Paint Your Wagon (film)

The film was adapted by Paddy Chayefsky from the 1951 musical Paint Your Wagon by Lerner and Loewe. It is set in a mining camp in Gold Rush-era California. A parson begins to make a determined effort to persuade the people of No Name City to give up their evil ways.

About Paint Your Wagon (film) in brief

Summary Paint Your Wagon (film)The film was adapted by Paddy Chayefsky from the 1951 musical Paint Your Wagon by Lerner and Loewe. It is set in a mining camp in Gold Rush-era California. When a wagon crashes into a ravine, prospector Ben Rumson finds two adult male occupants, brothers, one of whom is dead and the other of whom has a broken arm and leg. While burying the dead man, gold dust is discovered at the grave site. Ben stakes a claim on the land and adopts the surviving brother as his \”Pardner\” while he recuperates. Pardner is a farmer who hopes to make enough in the gold rush to buy some land, and is suspicious of the drunken and seemingly amoral Ben. Ben claims that while he is willing to fight, steal, and cheat at cards, his system of ethics does not allow him to betray a partner. The two fall in love, whereupon Elizabeth, saying she also still loves Ben, convinces them that if a Mormon man can have two wives, why can’t a woman have two husbands? As the town booms, the arrangement with Ben, Pardners, and Elizabeth works well for a while.

But soon the town becomes large enough that civilized people from the East begin to settle there. A parson begins to make a determined effort to persuade the people of No Name City to give up their evil ways, warning the townsfolk that they will be swallowed up by God’s wrath if they do not repent. This leads Willie’s saloon to the pleasures of Rotten Willie’s. During a fight in Willie’s bull-andbear-and-bear fight, Ben and the others dug a tunnel into the streets by the rampaging bull. A reprise of \”The Gospel of No name City\” plays as the town is literally swallowed by the earth.