La Vallée du bonheur

First, FINIAN'S RAINBOW does not take place in Tennessee. The movie only mentions Rainbow Valley, but onstage the valley is in Missitucky, home to Fort Knox and the gold depository that was thankfully saved by James Bond in later (for the movie, earlier) years.

The movie's flaws lie not so much in the updating to 1968 as in the eyes of today's viewers. We have sadly grown used to movies that are paced much faster than this one. As a result, those too young to have grown up with older movies will consider FINIAN'S RAINBOW very slow and overlong.

Fundamentally, though, FINIAN'S RAINBOW suffers the same afflictions all stage musicals suffer when transcribed to the big screen: Loss of intimacy. Hollywood always makes stage musicals 'way too big. They think musicals have to take place all over the continent. Oddly, a single stage worked for the play, and still does. (Possibly the rare exception to this is THE MUSIC MAN which was "opened up" only enough, not too much.) All movies are of their times, especially movie musicals. Accept that and enjoy FINIAN'S RAINBOW's wonderful score and excellent performances by the entire cast.

It took 20 years for one of post World War II Broadway's biggest hits to finally come to the screen. Finian's Rainbow ran for 725 performances in the 1947-48 season on Broadway and made a star out of David Wayne as Og the Leprechaun. Unfortunately in getting to the screen too late a lot of the satire and meaning of the book was lost on the audience of a different generation.

The book of E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy is set firmly in the visionary years of the New Deal with its satire on racism and unregulated capitalism. An immigrant Irishman arrives at Rainbow Valley in the state of Missitucky bearing the pot of gold stolen from a leprechaun. Said leprechaun now played by Tommy Steele is hot on his trail and growing. In fact if he doesn't get it back and soon he's going to become a mortal.

Playing the parts of Finian McLonergan and his daughter Sharon originated on Broadway by Albert Sharpe and Ella Logan are Fred Astaire and Petula Clark. Astaire in his last musical role hasn't lost a single step in his nimble feet though the part does not call for as much dancing as you would expect. In fact the dancing is mostly done by Tommy Steele and Barbara Hancock playing Susan the Silent. That I'm betting is different from the Broadway show where David Wayne, talented actor that he was, was no dancer.

Finian's Rainbow was the first big budget film that young Francis Ford Coppola directed and he seems to have adopted the style Robert Wise used in West Side Story and The Sound Of Music. Especially the latter where the whole screen is filled with the vastness of Rainbow Valley and the players sing and dance in it.

Every paradise does have a Grinch and in this case its Keenan Wynn playing old time southern Senator Billboard Rawkins. Back in the day before nationwide mass media and the southerners cleaned up their act somewhat, some of those guys let loose with some unbridled racism. Chief among them was a guy from Mississippi named Theodore G. Bilbo on whom Wynn's character is based. Audiences in 1968 would not know who Bilbo was so the point of the name is lost on them. But when Billboard Rawkins gets a good taste of how the other half lives, no one could miss that.

Al Freeman's black scientist working on a menthol flavored tobacco could not be mistaken for anyone other than George Washington Carver who died in 1943. But by 1968 with a new generation of civil rights leaders, Freeman's character significance is lost.

In a way though with Barack Obama's election to the presidency this year the vision of Finian's Rainbow might just be more relevant now than ever. And the Burton Lane-E.Y. Harburg songs will never go out of style. Old Devil Moon and How Are Things In Glocca Morra have become mega pop standards.

If you can find it in addition to the original Broadway cast album which was Columbia Record's first in that category and the cast album for the film, I highly recommend the Reprise Musical Theater all star album of the songs of Finian's Rainbow. Frank Sinatra gathered many of his contemporaries like Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. Clark Dennis, Debbie Reynolds, Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby and the McGuire Sisters all do the songs from the score and it's a gem of a record. Hasn't been in print for years so get to those second hand stores.

In the meantime watch and enjoy this film.

This was Fred Astaire's last full-blown musical movie ("That's Entertainment II" is not counted). The original play, written back in the 1930's, dealt more with the organization of a union by a bunch of poor sharecroppers. But by the time this movie was finally set to be made, unions were no longer the "hot topic", thus the racism angle was embellished. Plot aside, which isn't difficult, the basis of the story is that Finian McGlonnagen (Fred Astaire) has stolen a pot of gold from Og the leprechaun (played to perfection by Tommy Steele) and has plans to bury it near Fort Knox, thinking that the "magical properties" in the ground there will make more gold for him. Not exactly Pulitzer stuff here, but an enjoyable movie. A great vehicle for Keenan Wynn, showing why he was the best character actor of his day, and Tommy Steele, who disappeared from American movie screens far too soon. Great music; Good movie.

