DVDs: Petula in Panavision
In recent decades, performing organizations seem to have become uncertain about reviving the 1947 Broadway hit Finian's Rainbow. That's because of the show's approach, both satiric and heartfelt, to racial issues, and such tricky scenes as a bigoted Southern senator turned black to experience life as a black man in America.
A recent Irish Repertory Theatre revival demonstrated that the show can still play well, even if its treatment of racial tolerance may now seem somewhat simplistic. But scenes like the one mentioned above may also have had something to do with the fact that it took Finian's Rainbow's unique blend of whimsy, satire, fantasy, and romance two decades to make it to the screen. True, there were several earlier attempts, including one that would have seen the musical become an animated feature, with the voices of Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.
When Finian's Rainbow finally got to the screen in 1968, it boasted a couple of major names. The one that was most notable at the time was that of Fred Astaire, who would be making his final appearance in a musical film. Astaire's co-stars in the Warner Bros. release were singing star Petula Clark in her first Hollywood musical, playing Finian Astaire's daughter, Sharon; another English singing star, Tommy Steele, as Og the leprechaun; and Canadian Don Francks as the romantic leading man. Francks' most notable U.S. credit at the time was as the star of the one-night Broadway disaster Kelly. Steele was in the midst of a brief Hollywood career that would embrace three, almost simultaneous films the other two were The Happiest Millionaire and Half a Sixpence. Clark would be back the following year with another big screen musical, Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
The Finian's Rainbow screenplay was by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, who updated their Broadway script, changing Francks' role from a labor organizer to the manager of a sharecroppers' cooperative, with college-student Howard Al Freeman, Jr. now a research botanist. To accommodate Astaire's talents, the role of Finian was given a song-and-dance presence the character had not had on stage. Hired to stage Astaire's numbers was the star's frequent collaborator Hermes Pan.
But Pan was dismissed during the shooting by the film's young director and its other most notable name, Francis Ford Coppola, only a few years away from The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. Warners believed that only a young director could offer the proper perspective on the Finian's material, and so hired talented newcomer Coppola. Pan seems to have been let go because Coppola, directing his first big-budget feature, wanted more naturalistic staging.
Finian's Rainbow was one of several late-'60s, grand-scale musicals that went into production as a result of the success of the film version of The Sound of Music. The Finian's Rainbow film debuted as an elaborate, reserved-seat "road show," complete with intermission. And like several other big musical films of the period, Finian's Rainbow was a box-office failure.
Still, it managed to preserve much of the original material, with every one of the glorious Harburg-Burton Lane songs filmed. "Necessity" is on the soundtrack album, but it was deleted from the film prior to release. And if the film is often overblown and overly busy in its editing, it managed to capture a fair amount of the show's charm. Astaire may be rather too urbane a presence for the folksy Finian. But Clark's singing is wonderful. Francks' singing sometimes sounds like Sammy Davis. Steele is one of those performers whose style is better suited to a large theatre than to a close-up, but he's an apt choice for Og. Keenan Wynn handles the delicate role of the racist Senator with skill.
In its DVD premiere, the Panavision film looks better than ever. The bonuses include a twenty-five-minute color short on the film's world premiere at a Broadway movie house. Among the guests is Ella Logan, who starred in the original stage production of Finian's Rainbow and, until she departed on the road, co-starred with Don Francks in Kelly.
But more notable is the full-length track of audio commentary by director Coppola, which is remarkably clear-eyed and focuses mostly on the film's shortcomings. Coppola had wanted to film on location in Kentucky, but was forced to shoot mostly on the Warner backlot, on sets left over from Camelot. Coppola says he was faced with taking a "clunky, left-wing piece" and reconciling it with the civil rights movement of the '60s, bringing it up to date without destroying it.
His second film and his first major studio production, Coppola took on Finian's Rainbow to impress his father, whose background was in Broadway musicals, and because he loved the songs. But he admits that he might not have done the film had he first read what he found to be a dated, agit-prop book.
If he had it to do over again, Coppola says, he would have severely pared down the complicated libretto to its esssentials, trimming much of the dialogue to make the film less stagebound. The picture is, as Coppola says, "a touch more theatrical than it ought to be."
Coppola admits that he did not get along with Francks, who, he says, had become his pugnacious character both on and off screen. He also had difficulty reconciling Steele's brash, vaudeville style with the role of a shy leprechaun. He explains his reasons for having to fire Hermes Pan; recalls George Lucas as a young observer during the shoot; and reveals that while the film got the full "road show" treatment the DVD is complete with overture, entr'acte, and exit music, it was actually a relatively low-budget affair.
And there's an additional DVD bonus for Petula Clark fans. The film can be viewed with a French-language soundtrack, the dialogue and songs both translated. And singing the heroine's numbers on this soundtrack is none other than Clark herself, who sounds just as good in French as she does in English.