PAINT YOUR WAGON: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Paramount, 1969) Kino Lorber

Few movie musicals are as incalculably ill-advised, monstrous atrocities as director, Joshua Logan’s Paint Your Wagon, by 1969, a careworn and very creaky chestnut from another bygone era. The sixties were a particularly detrimental decade for the Hollywood musical. Finian’s Rainbow (1968)…need I say more? While the celluloid escapist song-and-dancers of the thirties and forties relied – chiefly – on hand-crafted material, expressly conceived for the medium of film, increasingly, this balance of power began to shift in the cash-strapped fifties, with studios merely acquiring pre-sold product directly from the Broadway theater. In theory, the logic was sound. Except, what works in stagecraft rarely translates entirely, or even marginally, to the two-dimensional proscenium. Thus, the Broadway-to-Hollywood hybrids, with noted exceptions, became more infamous for their lack in faithfulness, strangely off-kilter with the more expansive movie canvas. This creative chasm was exacerbated by needless tinkering; movies whose only resemblance to the Broadway origins was in a basic retainment of its title, with book and lyrics shorn in favor of new – though rarely ‘better’ material. The introduction of Cinemascope, and later – Panavision – also cast its pall on the intimacy of these shows as bigger, bolder reimagining was deemed necessary to really wow the audience, filling ever more vast and vacuous screen space with some sort of frenetic action. Alas, such blind and lavish ambition debunked the axiom ‘bigger is better.’

Joshua Logan was the wrong man to deliver Alan Jay Lerner and Fredrick Loewe’s tune-filled western from the wilderness into the wonderment of the movies. Logan’s participation on several big-budgeted musicals from this period had much to do with his having co-written and directed the stage and screen versions of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. Nearly a decade separated those efforts (1949 and 1958 respectively). In the interim, Logan remained primarily a director of dramas. This is where his métier lay. Alas, Hollywood doggedly pursued Logan to helm, though in hindsight, make an utter travesty of two of the sixties’ most amiable musical properties. The first casualty of Logan’s relentless heavy-handed approach was Camelot (1967). The other was Paint Your Wagon. The executive logic in hiring Logan to direct Paint Your Wagon, particularly in this uncertain epoch where movie musicals – once, sure-fire gold – were now foundering at the box office, though especially in the shadow of Camelot’s own disastrous intake, is puzzling. While the film version of South Pacific made money, it was widely – and justly – panned by the critics for Logan’s hermetically sealed approach to Hollywood does stagecraft.

If not for its exotic locales and tenderly rendered performance by Mitzi Gaynor, the film would have little to impress. But Camelot had imploded under Logan’s bizarre elephantiasis. As with it, the other lethal decision made on Paint Your Wagon, one to effectively severe all creative arteries, was the casting of non-musical performers in musical roles. This too had become something of ‘a thing’ in the mid-sixties – a great actor taking the place of a great singer or dancer. In unique instances, such as Robert Preston’s mesmeric turn as Prof. Harold Hill in The Music Man (1962) or Rex Harrison’s devilishly sexist rhyming as Prof. Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, the effect was sagaciously stylish and pleasing. But the songs afforded both those characters had been essentially designed to be spoken on pitch, rather than belted into the rafters. Not so with the score to Paint Your Wagon.   

So, there was ample blame to go around. The movies stars, Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin are irrefutably monumental he-men and solid performers besides. But musicals is decidedly ‘not’ their thing. Marvin in particular, croaks like a bullfrog, makes an utter mockery of ‘The First Thing You Know’ while Eastwood’s rendition of ‘I Talk to The Trees’ only serves to reaffirm why they have no interest in listening to him. Prior to Logan, there had been several attempts to launch Paint Your Wagon on the big screen. Jack Warner thought he could do something with it as a vehicle for Doris Day, but then went with the western-themed Calamity Jane (1953) instead. Louis B. Mayer, by then, ousted from power at MGM, but still contemplating his legacy as an independent, bought the rights to Paint Your Wagon shortly before his death in 1957. Thereafter, Mayer’s estate reconciled with Paramount, the studio acquiring Paint Your Wagon as a vehicle for Bing Crosby (who eventually donned western garb for the 1966 non-musical remake of Stagecoach).

