Oklahoma! (1955)
Spoilers ahead.
Movie rating: 9/10
Those Rodgers and Hammerstein can write some good songs. Fantastic music, singing, and dancing are the best things about this 1955 film adaptation of the classic musical. It’s also a beautiful movie to look at. From the opening shot, which starts at a low angle moving through fields of corn before breaking through into stunning vistas of the wide open countryside underneath endless blue skies, accompanied by a stirring soundtrack, Oklahoma! is a feast for the senses.
The story, let’s acknowledge right off the bat, is arguably the weakest part of the film. While set in 1906 against the backdrop of the Oklahoma Territory’s path to statehood and conflict between farmers and cattle ranchers, the movie is mainly about conflict over the romantic affections of two women: first and foremost female lead Laurey Williams (Shirley Jones), a farm girl pursued by good-hearted cowboy Curly McLain (Gordon MacRae) and sinister farmhand Jud Fry (Rod Steiger). A secondary romance involves Laurey’s friend Ado Annie (Gloria Grahame), caught between lovestruck cowboy Will Parker (Gene Nelson) and, comically and unwillingly, peddler Ali Hakim (Eddie Albert).
To call the relationship between Laurey, Curly, and Jud a “love triangle” is a bit ridiculous, given that it’s clear from their first scene together Laurey and Curly are meant for each other. The glowering and dishevelled Jud, meanwhile, is creepy and unlikable from the get-go: dismissing Curly’s polite hello, peeping at Laurey through her bedroom window, living in a dirty hovel displaying his gun when Curly stops by. Curly is in love with Laurey and wants her to go with him to a box social, organized as a fundraiser to build a new schoolhouse. But Laurey is upset that Curly waited so long to ask her and agrees to go with Jud instead. Later Jud threatens her if she changes her mind. But it’s hard to shake the idea that Laurey created her own problem by agreeing to go to the box social with a thuggish lout like Jud in the first place.
The dynamic between Annie, Will, and Ali is played more for laughs. It’s funny to hear Annie sing “I Cain’t Say No”, about her inability to resist men’s advances. Her duet with Will, “All Er Nuthin”, suggests he has similar problems with womanizing, so the odds may be against this couple’s relationship working out. Ali agreeing to marry Annie at the behest of her shotgun-wielding father and desperately trying to weasel his way out is a consistent source of humour.
On the other hand, the film isn’t all lighthearted moments. I was a little taken aback—in a good way—by “Pore Jud is Daid”, the duet between Curly and Jud about how people appreciate you more when you’re dead. Jud is a dark and threatening presence throughout the film, the antithesis to the general cheer and romance around him. When Curly outbids him for Laurey’s hamper at the box social, Jud tries to kill Curly with “The Little Wonder”, described by one viewer as “a combination telescope/pornography viewer/switchblade”. Jud responds to Laurey’s rejection by telling her, “You ain’t never gonna get rid of me.”
After Laurey and Curly marry near the end of the film, Jud attempts to kill them both by setting fire to a haystack they’re both standing on. Curly leaps down onto Jud and inadvertently causes the latter to fatally stab himself with his own knife. The townspeople hold a quick impromptu trial in the kitchen of Aunt Eller (Charlotte Greenwood) and find Curly not guilty by reason of self-defence, so fast it’ll make your head spin. By the very next scene the attempted murder of a bride and groom on their wedding night, and the groom inadvertently killing a man, are forgotten and Laurey and Curly happily ride off for their honeymoon.
Is this all just tonal whiplash? Or is Oklahoma! in fact darker and more complex than it appears on the surface? My initial reaction to the film was that it was exceptionally well-made fluff. The character of Jud seemed out of place in what was otherwise a bright and cheerful musical. But maybe that’s the whole point. Jud is a counterpoint to the film’s lighthearted escapism—the fly in the ointment. His presence onscreen, conveyed well through Steiger’s menacing performace, is a reminder of the darker sides of human nature. Handsome hero Curly sings cheerful songs like “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’” or his playful duet with Laurey, “People Will Say We’re in Love”. But it’s only when he encounters Jud that Curly starts ruminating on death, suicide, and regret. Hammerstein’s lyrics in “Pore Jud is Daid” are biting in their description of how Jud in death “looks like he's asleep / It's a shame that he won't keep / But it's summer and we're running out of ice.”
Earlier I said it seems ridiculous that Laurey would agree to go to the box social with a grimy bully like Jud. But is it really? How many women, particularly in a frontier environment like 1890s Oklahoma, would find themselves in relationships with men based on fear and the threat of violence? I said that the trial that acquits Curly seems awfully fast and how quickly everyone seems to forget about it. But wasn’t violence and murder a commonplace aspect of life in the old West? Is this not an example of “frontier justice”? If we look at Oklahoma! by the standards of its own time and place, rather than through the lens of the 21st century, these plot developments and how the characters respond to them become more comprehensible.
The actors are all stellar. Jones and MacRae make for an attractive, likeable couple, and both are excellent singers. I wasn’t aware watching the movie that Jones later played mother Shirley Partridge on The Partridge Family—a show I’ve never watched, but which was a pop culture phenomenon in the 1970s. She’s beautiful and radiant here as Laurey, both in her performance and singing. MacRae is a solid male lead and sings in a powerful baritone voice.
