"Paint Your Wagon" Starring Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg

Directed by Joshua Logan Written by Paddy Chayefsky, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe

Paramount. 1969

Reviewed by Kim Kimura, LDS Video Store

"Paint Your Wagon" is the #1 LDS in box office history featuring a lead character openly identified in the movie as a Latter-day Saint.*

"The Other Side of Heaven" is #2.

After a successful Broadway run, Paramount spent an estimated $20 million to turn this production into a feature film. It was the 7th most successful movie released in 1969. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score.

Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood star as California prospectors. A town full of male prospectors force a Mormon man (John Mitchum) traveling through town to "sell" his second wife (Jean Seberg) to the highest bidder. Surprisingly, the strong-willed Latter-day Saint woman agrees to the idea, and ends up married to the rough-hewn prospector played by Lee Marvin. But while her husband is away from the town, Seberg falls in love with Eastwood and declares she would like both him and Marvin as her husbands.

"Paint Your Wagon" was directed by non-Latter-day Saint director Joshua Logan, and remains one of his best loved films. Logan received Academy Award nominations for Best Director for "Sayonara" (1957) and "Picnic" (1955), and his film "Fanny" (1961) was nominated for Best Picture. He also directed such popular movies as "South Pacific" (1958), "Camelot" (1967) and "Bus Stop" (1956).

The movie's male leads, Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, are both Academy Award winners. Lead actress Jean Seberg, as the Latter-day Saint woman who marries them both, received nominations for BAFTA and Golden Globe awards.

Now, be aware that this is not technically "LDS Cinema," because the filmmakers who made this movie were not Latter-day Saints and the movie wasn't made for a Latter-day Saint market. This is a big-budget Hollywood film made by non-LDS filmmakers. Despite the fact that Jean Seberg's character is a Latter-day Saint, there is little about her or about the movie as a whole that is particularly LDS, except for the plural marriage plot device. As a lead actress, Seberg is very much an admirable character and she exhibits high ideals. Mormonism is only mentioned by name in the scene where Seberg, her husband, and his first wife come into town; it isn't necessarily portrayed favorably, but nothing mean-spirited is intended by the portrayal either. Basically the hundreds of men in a mining town without women admire or are jealous or resentful of a man with TWO wives. The fact that the husband is willing to offer his wife to the highest bidder doesn't speak well of his character, but he at first flatly refuses the idea, and only agrees to it when Seberg pressures him to. She is clearly tired of her marriage and resentful of her husband's first wife.

I thought these scenes were very funny and entertaining. There are some humorous lines such as "Brigham Young has 26 wives, and look at the trouble I'm having with just the two of you!" This is a period piece, set 150 years ago. None of it is intended as an attack on the Church, and I think most Church members would not be offended by the movie's Mormon-related content, which is actually a small portion of the overall film.

Also be aware that the movie takes place almost entirely within a frontier town with somewhat earthy and definitely non-religious sensibilities. The rated earns its PG-13 rating, mostly for general thematic content. There is some mild language and some mild profanity. The film depicts no nudity, although after getting married to Lee Marvin, Jean Seberg's character is seen in a cleavage-revealing outfit. There are also two topless mannequins outside the saloon, carved out of wood but painted realistically. The mining town eventually expands and brings in more women, some of whom it employs as prostitutes.

For me one of the most bothersome scenes is when Lee Marvin's character brings the twenty-something virgin son of a farming family to the room of a prostitute. Absolutely nothing is shown on screen, but it is quite clear what happens, and Marvin thinks arranging this was all in good fun. Fortunately for the overall moral tone of the movie, the characters played by Seberg and Eastwood are both outraged by Marvin's actions. In fact, Seberg immediately kicks Marvin (her husband) out of her home for doing this.

"Paint Your Wagon" is a well-made, entertaining movie. But it should be watched for its own merits, not to learn anything about Latter-day Saints. The Church-related aspects are there mostly as a plot device. You would have to decide for yourself if Seberg's high ideals and beliefs, despite living in a ribald mining town, are a result of her maintaining her identity as a Latter-day Saint, or simply a reflection of a generally noble character. Also interesting is the question about whether her taking two husbands, in what she specifically refers to as "plural marriage," stems from beliefs as a Latter-day Saint, or from a willingness to abandon normal societal conventions for the sake of expediency.

I enjoy "Paint Your Wagon," but be aware that it isn't necessarily a "family movie."

264 minutes / Color / Stereo / Region 1 DVD encoding / Widescreen Optional English subtitles for the hearing impaired.

* "Paint Your Wagon" grossed $31.6 million at the U.S. box office, making it by far the most successful movie ever released featuring a lead character openly identified as a Latter-day Saint. "Ocean's Eleven" grossed far more (3 decades later), but the 2 characters identified as Mormons in the movie are not really lead characters, although they could be called 2 of the main characters, as they are two of the titular eleven. Also, their status as Mormons has no bearing on the plot. The religious affiliation of Jean Seberg's character in "Paint Your Wagon" is the central plot point.