor, Douglas Shearer (brother of retired screen siren, Norma Shearer), approached the President of Panavision, Robert Gottschalk with a proposal for a new 65mm process that would set a standard in the industry. Shearer was adamant the new process eliminate Cinemascope’s curvatures and distortions and yield a superior quality in 70mm – projected at 3:1 without a soundtrack or 2.7:1 with 6-tracks of stereo. But he also wanted Camera 65 to be compatible with 3-strip Cinerama, and, with limited modifications to also be able to produce a high-quality 35mm reduction print, thereby covering virtually all of the varying methods of motion picture presentation then in existence.

Gottschalk went to work, MGM throwing open its gates in 1954 with the full formidable resources of their backlot and lab at Panavision’s disposal. The results were successful at achieving everything the studio had hoped. Despite this, MGM, due to their contractual agreements with 2oth Century-Fox, continued to advertise Panavision anamorphic films as “in CinemaScope” for several years thereafter. As Ben-Hur was not ready to begin production, it was decided Raintree County would be the first movie to be photographed and promoted in the new Camera 65 process. MGM actually trumpeted Camera 65 nearly a decade before its ‘faux’ debut in Raintree County. Given all the effort poured into its creation, and the mass marketing hype surrounding Camera 65’s ‘debut’, it is more than a little disheartening to learn Raintree County eventually hit theaters only in Cinemascope-friendly reduction prints, the inclusion of its Magoptical 6-track stereo reducing the actual frame size to the standard 2.35:1 ‘scope’ ratio.

Another of Raintree County’s oddities is its subject matter. Those expecting a Civil War epic were likely disillusioned to discover the war itself is given short shrift as the movie’s third act, the bulk of the tale concentrated on the intimate struggles of husband and wife. We first meet idealist, John Wickliff Shawnessey in the Spring of 1859, an introspective resident of Raintree County, Indiana. John rather naively admires Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles whose academic principles serve as the guiding force in this young man’s as yet unformed aspirations for what will follow his graduating class. Stiles speaks of ‘the raintree’ – a sort of mythical ‘fruit of knowledge’, presumed to grow only in their county, and to yield eternal happiness for the true seeker of life. John is motivated to go in search of the tree, venturing deep into the swamps, much to the dismay of Nell Gaither, the girl who shamelessly adores him. At present, Nell is being courted by fellow student, Garwood B. Jones, who cuts a robustly masculine figure in contrast to Johnny’s slight physical presence, but lacks the good sense God gave a lemon to keep his ego in check. Nell does not favor Garwood’s braggadocio, rather using it in the hopes to lure John back to her side. The two exchange heartfelt graduation gifts. Alas, Nell is thwarted in her romantic pursuit when John encounters Susanna Drake, a wealthy daughter of New Orleans. The two embark upon a passionate tryst after their first ‘cute meet’ at a photographic studio. John’s decision to forsake the more temperate Nell is wholeheartedly supported by Prof. Stiles, who is carrying on a notorious affair with Lydia Grey, the much younger wife of one of the town’s more prominent businessmen.

John is tempted by the boastful muckraking of Orville 'Flash' Perkins to partake of a foot race to prove his own masculine prowess. Indeed, this has been impugned by Garwood’s retelling of how John, in search of the raintree, was nearly drowned in the swamp and rescued – a bedraggled mess – by him along the roadside. Prof. Stiles prevents the race to propose another display of physical endurance, one for which he wagers a handsome endowment of 50 gold pieces, matched by Flash’s ill-gotten gains, and raised by Garwood and the rest of the men, eager to get in on the bet. Susanna proudly proposes to be the girl waiting at the finish line. And, true to form, and his passion to prove Garwood wrong, John wins the race, leaving Flash full of admiration for the man he only previously judged as a pathetic little upstart. After their blissful summer together, Susanna departs for home. Alas, in a short while she returns to Raintree, informing John she is going to have his child. More from a sense of duty than love, John weds Susanna, leaving Nell devastated. The newlyweds make their pilgrimage South to visit Susanna’s family. She takes John for a buggy ride to the old plantation, her ancestral home, long-since destroyed by fire. John begins to piece together the mystery surrounding this blaze. Susanna’s cousin, Bobby (Tom Drake) informs John that Susanna’s claim, she was only a baby at the time of the fire, is a lie. Susanna was nine-years-old. Furthermore, Susanna’s father and the slave, Henrietta, whom Susanna loved dearly as her mammy, were suspected of being sexually involved – their exposure, causing Susanna’s mother to go insane and quite possibly, to have set the blaze that killed them all.  

