Paint Your Wagon

By VARIETY STAFF

Paramount. Director Joshua Logan; Producer Alan Jay Lerner; Screenplay Alan Jay Lerner, Paddy Chayefsky; Camera William A. Fraker; Editor Robert C. Jones; Music Nelson Riddle (arr.); Art Director John Truscott
 
Lee Marvin
Clint Eastwood
Jean Seberg
Ray Walston
Harve Presnell
Tom Ligon
 

Paint Your Wagon is the tale of a gold mining town in California in the 1840s - before it became a state and before there were many 'good' women in the territory.

Main story centres around a menage a trois. Lee Marvin, his pardner Clint Eastwood, and Marvin's wife (Jean Seberg) are the trio.

Director Joshua Logan has captured best the vastness and beauty of the country; the loneliness of men in womenless societies.

What the $17 million-plus film (from the 1951 Lerner-Loewe Broadway musical) lacks in a skimpy story line it makes up in the music and expert choreography. There are no obvious 'musical numbers'. All the songs, save one or two, work neatly, quietly and well into the script. The actors used their own voices, which are pleasant enough and add to the note of authenticity.

1969: Nomination: Best Adapted Music Score

(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1969. Running time: 166 MIN.