Having written the screenplays for Oscar-winners, An American in Paris, Gigi, and My Fair Lady (the latter two, he also wrote the book and score with collaborative partner, Frederick Loewe), Alan Jay Lerner elected to produce Paint Your Wagon. It was Lerner’s decision to hire Logan in lieu of fellow director, Blake Edwards, who had already expressed interests in doing the film. Somewhere along the way the executive decision was made to jettison the premise of the stagecraft, with Lerner hoping to lure Loewe to partake of a complete rewrite. Loewe balked. He was, after all, enjoying his retirement to its fullest in the south of France at the time. So, Lerner turned instead to André Previn, not such a bad second, except Previn had grave difficulties authoring substitute songs that fit into the style of Loewe’s surviving original score.  Eastwood replaced George Maharis and Lee Marvin received a cool million to be top billed, with Eastwood raking in a respectable $750,000. For the romantic lead, producers considered Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Tuesday Weld, Julie Andrews, Diana Rigg and Sally Ann Howes, before Jean Seberg was finally hired for the coveted role of Elizabeth. Regrettably, somewhere along the rewrite, Seberg’s character became mere token estrogen in this all-male pantheon. Interestingly, while Eastwood and Marvin (to their everlasting detriment) did their own singing, Seberg’s vocals were dubbed by Anita Gordon.

Important to reconsider what Paint Your Wagon might have been on the screen had it adhered to the original stagecraft. On Broadway, the tale was set in California circa 1853 and had Ben Rumson, the impoverished miner striking it rich along with his daughter, Jennifer. Soon, prospectors stake their claims and the town of Rumson is established: all men…except for Jen. Handsome miner, Julio Valveras begins to fall for Jennifer. As he is Mexican, Ben is alarmed by his daughter’s mutual attraction to the young buck. Meanwhile, Jacob Woodling, a Mormon toting two wives, Sarah and Elizabeth, is forced to give one of them up. Ben woos Liz. But his affections disgust Jennifer who promises to return to Julio in a year. Julio’s luck turns bad, forcing him to leave town before the year’s end. Miner Mike Mooney informs Julio about a lake whose bottom is covered in gold dust. Meanwhile, fellow miner, Raymond Janney offers to buy Elizabeth from Ben.  She has other ideas and runs off with another miner, Edgar Crocker instead. Another strike some forty miles away depletes Rumson of its populace. The place is now a ghost town. Nevertheless, when Julio returns, he finds Jennifer waiting for him. Though his claim has failed, Ben welcomes Julio into the family, as the wagons filled with town folk depart Rumson for the last time.

On stage, Paint Your Wagon was a poignantly executed parable about the inevitable passage of time and the fitful legacy of man’s conquering of the old west. Regrettably, the movie version – co-authored by Lerner and Paddy Chayefsky – decided something else, though fatally, not something more, was needed. And thus, the movie version of Paint Your Wagon opens in Oregon country, with the daring derailment of Ben Rumson’s (Lee Marvin) wagon train down a steep ravine. As one of the occupants has died, Ben decides to bury him nearby where he inadvertently discovers gold dust. Ben also elects to make the dead man’s brother, Sylvester Newell (Clint Eastwood) his business partner. Newell, however, is a cautious man and not at all contented with this arrangement. Especially disconcerting is Ben’s rather obnoxious boozin’ and ballin’. He is a rogue. Establishing ‘no name city’ in this rugged wilderness, Ben is suspicious of the newly arrived, Jacob Woodling (John Mitchum), a Mormon with two wives, until he agrees to sell the younger of his two brides, Elizabeth (Jean Seberg) to Ben. Determined not to be treated as chattel, Liz threatens Ben into building her a cabin. This provides her with a sense of security and Liz settles into her new life and home. Naturally, the other men in town, deprived of female companionship, are jealous of this arrangement.

Thus, when Ben learns of ‘six French tarts’ traveling to a neighboring town by stagecoach, he plots to reroute their journey so the other miners can find love on their terms too. While conspiring on this heist, Ben leaves Elizabeth in Newell’s care. Predictably, true love takes hold. Reticent about leaving her husband, Liz reasons that if a Mormon can have two wives, she can keep two men as her lovers. This arrangement is equitable to Ben and Newell until a meddling parson (Alan Dexter) begins to preach of sin and corruption. As God-fearing settlers arrive in town, Ben is forced to reconsider. After an avalanche detains the Fentys, an ultra-conservative family to remain guests at their cabin, Liz lies that Newell is her husband, leaving Ben to concoct an insidious revenge. He will introduce the family’s patriarch, Horton Fenty (Alan Baxter) to the local whorehouse/saloon. Disgusted, Elizabeth orders both Ben and Newell from the house. The latter takes up gambling to pass the time. Alas, during a bull-and-bear fight, the rampaging bull charges into the tunnels previously dug under the entire town by Ben, fracturing the support beams and causing all of the buildings to instantly implode. Ben departs for other prospects further north, leaving Newell and Elizabeth to rekindle their love match.  