Unnerved by these findings, John desires to take Susanna back to Raintree. He is also quite aware his abolitionist views are unfashionable with her family. Susanna, however, is quite comfortable in New Orleans, surrounding herself with a collection of dolls, one of which is charred, but otherwise survived the plantation fire. Susanna initially refuses to return with John to Raintree. However, after confessing that she lied about her pregnancy because she desperately wanted to marry him, he confides he has since grown to love her deeply and will never leave her side. Imbued with this confidence, Susanna agrees to ‘go home’ with John. But she keeps a watchful eye on Nell, goading her into keeping her distance. Meanwhile, descension between the North and South ferments. John finds work as an educator. Prof. Stiles is found out in his affair with Lydia and narrowly saved from a mob lynching by John, who escorts him to the train depot. Susanna, pregnant for real this time, gives birth to their only son, Jimmy (first played by Donald Losby, then Mickey Maga). Although John has pledged not to leave his wife to enlist in the war, by its third year, Susanna’s severe paranoia, wild delusions, and panicked bouts of forgetfulness have driven John to distraction. Even Susanna’s attempt to free her slave girls, keeping them on for wages at John’s insistence, is ruined when Garwood and other guests attending the surprise party in John’s honor, find Susanna’s gesture, amusing at best. Returning home one afternoon, John is informed by his mother, Ellen (Agnes Moorehead), Susanna has fled to her family’s plantation in Georgia with Jimmy.

Determined to bring his family home, John enlists in the Union Army where he is reunited with Flash and the Professor, each having previously joined the fight. Flash and John capture a Confederate officer (DeForest Kelley). John also stumbles upon the decaying remnants of Susanna’s family home, seemingly deserted. After discovering a dying slave in the upstairs bedroom, John also realizes one of Susanna’s slave girls, Parthenia (Ruth Attaway) is hiding in the attic with Jimmy. Father and son reunited, John – along with Flash – begin the arduous journey back to the relative safety of their army base camp. Alas, they are ambushed in the dark. Flash is mortally wounded, nobly to act as a decoy for the advancing rebels while John, with Jimmy on his back, sprints to base camp. Learning of Susanna’s institutionalization in an asylum, John locates his wife in a squalid little hospital cell and coaxes her into believing he will take care of her from now on. At this juncture, Lincoln is assassinated. As the train cortege carrying the President’s remains passes through Raintree County, Prof. Stiles encourages John to seek public office. Garwood infers he will also run, leading John to denounce him once and for all as a rank opportunist who would do nothing to selfishly crave the spotlight. Although Nell, John’s father (Walter Abel) and the Professor implore John to reconsider his future, John staunchly refuses. Realizing his sacrifices are because of her, Susanna sets out in the dead of night to find the raintree from long ago, believing this will satisfy and liberate John to pursue his destiny. Unable to sleep, Jimmy follows his mother into the swamp. A search party is organized, only to discover Susanna’s lifeless body near the edge of the property, apparently drowned, early the next morning. Jimmy, however, has fallen asleep under the raintree. A grateful John and Nell find the boy and take him home, presumably to begin their lives together at long last, leaving the whereabouts of the raintree, prominently glinting in the sunshine, a mystery for all time.

