“Paint Your
Wagon”
Movie Review
Featuring Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, and Jean Seberg, Paint
Your Wagon is a 1969 American Western song movie. From the 1951 musical Paint
Your Wagon by Lerner and Loewe, Paddy Chayefsky adapted the movie. In California
during the Gold Rush, a mining camp serves as the setting. Josh Logan was the
director.
Prospector Ben Rumson, played by Lee Marvin, discovers two adult
male inmates, brothers, when a wagon falls into a ravine; one of them is dead
and the other has a broken arm and leg. Gold dust is found at the cemetery site
while the dead man is being buried. Ben establishes a claim on the land and
takes in Clint Eastwood's portrayal of the survivor brother as his
"Partner" while he recovers.
Partner sings a love song about a made-up female while being
naïve and sweet. He is wary of the fast-living Ben and expects to acquire
enough money during the gold rush to purchase some land. Ben asserts that
despite his willingness to engage in physical combat, steal, and cheat at
cards, he will never betray a friend. Ben will split the prospecting profits as
long as Partner looks after him during his intoxicated and depressed periods.
"No Name City" emerges as a tent city when gold is
discovered, with the miners alternating between wild parties and periods of
solitude. The entrance of Jacob Woodling, a Mormon with two wives, played by
John Mitchum, is enough to draw the town's attention as the males get impatient
with their lack of female company. Woodling is convinced by the miners to sell
one of his wives for the greatest price. Jacob's younger and more disobedient
wife Elizabeth, played by Jean Serberg, accepts to be sold on the grounds that
anything she receives can't be worse than what she now has.
Ben ends up making the biggest offer for Elizabeth while still
intoxicated. The other miners prepare Ben for the wedding, and Ben marries
Elizabeth according to "mining law," giving him exclusive access to
"all her mineral resources."
Elizabeth threatens to shoot Ben on their wedding night if she is not
treated with respect because she is not satisfied to be treated like property.
Despite her belief that Ben is not the kind to permanently settle down, she is
willing to accept their arrangement provided he builds her a decent wooden
cottage to give her some stability for the inevitable day when he must depart.
Elizabeth is delighted to finally have a good house when Ben, who was moved by
her tenacity, enlists the miners to assist him in keeping this pledge.
There is word that "six French tarts" are on their way
to a nearby town via stagecoach. The ladies are eventually brought to "No
Name City" as part of a scheme to divert the stagecoach under false
pretenses and transport them there, giving the other miners some feminine
company. Partner will look after Elizabeth while Ben leads the mission. The two
fall in love, and Elizabeth persuades them that "if a Mormon man can have
two wives, why can't a woman have two husbands?" by claiming that she
still loves Ben. Up until the town is big enough for civilized people from the
East to start settling there, the polyandrous system works. A parson starts a
dedicated campaign to convince the residents of No Name City to change their
bad ways. Ben and some other miners find that many of the saloons have gold
dust falling through the floorboards. To obtain the gold, they dig tunnels
beneath every company.
A family of newly arrived settlers is asked to spend the winter
with Elizabeth and Partner, who is considered to be her sole spouse, after the
group is saved from the snow. Ben is left on his own to handle things. He
introduces Horton Fenty, a young man who lacks experience, to the joys of
Rotten Luck Willie's bar and brothel as payback. As a result, Elizabeth kicks
Partner and Ben out of the log home, and Partner starts playing poker in
Willie's. During a bull-and-bear battle, the ferocious bull plunges into the
tunnel system that Ben and the others excavated and destroys all of the support
beams, bringing down the streets and structures. The town is ultimately totally
destroyed. Ben says he never knew Partner's true name, which Partner then says
is Sylvester Newel, and then he leaves for other gold fields. Elizabeth and
Partner make up and decide to remain together while thinking about Ben's upcoming
heroic journey.
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