Paint Your Wagon Details

Alan Jay Lerner invented a new “adult” plot, quite unnecessarily, for this screen version of his own Broadway show, in which Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood share Jean Seberg in a ménage à trois. Joshua Logan directs with the heaviest of hands, and only Harve Presnell as Rotten Luck Willie emerges with credit, but then he does have all the best songs, although it was Marvin who topped the UK charts with Wandrin' Star. Clint uses his own singing voice charmingly, too, and there's some of the finest chorale work (directed by Roger Wagner) ever heard in a film musical. This overlong screen adaptation almost works, but not quite.

Good-looking but uncinematic and monumentally long version of an old musical with a new plot and not much dancing. There are minor pleasures, but it really shouldn't have been allowed.