Oklahoma!

I just acquired the set of Rogers and Hammerstein's musicals on DVD, and am enjoying them immensely; the picture clarity and sound are outstanding and the music and story good to boot!! I believe this was Shirley Jones' debut in a movie, and she portrays Laurie to a tee, and has ample support from all of the other actors, with fine comedy support from Gloria Grahame and Charlotte Greenwood; have enjoyed Ms Greenwood in earlier films she did at Fox, and am wondering if she played Aunt Eller on Broadway.... The ballet sequence is exquisitely handled by Agnes DeMille, and the dancing in all scenes superb; if there was any complaint it would only be that the scenes with Jud seem a little prolonged and drawn out, but overall, an excellent film...

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.

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

The story follows various characters in the Oklahoma territory at the turn of the century. Much of the drama concerns who's taking who to the big dance: Laurey Williams (Shirley Jones) wants to go with Curly McLain (Gordon MacRae), but ends up being asked by the creepy Jud Fry (Rod Steiger). Cowboy Will Parker (Gene Nelson) pines for Ado Annie (Gloria Grahame), but she's with traveling salesman Ali Hakim (Eddie Albert).

Charlotte Greenwood, with whom I am most familiar in her early talking picture days, shows up in several of these Fox musicals in supporting roles and adds punch to any part she takes.

This movie is notable for a few reasons. It was the first movie made in the Todd-AO 70mm format, a process so new that, just in case things went wrong, the movie was simultaneously shot in CinemaScope. Most theatergoers saw the CinemaScope version which was distributed by first RKO and then Fox, while the Todd-AO version was taken out by the Magna Theater Corporation as the first of the "roadshow" musicals that began to dominate the genre for the next 20 years.

Director Fred Zinnemann does a terrific job of utilizing the widescreen format, filling the screen with activity and beautiful scenery. The songs, many of which have become standards, are infectious if occasionally overlong, much like the movie itself. The performances are all BIG, too, from Steiger's method intensity to MacRae's wholesome hero. Lovely Shirley Jones makes her film debut and acquits herself well enough. Gene Nelson gets some of the best dance numbers, naturally. It may be blasphemous, but I could have done without the lengthy vocal-less dancing dream sequence. The movie earned Oscar nominations for Best Color Cinematography (Robert Surtees) and Best Editing (Gene Ruggiero, George Boemler), and it won for Best Score (Robert Russell Bennett, Jay Blackton, Adolph Deutsch) and Best Sound.

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.