To suggest MGM had some very high hopes riding on Raintree County is putting things mildly. Indeed, Dore Schary’s entire future rested squarely on its success. Throughout the 1950’s, despite some very fine movies still being made under his auspices, the studio was embroiled in a slow, but steady downward spiral. Bad timing, and Schary’s executive decision to gradually prune Mayer’s galvanized star system, breaking it down to bedrock by the end of the decade, resulted in costlier projects being produced on a picture-by-picture basis. From this vantage, Raintree County can be perceived as both a throwback to that lush Mayer/Thalberg era for which Metro was justly celebrated, but also, a great opportunity for Schary to truly show off the technological advances that had evolved since the era of Gone with the Wind – making his Southern epic the preeminent leader of the pack. Alas, this was not to be. For although an early assembled 3hr./6 min. roadshow rough cut, shown in Santa Barbara as a ‘sneak peek’ prevue, and, attended by Dmytryk, Lewis, Joseph Vogel, and various ‘yes’ men at the studio, received favorable feedback from 1,100 spectators, almost immediately, the decision was made to reshoot various scenes and add a few new ones to crystalize and smooth out the transitions in the plot. The news was less encouraging when Raintree County had its official premiere in Kentucky in Oct. 1957. In a whirlwind gala, designed to outdo Selznick’s original Atlanta premiere for Gone with the Wind, Schary’s climax of cotillions, parades and parties, including a costume ball at Freedom Hall, culminated in a rather tepid, to downright frosty, reception of the picture. Immediately thereafter, Raintree County lost 15 minutes of exposition for its wide release, the real/reel beginning of the end for its screen immortality.

Decried as a historical soap opera, and generally savaged by the nation’s top critics as beginning in abject tedium, only to conclude on 168-minutes of leaden apathy, Raintree County entered the annals of film history as a weighty tome to that bygone era in picture-making, seemingly already dead, if not as yet quite buried by Schary’s thinly veiled and elephantine forced march to make it the greatest Civil War epic of all time. Yet, in hindsight, what seems to have left most of this aristocracy of pundits mildly miffed to thoroughly perturbed is not that Schary dared to emulate and compete with the success of Selznick’s Southern super-colossus, rather, that in pitch and personality, his offering failed to reflect or even bask in the afterglow of that irrefutably grand and justly celebrated marathon of yore. Herein, Johnny Green’s underscoring for the picture served as a reminder Raintree County was not GWTW – from the outset of its proud and lustful overture, seems to herald an experience quite ‘un-Wind’ like, and furthermore, to firmly anchor the picture in its own time capsule of fading fifties’ ‘contemporary’ film scores – introduced by a pop tune, interpolated thereafter as the underlying anthem, with rarely a whiff of the ‘old South’ about it. From its unusually succinct main title sequence, set to Green’s explosive flourish of resplendent brass under Leo the Lion, almost immediately to retreat into an intimate ballad, romantically warbled with bittersweet passion by Nat King Cole, Raintree County offered no illusion or misdirection for the audience that the next 2 ½ hours were an excursion into the heart of lost opportunities, tinged in a sincerely flawed, if valiantly expressed sentimental yearning for the regality of that land of ‘cavaliers and cotton fields’, mythologized out of proportion in Gone with the Wind, yet queerly counterbalanced in Raintree County by its underlying dissention towards slavery, as expressed by the film’s protagonist, John Shawnessey.

From the outset, Montgomery Clift’s character is uncomfortably situated into this culture, curiously to have split its self-professed pride between the mannered stature of opining Southern gentlemen, as depicted by Rod Taylor’s Garwood, and the more crudely hewn rough-houser, best embodied herein by Lee Marvin, whose entire stature is built upon his physical ability to outfox, outrun, and out-perform the competition. Clift’s Johnny thus remains the anomaly – an introspective fellow, benignly attracted and made attractive to Elizabeth Taylor’s mentally failing belle, and yet, completely incapable of adapting into the world from whence she derives. Hence, Johnny’s determination to make his wife accept the fast-advancing obsolescence of her decaying Southern gentility only serves to hasten her steep emotional decline. A daughter of that stately and structured vintage, there is no place for Susanna in the ‘new’ South. And yet, with or without her, there appears to be nowhere Clift’s Johnny could ever unearth the sort of blind-sighted optimism that would thoroughly satisfy his simplest desire, merely to live contented in his beloved Raintree County. Johnny’s initial pursuit of the mythical ‘raintree’ – left undiscovered in the end – speaks to his present, and ongoing dissatisfaction with life as he knows it, thus addressing one of life’s enduring apothegm; that, in a world full of men driven by their ambitions, the man who is dictated to by his own code of honor is doomed to remain an island unto himself.  Indeed, the finale to Raintree County bears this out, with Johnny, mournful over the loss of his wife, almost immediately reconciled with gratitude his young son has survived. Johnny will be contented now to rear the boy, perhaps, with Nell’s doting complicity as the embodiment of that rather passionless and doe-eyed innocence he only thought he had left behind.   

