Paint Your Wagon

Paint Your Wagon is a musical film released in 1969, adapted by Paddy Chayefsky from the 1951 stage musical by Lerner and Lowe, set in a mining camp in Gold Rush-era California. The movie begins with a wagon crashing into a ravine. Whiskery gold prospector Ben Rumsom finds that of the two adult male occupants, one is dead and his brother injured with a broken arm and leg. As the man is about to buried, gold dust is discovered at the graveside. Ben stakes a claim on the land and the surviving brother is adopted as his "Pardner" while he recuperates. They then share the spoils of Ben's prospecting on the condition that Pardner takes care of Ben in his moments of drunkeness and melancholy. Pardner pines for a non-existent girl ("I Still See Elisa"). The land becomes a boom town. "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 persuade Jacob Woodling to sell one of his wives to the highest bidder. A drunken Ben winds up with the highest bid for Elizabeth (Jean Seberg). Ben is readied for the wedding by the other miners ("Whoop-Ti-Yay"). Elizabeth's presence comes to be a novelty in the area, causing Ben to become jealous of all the other miners. News comes of the pending arrival of "six French tarts" to a neighboring town and a plan is hatched to kidnap the women and bring them to "No Name City" ("There's a Coach Comin' In"). Ben heads up the mission and leaves Elizabeth in the care of Pardner. While Ben is gone, the two fall in love ("A Million Miles Away Behind the Door" by Elizabeth and "I Talk to the Trees" by Pardner). Elizabeth convinces them that if a Mormon man can have two wives, a wife can have two husbands. As the town booms the arrangement with Ben, Pardner, and Elizabeth works well for a while until a group of settlers is rescued from the snow. A straight-laced family is invited to spend the winter with Elizabeth and Pardner is assumed to be her husband. Ben is left to fend for himself in town. As the gold begins to play out Ben and a group of miners discover that gold dust is dropping through the floor boards of many of the saloons. They hatch a plan to tunnel under all the businesses to get at the gold ("The Best Things in Life are Dirty"). Ben introduces one of the family, young Horton Fenty to the pleasures of Rotten luck Willie's saloon and cat house. This leads to Elizabeth dismissing Pardner from the log cabin Ben built for her. Parder takes to gambling in Willie's ("Gold Fever"). This brings the story to its climax when, during a bull and bear fight, the streets collapse into the tunnels dug by Ben and the others and the town is destroyed. At the end of the film Ben moves on to the next gold field ("Wand'rin' Star").