The only questionable casting decision is Eddie Albert as Ali Hakim. His performance is enjoyable enough, but if his character is supposed to be Persian, they might have cast someone from a different ethnic background.
Steiger, playing a villainous figure, manages to bring some depth to Jud that makes the audience feel where his resentment might come from. That is conveyed not only in the song “Pore Jud is Daid”, but through dialogue: “I ain't good enough for you, am I?” he tells Laurey at one point. “I'm a hired hand. I got dirt on my hands. Pig slop. I ain't fit to touch you, am I—you're better. Oh, you're so much better, Miss Laurey Williams! Well we'll see how much better you are, and then you won't be so free and easy and hifalutin' with your airs! You such a fine lady!” His anger at being dismissed as a lowly farmhand means that while not condoning his actions, we can understand where his feelings come from.
The songs, as I mentioned, are wonderful. Hammerstein’s lyrics are clever and funny, and the words are always intelligible. Combined with Rodgers’s catchy melodies, these tunes are instantly memorable. Aside from the title track, which has since become the official state song of Oklahoma, I had never heard any of these songs before, but was amazed how quickly they get stuck in your head.
“Kansas City” is a lyrical highlight for how it helps us get inside the heads of people in this particular time and place, as Will extols the wonders of modernity and urban life to the amazed rural folk:
I got to Kansas City on a Frid'y
By Sattidy I larned a thing or two
'Coz up to then I didn't have an idy
Of whut the modren world was comin' to!
I counted twenty gas buggies goin' by theirsel's
Almost ev'ry time I tuk a walk.
'Nen I put my ear to a Bell Telephone
And a strange womern started in to talk!Whut next?
Gather 'round!
Ev'rythin's up to date in Kansas City
They've gone about as fur as they c'n go!
They went and built a skyscraper seven stories high,
About as high as a buildin' orta grow.
Ev'rythin's like a dream in Kansas City,
It's better than a magic lantern show!
Y' c'n turn the radiator on
Whenever you want some heat.
With ev'ry kind o' comfort
Ev'ry house is all complete.
You c'n walk to privies in the rain
And never wet your feet!
They've gone about as fur as they c'n go!
Probably my favourite song is “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’”, the opening number sung by Curly that establishes a note of cheer and optimism.
The original Broadway production of Oklahoma! first opened in 1943. The first musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, it’s been hailed as a landmark production. “Not only is Oklahoma! the most important of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, it is also the single most influential work in the American musical theatre,” playwright and theatre writer Thomas Hischak observed, adding, “It is the first fully integrated musical play and its blending of song, character, plot and even dance would serve as the model for Broadway shows for decades.”
I learned a thing or two about musical conventions watching this film, which follows the original production closely. A lengthy dream sequence before the intermission left me a little perplexed, especially when two other performers take over from Jones and MacRae in the roles of Laurey and Curly. Only after watching the film did I learn that the dream ballet is a common type of sequence in musical theatre: a way to step outside more conventional storytelling and advance plot and characterization entirely through dance—which is to say, like a ballet. But even while watching it, I admired how surreal and downright trippy the sequence felt for a film made in 1955.
There’s something quintessentially American about Oklahoma!. At the time the musical premiered on Broadway, the United States was embroiled in the Second World War, which would leave it as the leading superpower and most powerful country on earth, economically and militarily. The film adaptation was produced in the midst of an unprecedented postwar boom. The musical embodies the self-image of the U.S.A., particularly at this time, as optimistic, cheerful, rooted in the pioneer spirit. Like a lot of classic Americana, Oklahoma! also showcases the role of Jewish artists—in this case, composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II—in producing some of the country’s most beloved cultural works and establishing that American self-image.
Of course, as the character of Jud makes clear, there is a darker side of reality that breaks through even this lighthearted escapism. Other realities, however, are notable by their absence. Oklahoma historically served as a government-sanctioned territory for Native Americans and 25 Indigenous languages are still spoken there, more than any other state. The “pioneer spirit” through which the United States colonized the West was made possible only through the violent displacement and genocide of Native Americans. That harsh truth remained unmentionable in the United States and Canada the 1940s and ’50s, and it would take mass struggles of Indigenous people like the American Indian Movement to begin to change that. Even today, popular culture has a long way to go in presenting the experience of Indigenous people in North America since European colonization. Meanwhile, U.S. capitalism is now a system in decline and the country’s much-vaunted optimism has been replaced by pervasive fear and despair, which can only be resolved by a complete social transformation.
Taken on its own terms, however, Oklahoma! is an enjoyable musical and a beautiful film, with excellent performances, memorable songs, spectacular singing and dancing, and gorgeous cinematography, which must have been even more impressive in 1955 when widescreen and colour were still relative novelties in the movies. Though shot in Arizona rather than Oklahoma, the awe-inspiring landscapes in any case convey the beauty and vastness of a country that seems full of endless possibility. This musical is fun escapism with just enough darkness to give it more layers and depth than might first appear.