Arguably, the cinematic Raintree County, having veered considerably from Lockridge’s authorship, was never meant to be a sprawling epic, rather, an intimate tale of love and loss, regrettably tricked out in all the finery MGM could muster at the tail end of their picture-making supremacy. For certain, the lion’s share of criticism must reside with screen writer, Millard Kaufman’s brutal inability to find a more engaging way of transferring Lockridge’s intellectual reflections to this proscenium in more cinematic terms. Blame should also go to director, Edward Dmytryk, who – despite an enviable career in pictures – spectacularly fails to bring cohesion to the latter half of this movie. Instead, and with very few scenes devoted expressly to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’, Raintree County quickly devolves into a series of talkative mediations, debates and contemplations, ferociously devoted to extolling the virtues in Lockridge’s prose, yet curiously unwilling to concede that in order to maintain a precise level of fidelity to that work, movies more readily, and far more successfully executed than Raintree County must endeavor to depart along their own artistic line of inquiry, ironically to reach their happy symbiosis somewhere in the middle between these disparate artistic mediums. Regrettably, this synergy is never brokered in the picture. Nevertheless, Raintree County endures as a landmark in film-scoring, thanks to Johnny Green’s invested perquisite to will an unabashedly sentimental and sweeping orchestral magnum opus from its ashes, ironically with its orchestral bridges tethered to the human dynamics of its love triangle rather than the historical trappings which serve as its framework. Green’s extraordinary musicianship is a deviation from the reigning blockbuster mentality of the period. Instead, his score preps the first-time viewer for a psychologically complex melodrama, never to evolve dramatically on the screen, but with a rare sophistication that melds the full breadth of MGM’s classically-trained studio orchestra with less likely atmospheric tomes that serve as musical counterpoints to the action on the screen. When all else fails, these subtler investments continue to haunt from the peripheries of the screen for almost the picture’s entire runtime, illustrating Green’s remarkable command of the material.

Upon its release, Raintree County was met with considerable interest from the public. Yet, despite this, the movie’s crippling budget practically ensured its inability to turn a profit. Instead, Raintree County would go on MGM’s ledgers as a shameful box office bomb. So, why did Dore Schary elect to make Raintree County? Very near the start of his tenure at Metro, Schary had backed another movie about the war between the states, John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage (1951) against L.B. Mayer’s strenuous objections to kill the project. Foreshadowing Raintree’s implosion at the box office, The Red Badge of Courage also lost money for the studio – barely earning $1,080,000 on its $1,673,000 outlay. And even though the losses on Raintree County were no more catastrophic – the picture fell short by $484,000 – what really sounded the death knell for Schary’s tenure at MGM was the absence of a viable scapegoat on which to either pin, or merely explain away the hemorrhaging of badly needed capital. In 1951, Mayer’s then relatively recent ousting precluded the New York offices from pointing the finger for The Red Badge of Courage’s failure squarely at Schary, despite the fact Mayer had vehemently fought both Huston and Schary’s verve to produce the picture. With no one else to blame, Raintree County was distinctly Schary’s mistake – unforgivable and worthy of another palace coup. In the wake of Schary’s departure, bean-counter, Benny Thau assumed the reigns of MGM – a disaster for the studio, best left to another time and another discussion to fully comprehend.  As for Schary, one-time studio alumni, Esther Williams would later glibly assess, that despite his many failings, and her distinct dislike of the man, it was rather cruel of MGM’s parent company, Loews Incorporated to fire him on Thanksgiving Day since, by Williams’ own assessment, he was ‘the turkey’. Somewhat prophetically, L.B. Mayer died of leukemia on Oct. 29^th, 1957, just 25 days after Raintree County’s gallant premiere, and almost a year to the day of Schary’s dismissal from the studio. Interestingly, the last 3 movies Schary personally supervised for MGM – 1956’s The Swan, and, The Last Hunt, and 1957’s Designing Woman, all lost money – an unlucky streak, later remedied when Schary proved he still had a showman’s eye for popular entertainment, producing several smash hits on Broadway, including Sunrise at Campobello (1958-59) and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960), each, later turned into highly successful movies – the latter, at MGM. In reflecting on this turbulent time, studio contract player, June Allyson suggested that when Mayer died “he took the studio with him…so he didn’t really lose in the end.” 

