Oklahoma!

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 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 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.

Back in 1957 I saw this film when it was re-released and playing as a double feature with Carousel. Talk about musical entertainment, you can't do much better than that.

With a few numbers cut, this film version of the legendary Broadway musical is a faithful adaption of the show that premiered in 1943 and set a record of 2212 performances in a five year Broadway run at the St. James Theater. Oklahoma set a host of firsts on Broadway, the first musical to have an original cast album, the first also in the partnership of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, II.

Oklahoma on stage was also daring in that it had an extensive use of ballet, something unheard of for Broadway. Well, not quite because Richard Rodgers when he was writing with Lorenz Hart had Georges Balanchine do the famous Slaughter on Tenth Avenue ballet for On Your Toes.

But that was not as long as the dream ballet of Laurie that Agnes DeMille choreographed for Oklahoma. Agnes had previously choreographed Aaron Copland's composition Rodeo for a ballet and was a perfect choice for the musical with the western setting.

Would you believe that Oklahoma's origins came from a flop play by Lynn Riggs called Green Grow the Lilacs? The first person to play Curly was not Alfred Drake on stage or Gordon MacRae on film, but Franchot Tone. It's the closest the urbane Mr. Tone ever got to a western in his career. June Walker played the Laurie part in Green Grow the Lilacs that Joan Roberts did on stage and Shirley Jones did in this film. Green Grow the Lilacs ran a total of 64 performances back in 1931. But Dick Rodgers saw the musical possibilities in it.

MacRae was a proved commodity, but this was Shirley Jones's big screen debut. She followed it up with Carousel again co-starring with MacRae, just as the era of big screen musicals were ending. To some of us she's better known for singing those Rodgers&Hammerstein songs than for being the mother of the Partridge Family.

The secondary characters in the show are nicely cast with the secondary romantic triangle of Gene Nelson, Gloria Grahame, and Eddie Albert. One of the songs cut is a number called, It's a Scandal, It's an Outrage that Albert's character, peddler Ali Hakim sings. Albert did sing on stage and screen occasionally, I wish his number had stayed in. All he got out of the film as we well know is a three day bellyache.

The songs of Oklahoma are part of our national musical treasure from the opening of Oh, What a Beautiful Morning to the rousing title song almost at the very end. On stage, Oh, What a Beautiful Morning is sung off stage with a farm house setting and the Aunt Eller character, Charlotte Greenwood, sitting and churning butter. On stage MacRae is on horseback, riding through a cornfield where you can really see the corn is as high as an elephant's eye.

Rodgers&Hammerstein also gave one state in the union probably the best state song ever written at least in my humble opinion. The infectious and optimistic Oklahoma is in fact now the state song of the Sooner state. You can't sit quietly and listen and watch that number when its on, I defy anyone to.

Another big hit is People Will Say We're in Love that MacRae and Jones sing trying terribly hard to convince each other they're not crushing out. A favorite of mine has always been the ballad that Jones sings, Many A New Day to cheer herself up when MacRae hasn't asked her to the dance.

The plot of Oklahoma is slight, a couple of wholesome young people playing courting games about a dance. The problem is that the brooding hired hand of Jones and Greenwood's farm is used to make MacRae jealous. That would be Jud Fry, played with appropriate menace by Rod Steiger. The method acting Mr. Steiger stands out in this cast, but he's supposed to, because he's not really part of the community of farmers and cowmen. Among all these musical performers, Mr. Steiger proves to actually have a few nice notes in his voice as he joins MacRae singing Poor Jud is dead.

It took over ten years for Oklahoma to finally make it to the big screen. It took home Oscars for sound and musical scoring. It was well worth the wait.

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?".