Tricked out in Panavision, but bereft of a single engaging moment, Paint Your Wagon is a disastrously bloated movie musical with a plot more wafer-thin than the singing talents of Eastwood and Marvin. Time often, and rather strangely, mellows such artistic failings.  Not in this case. If anything, the years illustrate more clearly Joshua Logan’s overall lapse in good judgement to make anything except a morbid mess of this once lithe and lyrical stagecraft. Shot in Baker City, Oregon, Big Bear Lake, California and the San Bernardino National Forest – it all looks rather rurally impressive. Too bad, interiors were all filmed back at Paramount – and look it too in all their static plywood beauty. Logan’s fastidiousness to will silk from this sow caused the picture’s original budget of $10 million to double with nearly $80,000 spent daily on transporting cast and crew to and from the set to the nearest hotel – a whopping 60 miles away!  Under siege by inclement weather, delays owed Lee Marvin’s chronic alcoholism, and, a looming strike, Paint Your Wagon did have one positive conclusion. Costar, Clint Eastwood has since cited its chaotic gestation as the reason he decided to become a director.

Paint Your Wagon is an atrocity. It sinks faster than the town of ‘no name’ because it diffuses the ‘communal’ aspect of the stage show into a two-person show, with Jean Seberg liberally tossed from the arms of one suitor into the waiting fetch and carry of another. Of the considerable Broadway score, only eight songs survived this 3-hour-plus screen spectacle, with the one irrefutable hit tune, ‘They Call the Wind Maria’ – magnificently warbled by Harve Presnell’s Rotten Luck Willie.  The lion’s share for the picture’s inexcusable lack of finesse is owed Logan’s direction. It is lethal, except in fitful bursts of action that come to life almost in spite of Logan’s efforts to tamp down on this joyless excursion into the wilderness. In lieu of actual choreography, Logan contented his musical bent on a series of cutaways to men’s dirty feet stomping into the mud. Because Lerner could not woo Loewe back into service, he leaned rather heavily on the new songs co-authored by André Previn. Some, fit into the tone of the piece, well enough to be mistaken as of Loewe’s tenor and tempo. Others, regrettably show their source, and serve as little more than a tacked-on diversion between the comic or dramatic scenes.  

Of the three central performers, only Lee Marvin’s manages to blitz the bull-sugar out of its doldrums. He is over-the-top, though in the best sense of that ancient art of camp. And Marvin, at least, seems to be having a good time playing the town drunk. Less remarkable, and certainly far more off key, is Marvin’s interpretation of the songs. It’s painful to the ears. Clint Eastwood’s attempt at the ballad has all the luster of watching fresh cow’s milk curdle in the noonday sun. As for Jean Seberg – what exactly is she doing in this movie? After her introduction, she serves as decorous filler, trundled out in her bustle and blues merely to remind the audience there is something of a tepid lover’s triangle going on here. Paint Your Wagon ought to have been one of the irrefutable highlights of the sixties’ road show musical. Certainly, it squandered most – if not all – of that potential on a director incapable of completely understanding the genre. But it also deprived audiences of one of Lerner and Loewe’s finest stagecraft. Oh, what a producer like Arthur Freed and a director of Vincente Minnelli’s ilk and caliber in their prime could have made of it.

Kino Lorber, with Paramount’s complicity, debut Paint Your Wagon in UHD 4K Blu-ray. Paramount has done the heavy lifting here with a gorgeous restoration. I would have preferred their money spent on another – better – late-sixties’ musical, 1967’s more smartly turned out, Half a Sixpence featuring the incomparable Tommy Steele and marvelous Julia Foster in a far more evolved and engaging hybrid. But I digress. Paint Your Wagon really looks amazing in 4K.  Every frame of William A Fraker’s cinematography shines with clarity and refinement, the high-key-lit scenery sparkling from start to finish. Dolby Vision/HDR enhances the black levels and contrast is wonderful, with a light smattering of film grain looking very indigenous to its source. We get 2.0 and 5.1 DTS soundtracks. The 2.0 is closest to the theatrical release. But the 5.1 adds marginal separation to the songs. Otherwise, the two tracks are remarkably similar. Kino has shelled out for a new audio commentary from Dwayne Epstein, Courtney Joyner, and Henry Parke. There are many errors in this triumvirate’s recall. I suppose we can forgive them, as they ramble, reminisce and rail against the general consensus Paint Your Wagon is an unmitigated turkey, for almost three hours. The only other extra is a trailer, badly worn and barely running a minute. Bottom line: it’s hard to reconsider Paint Your Wagon as anything except the final nail in the coffin of that bygone era in sixties’ road show movie musicals. Looking for three-solid-hours to spend enraptured in story and song? Paint Your Wagon, t’aint your wagon. Just saying. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

1.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

1