Paint Your Wagon 1969

Paint Your Wagon was made into a big-budget film in 1969, adapted by Paddy Chayefsky who provided a significantly changed story line: "Rumson" is now simply called "No Name City". Ben Rumson has no daughter. The former "Julio" is now an American (Clint Eastwood) and Ben's (Lee Marvin) partner in the gold claim. "No Name City" starts as a tent city with the men partying ("Hand Me Down That Can o' Beans") followed by bouts of melancholy ("They Call the Wind Maria"}. The arrival of a Mormon with two wives is taken to be unfair to the miners. The miners convince Jacob Woodling to sell one of his wives to the highest bidder.
Below: How Paint Your Wagon may have looked in UK cinemas with its original A certificate
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Clint Eastwood Lee Marvin original UK QUAD poster Size 30 x 40

Click below to see a rare 60 second original theatrical trailer

Paint Your Wagon 1969 2 Original rare U.S. Pin Badges with Peter Max's designs, Inc the only one to feature Clint

Paint Your Wagon 1969 7" Vinyl I Talk to the trees / Wandrin Star Marvin / Eastwood

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Clint Eastwood Lee Marvin Original U.S. Window Card rolled mint
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original Spanish single in picture sleeve on Dot Records

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Clint Eastwood Lee Marvin Original Belgium film poster

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Clint Eastwood Lee Marvin Original German film poster
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Clint Eastwood Lee Marvin Original Yugoslavian film poster
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original Colour mounted Slides x 13 (Ultra rare Eastwood costume test shots)
Paint Your Wagon 1969 DVD Widescreen Clint Eastwood Lee Marvin
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original colour FOH set x 8 UK

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original colour German Lobby set x 18
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original Cast LP with Gatefold artwork Sleeve
Click below to hear Lee Marvin sings the haunting Wanderin' Star from Paint Your Wagon

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original German press sheets
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original German film Program

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original Swedish film program
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original UK program
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original UK songbook
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original Cast soundtrack CD

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original French film booklet
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original Radio Spots 60, 30, 10 seconds
Paint Your Wagon 1969 10 x 8 Press Stills b/w x 39 + 14 large 14 x 11 style

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Original Promotion folder from paramount
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Very rare the original Paint Your Wagon Royal European Film Premiere Programme (Astoria Charing Cross Road) on Wednesday January 14th 1970,

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Rare the making of Paint Your Wagon Featurette on 8mm (Not available on DVD)

PRESS BELOW TO VIEW THIS VERY RARE FEATURETTE
Note: The original featurette is actually in colour and not b/w

Paint Your Wagon 1969 UK 4 original d/sided promotion cards from Paramount in folder
Paint Your Wagon 1969 set of 3 original double sided white cards in Paramount folder
Paint Your Wagon 1969 I Talk to the Trees original sheet music with film artwork
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Rare Original UK fold out card (3 fold)
Paint Your Wagon 1969 Rare UK original ticket booking slip fully illustrated
Below: A Ticket from the European Premiere

Paint Your Wagon 1969 UK Gatefold LP x 2

 

 

 

 

Paint Your Wagon UK re-issue LP same sleeve but no Gatefold

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Ultra Rare Promotional original LP open-ended interviews for Radio show from Paramount, very collectable

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Promotional recording CD Backup of above Vinyl LP

Some of the many promotional items from around the world:
The U.S. 60 x 40 Poster and the U.S. Lobby set of 8 Size 14 x 11
Below: The U.S. Mini Lobby set of 12 10x8

Below: The U.S. Insert Poster
Below: This French 7" 45 rpm record Wanderin' Star from Paint Your Wagon came in a very nice picture sleeve

Cat No 00691369

Here's the German 7" 45 rpm Record which used the film poster art for the sleeve.

Cat No C00691108

Below: Here's really nice French LP (Front and Back)

Below: The Original paperback tie in novel by George Scullin
Below: An original advert for the paperback book 

Below: Paint Your Wagon Australian Daybill poster
Below: A set of 6 Pete Max designed posters for the film. These posters were printed on foil and can fetch quite high prices on today's market.

Below: Set of 9 Paint Your Wagon Italian fotobustas

 

Below: A rare solo shot of Clint in Paint Your Wagon

Below: Sent in by our good friend Jerry Whittington who worked both behind and in front of the cameras during Paint your wagon. The No Name City Gazette, these were on the set and handed out for the film crew to keep and enjoy. Wonderful stuff!

Below: Again, thanks to Jerry for sending in these 5 wonderful Behind the scenes shots from the production
Below: A Rare publicity still featuring Lee Marvin, but do you know the other actor?
Below: An example of a South American Publicity still

Below: A Rare shot of Clint rehearsing for a scene

Below: Lee and Jean Seberg during a lunch break

Original Reviews
Paint Your Wagon (1969)
October 16, 1969
PAINT YOUR WAGON
By Vincent Canby, New York Times
Published: October 16, 1969

Paint Your Wagon, which began its roadshow engagement at Loew's State II last night, is an amiable, $20-million musical. That's a high price to pay for something that is more an expression of good intentions than evidence of sustained cinematic accomplishment. However, because amiability is never in overabundant supply, especially in Hollywood super-productions, the movie can be enjoyed more often than simply tolerated.