The film version of "Finian's Rainbow" was conceived at a time when the public's interest in movie musicals was on the wane; in fact, in light of the poor critical reception accorded "Camelot" the year before, studio head Jack Warner would have been content to pull the plug on what he perceived as another sure-fire disaster. To an extent, his feelings were justified - what had been a daringly provocative look at racial strife in the deep American South as seen through the eyes of a scheming Irishman and his less-than-supportive daughter when it debuted on Broadway in 1947 was no longer very pertinent twenty-one years later, and the fairy tale aspects of the plot - which included the hyperactive antics of a leprechaun intent on retrieving his "borrowed" pot of gold - were going to be a hard sell in 1968. The score, although exquisitely timeless and highly recognizable, was old-fashioned in its theatricality and not likely to result in a best-selling cast album. Furthermore, directing the project was a virtual unknown, a "hippie" from northern California named Francis Ford Coppola, with only one prior film - a non-musical - to his credit. Given the odds the movie was doomed, Warner basically maintained a "hands-off, don't-ask, don't-tell" policy and simply hoped for the best.

The end result may not have been the "best", but it is considerably better than most critics described it upon its release. The overlong book, with several insignificant sub-plots, could have used some judicious trimming. Tommy Steele's performance as Og, the slowly-turning-into-a-human leprechaun, is frantically overblown. The film's editing is criminal in that Fred Astaire's feet are often unseen in his dance routines. And the attempt to blend reality and make-believe results in an awkwardly uneven balance of the two - Coppola would have been far more successful had he decided to emphasize the whimsical and play down the outdated political aspects of the story. But for all these shortcomings, "Finian's Rainbow" - from its spectacular opening credits to its nicely staged farewell to Finian - almost a goodbye to Astaire himself, for whom this would be his last dancing role - is pleasant entertainment, buoyed by its familiar score and anchored by the presence of Petula Clark, whose delightfully fresh and sweetly seductive performance is the true gold to be discovered here. At the time known in the States as the pop singer responsible for the mega-hit "Downtown", Clark drew on her previous experience as an actress in mostly grade-B British films and developed a character whose acceptance of a leprechaun hiding in the backyard well is as easily believed as her skepticism regarding her father's plot to multiply his borrowed gold by burying it in the shadows of Fort Knox and her fiancé's plans to grow mentholated tobacco. The Arlen/Harburg score - including such standards as "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" and "Look to the Rainbow" - could well have been composed specifically for her voice, which wraps itself around each note with a hint of a brogue and - in the case of "Old Devil Moon" - a raw sensuality suggesting the woman inside the sweet Irish colleen. Deservedly, Clark was nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe for her portrayal of Sharon McLonergan, and if for nothing else, her performance makes "Finian's Rainbow" definitely worth a look-see.

Whimsical is not a word I get to use often, but that's exactly what Finian's Rainbow is. Based on the 1947 stage musical it's part fantasy and part political satire. The plot follows the quintessential Irishman Finian(Fred Astaire in his last full screen role) and his daughter Sharon (Petula Clark) as they basically flee to America with a pot of gold stolen from the leprechaun, Og (Tommy Steele). After an amazing opening credit sequence ("Look To The Rainbow"), they arrive in "Misitucky" which is supposed to be near Fort Knox, to bury the gold in the belief that it will multiply. The small hamlet of Rainbow Valley becomes their home, a kind of Tobacco Road with very poor but very happy hippie-like inhabitants. Here Sharon meets her love interest Woody (Don Francks) Add Keenan Wynn as the villain, Senator Hawkins, a racist Southern stereotype that during the course of the story turns black. Several minor plots weave in and out, creating a rich and unique film. Astaire used to sound stages and carefully planned dance numbers balked at dancing outside in a field and the director, Francis Ford Coppola (an odd choice, but what's done is done) tried his best to meet his demands. Ironically the field sequence, which comes early in the film is beautiful and very well done by the choreographer Hermes Pan, who was subsequently fired from the film. Petula Clark clearly steals the movie. The camera loves her in this and her natural beauty and performance are such a pleasure to watch. Astaire, who was criticized cruelly for his appearance (he was 69 at the time) is as usual charming and no one danced like he did. Francks holds his own and makes a nice compliment to Clark. Tommy Steele's performance rolics between delightful and way too over the top. Beautifully filmed, it does suffer from jarring "this is real, this is fake" scenery but if you just go with it, it's not that bad. The DVD presents Astaire's dance numbers complete and full body (something Astaire always insisted on but was overlooked in the original release) Finian's Rainbow is known now more for many of it's songs than itself as a whole, but it's still very much worth a look, especially if you love musicals.