Paint Your Wagon (1969) Logan

Plot:  Based on the 1951 Broadway Musical, two prospectors share a wife during the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Stars:  Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood,  Jean Seberg

Satirized by the Simpsons, Paint Your Wagon has gone down as one of the biggest turkey's of the 1960s. With 3 stars who couldn't sing or dance, a weak story, and score that only has two good songs, its  been the butt of jokes for almost 50 years.

Sadly, I can't offer a revisionist opinion.  It's as bad as most reviews say.  And you can't blame the casting.  Marvin, by a maniacal comedic effort, almost makes it worth watching. And Eastwood is Eastwood. Even their singing isn't that bad.  Clint has a light, pleasant voice, and Lee Marvin's croaking is charming when you get used to it.  Nope, the problem lies *behind* the camera.  The script is awful, the score is mediocre, and the direction is slack and dull. Lets take them one at a time.

Story: The book for the Broadway Play was a mess.  Accordingly, Paddy Chayefsky (Marty) who knew nothing of comedy, musicals or westerns, was brought in for a re-write.  Why? I don't know.  Lerner then, supposedly, re-wrote most of Chayefsky's re-write.

Anyway, the whole "book" is a piece of crap.  Its so diffuse and meandering its difficult to summarize, but I'll try.  Eastwood and Marvin meet, become partners and help find a Gold Rush Mining town. Marvin buys Seberg at an auction, but ends up sharing her with Eastwood.  And that's gets us through only 1/2 the move!  After that, various unimportant things  happen until tunnels beneath the mining town cause it collapse.  Marvin moves on, Eastwood and Seberg stay to farm.

And there's zero character development. There are no funny lines. And no one has a significant part except the "Big Three".  It sorta dumb and sometimes sleazy without being bawdy or fun.

Score:  Well,  you got They call the wind Maria  and  Wandering Star, otherwise its just a bunch of mediocre, forgettable songs like Hand Me Down That Can Of Beans (really, that's the title).  What's odd is they could've replaced every song except the first two mentioned, with old out-of-copyright songs like Home on the Range or My Darling Clementine and they would've had better music.

Direction:  We're talking Josh Logan. Which means it *looks* great, but lumbers along at a snails pace for 158 minutes. Every crowd scene has 100 extras milling around,  every comedy scene is milked for all its worth, every action scene is made into a cartoon.  Never does Logan ever show any cleverness or improve the material. And for some reason, instead of hiring good comic western actors like Edgar Buchanan or Slim Pickens, we get odd, old, Ray Walston and a bunch on nondescript nobodies. Finally, Logan lets Lee Marvin go over-the-top, but given that's Marvin's the only thing giving life to the movie, I forgive him.

Summary:  You can turn off Paint Your Wagon at Intermission.  Except for Marvin croaking out "Wandering Star"  you're not missing anything.  Another puzzling 1960s musical failure.  Was everyone out for a paycheck or was there something in the water back then?