IMDb > Paint Your Wagon (1969)
Paint Your Wagon
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Paint Your Wagon (1969) More at IMDbPro »

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Paint Your Wagon (1969) -- Two unlikely prospector partners share the same wife in a California gold rush mining town.
Paint Your Wagon (1969) -- Two unlikely prospector partners share the same wife in a California gold rush mining town.

Overview

User Rating:
6.5/10   4,673 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Up 4% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Writers:
Paddy Chayefsky (adaptation)
Alan Jay Lerner (musical play "Paint Your Wagon")
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Contact:
View company contact information for Paint Your Wagon on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
15 October 1969 (USA) more
Tagline:
Stake Your Claim To The Musical Goldmine of '69! more
Plot:
Two unlikely prospector partners share the same wife in a California gold rush mining town. full summary | add synopsis
Awards:
Nominated for Oscar. Another 1 win & 2 nominations more
User Comments:
"Gotta Dream Boy, Gotta A Song, Paint Your Wagon, And Come Along" more (82 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)
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Additional Details

Also Known As:
Guldrushens glada dagar (Finland: Swedish title) (Sweden) [sv]
La leyenda de la ciudad sin nombre (Mexico) (cable TV title) (Spain) [es]
Westwärts zieht der Wind (Austria) (West Germany) [de]
Iki kabadayi (Turkey: Turkish title) [tr]
Kultarynnäkön iloiset päivät (Finland) [fi]
La ballata della città senza nome (Italy) [it]
La kermesse de l'Ouest (France) [fr]
Når guldfeberen raser (Denmark) [da]
O dromos tis eftyhias (Greece) [el]
Os Aventureiros do Ouro (Brazil) [pt]
more
MPAA:
Rated PG-13 for thematic material.
Runtime:
158 min
Country:
Language:
Color:
Color (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio:
2.20 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
4-Track Stereo (35 mm prints) | 70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints)
Certification:
Canada:A (Nova Scotia) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Manitoba/Ontario) | UK:A (original rating) | USA:TV-14 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-8 | Norway:16 | Spain:13 | Sweden:11 | UK:PG | USA:M (original rating) | USA:PG-13 (re-rated: 2001) | West Germany:16 | Singapore:PG
Filming Locations:

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Many extras in the film were "hippies" who just happened to be living in the woods near where the crew built the sets. more
Goofs:
Revealing mistakes: During "The Best Things In Life Are Dirty", Ben Rumson rides up on a cart full of sloppy mud. The three Irishmen, led by Mad Jack, are pulling the cart up on a block and tackle, with a heave-ho motion. The cart should rise a few inches at a time, to synch up with their motions. Instead, while they pull and rest, pull and rest, the cart rises out of the pit at a constant speed. more
Quotes:
Ben Rumson: Grace, I give you the boy. Give me back the man. more
Soundtrack:
Best Things more

FAQ

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.
8 out of 12 people found the following comment useful.
"Gotta Dream Boy, Gotta A Song, Paint Your Wagon, And Come Along", 9 January 2007
7/10
Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

Unfortunately Paint Your Wagon came at a time when big budget musicals were going out of vogue. The expenses of this film nearly bankrupted Paramount and it was many years before the studio recouped its investment. Another big Broadway hit from the same era, Finian's Rainbow also came to the big screen a few years earlier and bombed at the box office.

Paint Your Wagon ran 289 performances for the 1951-1952 season on Broadway. Daring in its time, Paint Your Wagon had an interracial love theme. That was too tame for the newly liberated silver screen from the Code and here we have a woman, Jean Seberg, marrying two gold miners, Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin. This might be the first story on screen about polyandry unless you count Noel Coward's Design for Living and that was a heavily censored version.

Listening to Lee Marvin it sounds like an eminently practical arrangement. Lee saves Clint Eastwood after a fall and nurses him back to health and he makes him a partner. Then he 'buys' at auction Jean Seberg who is the second wife of passing Mormon John Mitchum.

Since Clint's a partner in everything, sharing a wife seems a sensible arrangement. Lee's character Ben Rumson has some very interesting ideas on morality, especially morality out in the wilds. You'll have to see Paint Your Wagon to hear him explain his views.

Jean Seberg's voice is dubbed by Anita Gordon, but Eastwood and Marvin do their own numbers. For Marvin, he does it in the tradition of Rex Harrison and Richard Burton in those other Lerner and Loewe musicals and it comes off nicely. Clint Eastwood's many talents do not include singing however.

But as it turned out Paint Your Wagon needed all the help it could get at the box office. They could have cast a singer in Clint's part, but where was there on who could play the role, be the right age, and bring in the dollars. By 1969 there really was no such male singer in Hollywood. Probably in the fifties someone like Gordon MacRae or Howard Keel might have done it then.

The comedy is pretty raucous from Lee Marvin's original ideas on sex to the whole town caving in because of all the mine tunnels beneath. Paint Your Wagon holds up well and it's not as bad a film as has come down by reputation. It might be painful for Clint Eastwood fans to hear him sing though.

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Message Boards

Discuss this movie with other users on IMDb message board for Paint Your Wagon (1969)
Recent Posts (updated daily)User
Best Thing About Movie . . . teresa-elbin
Where's the baby?? joellyn917
Who sang They Call the Wind Mariah in the movie? turner-33
Cover Art on 1969 Album kmgeissel
Lee Marvin very different in this movie! nikkiandtim
Comeon Paramount it's worth a BD loa-3
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