MACTBy Steven LaVinge
As I’ve written before, the late 1960s brought a lot of expensive musicals to the screen. While Joshua Logan, Vincente Minnelli and Herbert Ross made several, one of Hollywood’s new wave of younger filmmakers was given the opportunity to make a big budget musical for Warner Bros, and it’s a charming, entertaining delight. That director is Francis Ford Coppola and that musical is Finian’s Rainbow.
Like many young filmmakers including Peter Bogdanovich and Ron Howard, Coppola was given his first opportunity to direct through Roger Corman, and that movie, Dementia 13, made for $40,000 is now a cult classic. Coppola would co-write the scripts for This Property is Condemned, Is Paris Burning? and the 1974 The Great Gatsby. He’d also write and direct The Godfather trilogy, but it was his adaptation of the novel You’re a Big Boy Now, for which he earned his MFA, which became a critical success. With a score by The Lovin’ Spoonful, this coming-of-age story featured a cast that included Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Julie Harris, Tony Bill and Karen Black. Coppola’s career was off and running.
So how did he wind up directing an old-fashioned musical like Finian’s Rainbow?
Finian’s Rainbow opened on Broadway in 1947, an epic year that included A Streetcar Named Desire, All My Sons, Allegro, Bloomer Girl, Brigadoon, High Button Shoes, John Loves Mary, Street Scene and The Cradle Will Rock. It was also the first year that the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Awards were presented. David Wayne, who played Og, won the award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance.
An inventive show, with the libretto by E. Y. Harburg (Book and Lyrics) and Fred Saidy (Book), and music by Burton Lane, it addressed racism in the south prior to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) land development project. Harburg and Saidy adapted their story for the screen, updating it to the late 1960s, without changing the principal plot.
Previously, MGM planned a film version to star Mickey Rooney and later, an animated film featured the voices of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Louis Armstrong, Jim Backus, David Wayne and Ella Logan was left unfinished.
Warner Bros. added it to their production schedule in 1966, before the release of Camelot. Dick Van Dyke was first choice to play Finian Monegan, but he turned it down to make Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang instead. Fred Astaire in his last musical film, costarred with Tommy Steele as Og, Petula Clark as Sharon Lonergan and Don Francks as Woody Mahoney. Dancer Barbara Babcock played Woody’s sister, Susan the Silent.
While the geography doesn’t make sense, cinematographer Philip H. Lathrop has beautifully captured Astaire and Clark hiking through a wheat field, then visiting the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate bridge, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, sailing down the Mississippi and sliding down a snowy mountainside on their way to Rainbow Valley, Missitucky, the sharecropping community where the story is set. The sequence is underscored with Clark singing “Look to the Rainbow.”
They arrive just as the populace sends away the sheriff after he fails to hold an auction on land owned by Woody and Susan, coveted by the bigoted Senator Billboard Rawkins (Keenan Wynn) to keep the TVA out of his district. (“This Time of the Year”). Hermes Pan, who staged many a dance for Astaire, and co-choreographer Claude Thompson bring the musical numbers up to date.
Sharon serenaded her father as they come to town (“How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”). Finian saves the day by hiding in a tree and throwing bills down to the Sheriff, becoming the new owner of the land.
As Finian explains his philosophy (“Look to the Rainbow”) to the people, we learn that Woody and his business partner, Howard (Al Freeman, Jr.), a botanist are trying to create mentholated tobacco, which will not only revolutionize the tobacco industry, but will also bring a fortune to Rainbow Valley.
Finian shares his whimsical theory about American fortunes to Sharon, then sets off to Fort Knox where he plans to bury a pot of gold he’s stolen from Og, a leprechaun (Tommy Steele). Disguised as a bush, Og follows Finian to the burial spot, planning on taking back his crock and returning to Ireland. However, while the gold is buried, the land become enchanted and an angry Sharon wishes the Senator was black. The remainder of the plot focuses on resolving this problem, while satirizing stereotypes and raising the issues of immigrant trouble. (Sound familiar?)
Coppola’s use of close-ups captures character emotion, and Ray Heindorf’s arrangements allow the music to flow naturally from the story.
Finian’s Rainbow was filmed on Warner Bros. back lot, where set pieces from past films, such as the crumbling mansion from Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte are used. The plot bogs down a bit in its second half, but Coppola keeps things moving so smoothly, these things don’t really matter.
Among the joyous highlights in Finian’s Rainbow are:
The clog dance performed by Finian and Sharon during “Look to the Rainbow,” which becomes a lively production number, placing Astaire where he belongs, at the center.
The lighting on his face as Finian opens his carpet bag and removes the pot of gold before burying it is enchanting.
The obviously genuine chemistry between Woody and Sharon, especially as they lay on a hill next to a brook and he seduces her with “That Old Devil Moon.”
The evident enjoyment Finian has while showing how “The Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich.” This is a fine addition to Astaire’s repertoire of dance numbers from his repertoire.
“The Begat” sequence, wherein Senator Rawkins, now black, meets a singing trio, the Passion Pilgrim Gospeleers, whose car continually breaks down. Along with the opening, this is the finest traveling sequence in the movie.
Of course, the movie does have its flaws. Audiences were startled because, at 69, Fred Astaire looked his age since his last film, The Notorious Landlady, was in 1962. He had, after all, been in films for over 35 years by this point.
In 1935, Mickey Rooney played Puck in Max Reinhardt’s all-star production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Rooney gives an incredibly obnoxious performance, and Tommy Steele appears to have based his leprechaun character on Rooney’s Puck. The difference here is that Steele is also charming, especially in his romantic scenes with Clark (“Something Sort of Grandish”) and Babcock (“When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love, I Love the Girl I’m Near.”) These are minor gripes, however and bear little on the joys of this film and it’s beautiful, singable score.
Fred Astaire continued to work in television and film, earning his only Oscar nomination for The Towering Inferno in 1974. Petula Clark would make one more American musical, co-starring the following year with Peter O’Toole in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969). She would return to the British theater, playing the mother in Bloodbrothers, Maria in The Sound of Music and Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd. Tommy Steele would also return to the London stage to play leading roles in Some Like it Hot and Singin’ in the Rain.
Sadly, Finian’s Rainbow can’t be successfully produced onstage anymore. Following an Encores concert presentation at New York’s City Center, a Broadway revival in 2009 only lasted 92 performances.
Still, unlike other musicals from the era that weren’t bought for the movies, (some of them being presented in truncated TV productions), Finian’s Rainbow is a musical that comes to magical life on screen. It’s a pleasant return to a simpler time and an enjoyable time that is.