As for Raintree County, since its theatrical release, the movie has remained curiously inconspicuous on television and home video. While it did receive two ‘deluxe’ home video debuts, the first as a double-VHS cassette offering in 1984, followed by a 2-disc LaserDisc the following year, both under a licensing agreement with Ted Turner, then, the custodian of the MGM library, and released under the MGM/UA banner, for decades now, the only way to see Raintree County has been on cable television, usually in its truncated form. Turner Classic Movies (TCM), a bastion for movie lovers everywhere, has long-since made Raintree County a main staple of its programming schedule. But Warner Home Video, the current keepers of the flame, have been rather remiss in committing to a release either on standard DVD or Blu-ray. Usually, such delays and/or absences of time-honored motion pictures on home video are attributed to the issue of rights, as in Otto Preminger’s 1946 production of Centennial Summer, inveigled in a dispute with the estate of composer, Jerome Kern, or Preminger’s 1959, 70mm adaptation of Porgy and Bess, rather idiotically held up by the fact, producer, Samuel Goldwyn’s lease expired 15 years after the picture was made, with all rights reverting to the Gershwin and Heyward estates, who have repeated refused licensing it to home video, marking it as one of the most prestigious ‘lost films’ from the 1950’s.  No such copyright has delayed Raintree County – the property, along with the rest of the MGM library, acquired by Warner Media from Ted Turner’s holdings in the late-1990’s. The official response to any and all queries for Raintree County to have its official debut in hi-def are met with arguments the original camera negatives are in a perilous state of decomposition, further afflicted by vinegar syndrome, from whence no proper video master can be struck of the complete 188-min. roadshow, but arguably, also, the foreshortened 166-min. theatrical cut, without incurring considerable expense to perform a full-on restoration.

Rather valiantly, Warner’s genuine commitment to its vintage catalog has yielded an admirable spate of hand-selected titles, restored and remastered from the ground up before marking their home video release in hi-def.  Many of these titles were properly curated throughout the infancy of the home video revolution, with a considerable investment to time and money, but also chronic tinkering as new restoration and preservation techniques beyond the photochemical became available, resulting in a gradual outlay of capital to get the job done. As Raintree County has not seen a video upgrade since the mid-1980’s, in these forty-plus years since to have passed, whatever assets the studio is holding must, indeed, be considered of a delicate and inferior quality, and hopelessly outdated by now, undeniably due for a prestigious complete overhaul. As Raintree County’s ‘reputation’ has continued to morph and mature over this same timeline, the movie that fell out of favor with critics in 1957, and failed to maintain its popularity in the years to immediately follow its release, in more recent times has begun to grow in stature, thanks to a select and ardent group of admirers. Perhaps, even more than Elizabeth Taylor’s later colossus from the sixties – Cleopatra (1963) – a movie, also to have been deciphered by the critics as a stinker, despite its sell-out crowds and formidable box office take, the cultural renaissance for Raintree County may indeed be just around the corner. Will the picture ever see the light of day in hi-def? While fans continue to flood online message and discussion boards with memories and requests, Warner Home Video, and its ‘archive’ appendage, remain circumspect about what the future may bring. Whatever awaits on the horizon, few can deny the picture’s fascinating, if sincerely troubled past.