Oklahoma!

I love this movie! It's one of the all time best musicals ever to be made. The songs are wonderful and the acting is great. Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones are great together in this movie (also in Carousel). It's one of my top movies and musicals. Rodgers and Hammerstein put out the best musicals of all time.

I've seen this musical on stage, acted in it in college and have also seen the Hugh Jackman version.

This is the gold standard. MacRae's near operatic baritone nails the opening 'Oh What a Beautiful Mornin' and the closing 'Oklahoma!'. He's perfect for the part of Curly.

Has there ever been a more beautiful, corn-fed, farm girl Laurie than Shirley Jones? Terrfic soprano too.

Gene Nelson's 'Kansas City' was a stimulating piece of choreography, dancing and singing.

Rod Steiger as Jud did well to elicit sympathy despite the elimination of his song 'Lonely Room'. Jud's a fatal attraction killer; he hints to Curly that he torched an entire family to death because the farmer's daughter rejected him. He was creepy & frightening. I'm not surprised he had no friends; he made no attempt to be friendly. His dark and brooding presence seems to have wandered in from a Tennessee Williams play. A good thing too; without Jud, 'Oklahoma!' is so light and frothy it threatens to float off into sunny western sky.

That said, I thought the dream ballet struck the wrong note. The ballet made it seem as if Laurie was fascinated by the forbidden dark side represented by Jud vs the sunny optimism of Curly. The dream ballet Jud was always surrounded by dancing girls, making him charismatically evil, not at all like the warped loner who lived in the smokehouse. In her waking moments, Laurie found Jud repellent. She only agreed to go the social with Jud because Curly was so smug. Perhaps Jud should have been played by Robert Mitchum.

This was one of the few musicals where all the actors were permitted to sing in their own voices. The genius who directed 'South Pacific' and 'Camelot' would probably have cast Tab Hunter as 'Curley' and Terry Moore as 'Laurie'.

The music was just wonderful; there's enough melody here to make several musicals of the caliber of 'Cats' or 'Rent'. Notice how danceable it is. 'Beautiful Mornin' and 'Out of My Dreams' are waltzes.

Since I'm a Newbie and go into detail on some the dance routines, I'm stating that there may be spoilers here just to cover myself.

Being afflicted with little coordination or a reliable short-term memory, I've developed a great respect, if not admiration for anyone who is or aspires to be a dancer, since those qualities are essential.

I used to attend the Solid Gold shows and marveled at how those dancers were expected to pick up complicated steps on the first take, repeat the routine time and time again until the director was happy, and then show lots of first-take energy. One dancer told me they always had swollen and sometimes bloody feet after the show. But at least they were always properly credited. I have no doubt that it's the same for the stage and screen dancers except that in so many cases they are treated as a throwaway commodity when it comes time to the credits.

Although "Oklahoma" is one of my all-time favorites, it is a classic example of the latter. In earlier viewings, I had noticed/liked/wondered about that perky little blonde dancer who has a crush on Will (Gene Nelson) and her almost-prominent presence in all of the dance routines. Being laid up with a broken foot gave me time to scan IMDBs comments and message board quotes for this movie, which prompted me to take a detailed, and in some cases a frame-by-frame look at this dancer's performances.

Well, leisurely dissecting her work in freeze-frame and slo-mo, you suddenly discover what a talented little gem this girl is (apparently Jennie Workman, but how can we be sure? - Updated 07/24/06 - Nope, it turns out she's Lizanne Truex). She first appears, and immediately establishes a stand-out presence as an infatuated-with-Will teenager in "Everything's Up To Date In Kansas City". At one point in the "ragtime" routine, she kicks so high she knocks off Will's hat -- and he is not a short guy. I thought he used the old trick of snapping his head back, but no, that little gal kicks her foot up as high or higher than her head with a disciplined precision (how many takes for that one?). Her disapproving look at Will's horse (who nuzzled him) typifies a little girl pique. Check out her adoring looks at Will while dancing with him as compared to her partner, who seemed concentrating on the steps. When the girls race with Will to the train, her arm-swinging energy makes it look like the start of a 100-yard dash. Freeze-frame caught her extra little toe-heel-toe step just before she jumped on the train – a nice professional flourish that I don't think was choreographed as her partner, who usually danced in unison, didn't perform.

Then there was her performance in "Many a New Day". First it was a how-can-I-fix-my-hair primping before a mirror followed by a hair-fluffing attention-getter and a dreamy head-in-arms swoon that personifies a young girl in love. At the end of the routine, when the dancers all fall to the floor around Laurey, she assumes a contorted position with such a fluid and graceful movement that you wonder if she has any bones.

