Der Regenmacher

When The Rainmaker came to Hollywood it was decided to get a couple of movie star names with some box office draw to replace the Broadway leads of Darren McGavin and Geraldine Page. The Rainmaker ran for 164 performances in the 1954-1955 season on Broadway and got good critical notices.

Paramount wisely retained the services of playwright N. Richard Nash to do the screen version and he very nicely expanded the play which on Broadway was set in the Curry parlor to include all kinds of outdoor scenes. But the biggest thing they did was signing Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn as the leads.

Hepburn plays somewhat against type, though not apparently so. She manages to successfully hide her Bryn Mawr speech and does do well as a mid western spinster. The last time Kate went middle west it was for Alice Adams over 20 years before.

But Lizzie Curry is no silly little girl like Alice was. She's an educated woman, a little too smart for most of the town folk where she lives. She intimidates them with her education. In fact she's being unfairly contrasted with Yvonne Lime who plays a silly flirt that her younger brother Earl Holliman is stuck on.

Into her life comes Starbuck who says he can make it rain for $100.00 of Curry money that father Camerone Prudhomme forks over, much to older son Lloyd Bridges's objections. As Starbuck, Burt Lancaster is in dress rehearsal for his Oscar winning role as Elmer Gantry five years later. Lancaster gives Hepburn the great romance she's been seeking and needs in the same manner he wooed Sister Sharon Falconer in Elmer Gantry.

My favorites in The Rainmaker are Hepburn's two brothers, Holliman and Bridges. Holliman in fact got a Golden Globe Award and young Earl more than held his own against this experienced group of veteran players. He's not terribly bright as he was in a whole lot of his early roles, but Earl has a good heart. Bridges is this control freak of a brother to whom the father has ceded much authority in the family and the running of their ranch. Cameron Prudhomme is the only one from the Broadway cast appearing in the film.

Rounding out the cast are Wallace Ford and Wendell Corey as the sheriff and deputy who are both on Lancaster's trail and who the Currys try desperately to fix their sister up with. Corey has a few issues of his own to resolve however.

Katharine Hepburn got one of her Best Actress Academy Award nominations for The Rainmaker, but she lost to Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia. The Rainmaker holds up very well for today's audience. After all, every family has some member they're trying to see happily wedded.

The skeptical reviewers miss the point. In fact, they take the position of Lizzie herself before she begins to believe in herself.

That some of this movie appears hokey, over-the-top and unbelievable is perfect. It requires the same leap of faith for the movie viewer as the characters must take in the story.

The script for this movie is brilliantly written and as timely today as it ever was. The casting and acting are wonderful.

This movie makes a very valuable point: It's not a con when you help someone believe in herself. You do something wonderful when you help another find hope, faith and love.

Although the screen adaptation of "The Rainmaker" remains firmly stage bound, once the film's fine cast involves viewers with the characters' complex emotions, the obviously fake sets are rarely noticed again. The painted skies, over-lit interiors, and western back-lots would under cut the film's veracity with a lesser cast. However, the leads are sterling, and, only a short time into the film, the small dreams of a lonely woman, who is just beyond her marrying years, engage the audience to such an extent that distractions from pedestrian direction, an often overly dramatic music score, and sound-stage exteriors will fade away.

Katharine Hepburn gives arguably one of her finest performances as Lizzie, the plain spinster who harbors a repressed yearning for marriage and a family. Despite the ploys of her brothers, well played by Lloyd Bridges and occasionally over played by Earl Holliman, Lizzie returns from a visit to a family of eligible bachelors without a beau. Although her sights had originally been set on Wendell Corey, a divorced sheriff who is disguised as a widower, he is an independent man and prefers to remain in the single state. Enter Starbuck, a flamboyant con man, played to the hilt by Burt Lancaster, who was born to inhabit such roles. Starbuck is cousin to Elmer Gantry, the Crimson Pirate, and other athletic extroverts that created Lancaster's larger-than-life screen persona, and Lancaster plays to this image in "The Rainmaker." Meanwhile, Hepburn is at the peak of her aging spinster parts, which also include such indelible women as those in "The African Queen" and "Summertime." Together, the two stars captivate viewers and lend credence to a some-times predictable story line. Actually, during a few of playwright N. Richard Nash's over-wrought scenes, the cast seems about to burst into song, which makes the play's subsequent musical adaptation, "110 in the Shade," almost inevitable.

Despite the film's flaws, patient viewers who persist beyond the first half hour will be rewarded. Although Hepburn became mannered as her later career progressed, the portrayal of Lizzie Curry does not rely on ticks and quivering chins, and the sensitive dreamer beneath the weathered woman shines through with the help of Lancaster's charismatic Starbuck. Hepburn's glowing demeanor, when faced with a cross-roads decision that she has dreamed of for years, will bring a tear to all but the toughest in the audience.

Much has been made of the fact that nearly all of the actors were too old to comfortably inhabit their roles, which I think is crap. I don't think Hepburn's character felt anything other than genuine nor did it seem as if she were playing a character younger than her years. For one, she was a pretty well-preserved 49 - but that's almost beside the point. The point, I think being, is that no matter what your age or station, dreams will infuse you with beauty and purpose, so never abandon them. Sure, there were show-boaty moments (the final scene of the Rainmaker riding off springs to mind) - but this was made in 1956, after all, and gestures tended to be a little more expansive. Context, people, context.

What can I say, it was a great movie. Katharine Hepburn is excellent as Lizzy Curry and Burt Lancaster in one of his best performances ever. Hepburn

deserved her Oscar nomination but Lancaster should have been nominated as

well. You have to admit he was not playing his ordinary tough character. He

brought some laughs to the movie as Starbuck. The supporting cast including

Lloyd Bridges and Wendell Corey was great and Alex North's music is great as

it usually is. This is an underrated movie and is definately worth your time

watching. You should see this movie if you haven't already. It's pretty hard to find of Video and it is not yet available on DVD and it should and if you do get this movie, don't get it confused with John Grisham's version.