In some ways, in fact, the very weaknesses of Paint Your Wagon are its virtues. There is something quite cheerful about its book, which is so casual that it stops being a story after intermission and becomes, instead, a frame for some amusing, comedy "set pieces." Its three stars—Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, and Jean Seberg—are not singers by the stretch of anybody's imagination, but they are appealing performers and they come on with such legitimate, graceful good humor that they disarm the sort of criticism demanded by more aggressive personalities.

Paint Your Wagon, which made its Broadway debut in 1951, was never one of Lerner and Loewe's major works. It falls behind Brigadoon, Gigi, and, of course, My Fair Lady, but its score is miles ahead of those of most of the other musicals of the 1950's, except those by Cole Porter and by Rodgers and Hammerstein, who somehow discovered the terrifying secret of transforming sugar into gold.

Working from an adaptation by Paddy Chayefsky, Alan Jay Lerner, the screenwriter, and Joshua Logan, the director, have abandoned Lerner's original Broadway book while retaining the locale, a rustic mining camp, fearfully short of females, during the height of the California gold rush. What there is of a coherent story concerns Ben Rumson (Marvin), a boozy old prospector given to gargantuan fits of melancholy; his best friend, Pardner (Eastwood), an equally tough but younger, comparatively prim prospector; and Mrs. Elizabeth Woodley (Miss Seberg), the No. 2 wife of a passing Mormon whom Rumson buys for $800 and marries in what is, in effect, a claim-staking ceremony. "You are hereby granted exclusive title to Mrs. Elizabeth Woodley," says the "preacher," "and to all her mineral resources."

When Rumson leaves town for several days on community business (to kidnap a wagonload of what are referred to, respectfully, as "French tarts"), Rumson's wife and his best friend fall in love. This crisis is resolved by the older man taking the younger one into the marriage partnership, which proves satisfactory to all concerned—and works so pleasantly that it shortstops dark considerations of rather peculiar psychological implications. All of this takes place in the first half of the film and is just about the sum and substance of the so-called book.

The score, which is supplemented by a couple of new songs by André Previn, who comes close to capturing what seems like an antique style, is lovely in a high-class schmaltzy way. Marvin talks his numbers well, especially "Wand'run Star." Eastwood sort of croons his in an early Frankie Avalon mode ("I Still See Elisa," "I Talk to the Trees," and, the best of all, "Goldfever") and Miss Seberg rather decently lip-syncs someone else's voice ("A Million Miles Away Behind the Door").
The cast also includes a real singer, Harve Presnell (The Unsinkable Molly Brown), whose one great number, "They Call the Wind Maria," shows up the nonsingers for what they are. However, although they are nonsingers, they are real stars, which, I believe, is more important.
Structurally—and stylistically—the film looks like something Logan might be trying out in New Haven—twenty years ago. Although the movie was shot entirely on some spectacularly beautiful Oregon locations, the scenery never has much more effect than would theatrical backdrops. The musical numbers aren't particularly well integrated into the story. They more or less "happen." There is hardly anything that resembles choreography, but there are a lot of boisterous processions, town meetings, and such, all of which rock with the sort of rousing, somewhat artificially hearty masculinity that marked Logan's biggest stage hits, South Pacific and Mister Roberts.

Logan and Lerner aren't afraid to include the irrelevant as long as it is funny. The high point of the second half of the film is an extended sequence in which Marvin introduces an eager young man (Tom Ligon) of pious background to the joys of No Name City, the gold town that has turned into the Sodom of the Sierras. This sort of looseness eventually works against the film's carefully engineered climax, in which No Name City literally disappears into the earth of its own greed. The Sodom and Gomorrah parallels are neither profound nor funny. One is simply stunned by the obvious physical effort of the filming.

Clint with Jean Seberg at a party held for Paint Your Wagon

Most of the time, however, Paint Your Wagon is very easy to take, as amiable as Marvin, Eastwood, and Miss Seberg, whose contemporary movie presences give an old property brand-new cool.

PAINT YOUR WAGON
Directed by Joshua Logan; written by Alan Jay Lerner and Paddy Chayefsky, based on the musical by Mr. Lerner and Frederick Loewe; cinematographer, William A. Fraker; edited by Robert C. Jones; music by Mr. Loewe; choreography by Jack Baker; production designer, John Truscott; produced by Mr. Lerner; released by Paramount Pictures.

Running time: 166 minutes.

Below: Clint and Lee Marvin with their ladies at the Paint Your Wagon Premiere October 15th 1969

Above: Harve Presnal at the Paint Your Wagon Premiere
Below: Clint from the same event

Below: Some great photos from Paint your Wagon

Below: Ray Walston as Mad Jack Duncan

Great shot of Jean Seberg in Paint Your Wagon

Below: Clint Eastwood and wife Maggie during Paint Your Wagon New York City Premiere at Sheraton Centre in New York City.

Below: A very nice 4" x 5" transparency from Paint Your Wagon 

Below: A rare example of the Paint Your Wagon soundtrack on the 8 Track format

Below: A very rare full page advert from Paramount promoting the Paint Your Wagon soundtrack release My thanks to our friend Steve Saragossi for supplying  this piece. 

Below: Another Great Press still from Paint Your Wagon

Below: A very rare pass for the Paint Your Wagon Premiere October 15th 1969

Paint Your Wagon Royal European Premiere Astoria, Charing Cross Road, London, Wednesday, 14th January, 1970

Below: The U.S. Laserdisc

Below: Jean Seberg Paint Your Wagon cover Films In Review magazine 1969

Below: Some more stills from Paint Your Wagon

Below: A sample of 7/8 of the Mexican Lobby set