In the early part of Laurey's (Shirley Jones) dream sequence, she shyly presents a bouquet of flowers to Dream Curly (James Mitchell) and when he accepts, she flashes such a winsome smile that it squeezes your heart. Dagnabbit, I'm in love -- and with a 50-year-old image at that! Follow her around in the "Farmers and Ranchers" bit and notice how she's not just acting, but having REAL fun -- by-God-enjoying every minute of it and probably thinking "And to think they're paying me to do this!"). There's a notably cute bit where she bounces up on Will's hip, seemingly light as a feather, and then rewards him with a very ladylike curtsy.

In "All er Nuthin" she and her partner come out and do some fancy high-stepping and strutting around Will and when he gives her girlfriend a peck on the lips, she does a great arms-akimbo pouting look of HMMMPH! This little lady consistently gives a great professional account of herself throughout the film both as an actress and a dancer. She has spot-on timing and always seems to kick a little higher and express a little more verve and elan than the others.

And for all this she gets a generic "Dancer" in the film credits!!! They could at least have said "Perky Little Blonde Teenager" or "Foxy Teenage Blonde Infatuated with Will". Heck, I'd even settle for "Young Girl No. 1". At least you would have been pointed in the right direction. Shame on whomever was responsible, for this little lady had lots of potential and in my opinion, her subsequent absence was a loss to the trade. Evidently this was her only film and biographical info on her is non-existent. All the other Internet movie references for her appear to be taken from IMDBs database. Perhaps she was so disgusted at the lack of recognition that she quit the business. Then again, I'd like to think some smart (as in lucky) guy married her soon after and by now she has lots of grandchildren.

In any event, I pass on a "Well Done and I wish I could have seen more of you" to her, wherever she is. It's the least I could do for someone who owns part of my heart. In keeping with IMDb's restriction on URLs, check out my tribute to her by clicking on nevkid12's name in the message board's reply to "Who are the 2 dancers?".

I emphasize 60 because the musical debuted on Broadway in 1943, even though the film version was released 12 years later.

An unforgettable score. Perfect singer-actors. Tantalizing cinematography. It does not seem to get much better than this.

The main thing I admire about Oklahoma is that like the Rodgers and Hammerstein adaptations that would follow it (Carousel, South Pacific, Flower Drum Song, and, of course, The Sound of Music), the movie was fronted by legitimate musical talent, unlike in My Fair Lady and West Side Story. Further, it was a movie that did not rely on major stars, Rod Steiger notwithstanding, to make it an enjoyable picture. (Lest you forget this movie 'introduced' Shirley Jones as Laurey. Lest you would also like to know, the stage musical Oklahoma debuted on March 31, 1943, which coincidentally was a birthday of Miss Jones (I won't say which one). Prophetic? Maybe.

The stage-to-screen musical became an institution during the 1950s, one that would reach its peak in the mid-1960s and then quickly decline. Within the industry, I wonder if a certain prestige attached itself to established directors who could create good musicals, because many a veteran director tried his hand at it. Between 1955 and 1970, directors like Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Robert Wise, George Cukor and Carol Reed, none of them known as musical directors, would make some of the best-known and best-loved screen musicals of all time. Fred Zinneman tossed his hat into the ring with "Oklahoma!"

And, as it happens, made a pretty good job of it. Many a film director struggled with how to open up stage-bound material for the screen. Some didn't try (George Cukor in "My Fair Lady") and some improved on the original material through doing so (Robert Wise in "The Sound of Music"). Zinneman's efforts fall somewhere in between. The vast landscapes that serve as a background for his film contribute a realism that the stage version could never capture, but Zinneman doesn't always know what to do with the space he's given, and his transitions from scene to scene (that would have been covered up on stage through extra business and music) suffer from clunkiness. The score sounds remarkable, and those involved knew well enough to leave the original songs mostly intact.

Where "Oklahoma!" surpasses other film musicals is in its wonderful cast. Gordon MacRae could play a signing cowboy without making him twerpy. Shirley Jones could convince you with her soprano warble that she was an innocent country girl. Rod Steiger is almost too good for the material as the psycho Jud Fry. James Whitmore, Eddie Albert and Charlotte Greenwood have priceless little bits that they make the most of. And Gene Nelson and Gloria Grahame steal scene after scene, making you almost wish the movie was about them.

Most importantly, Zinneman knew how to stage a musical number and effectively capture dance on film, which is something Mankiewicz, whose "Guys and Dolls" came out in the same year, did not.

Grade: A