Oklahoma (1955 film)

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This article is about the musical film. For other uses, see Oklahoma (disambiguation)
Oklahoma!

Film Credits
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Produced by Arthur Hornblow Jr.
Written by Lynn Riggs (play)
Oscar Hammerstein II (play)
Sonya Levien
William Ludwig
Starring Gordon MacRae
Gloria Grahame
Gene Nelson
Charlotte Greenwood
Shirley Jones
Music by Adolph Deutsch
Richard Rodgers
Cinematography Robert Surtees
Floyd Crosby
Editing by George Boemler
Gene Ruggiero
Distributed by Magna Corporation
RKO Radio Pictures Inc.
Release date(s) October 11, 1955
Running time 145 min.
Language English
Budget $5,000,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

The 1943 musical play Oklahoma!, written by composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II (see Rodgers and Hammerstein), was adapted into an Academy Award–winning musical film in 1955, starring Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones (in her film debut), Rod Steiger, Gloria Grahame and Eddie Albert.

Contents

[edit] Production

This film was shot with two sets of cameras, in the new 70 mm widescreen process of Todd-AO and again in the more established Cinemascope 35 mm widescreen process for the majority of theatres lacking 70 mm equipment. Rodgers and Hammerstein personally oversaw the film themselves to prevent the studio from making the changes that were then typical of stage-to-film musical adaptations—such as putting in new songs by different composers. (They also maintained artistic control over the film versions of several of their other stage musicals).

The film Oklahoma! followed the original stage version extremely closely, more so than any other Rodgers and Hammerstein stage-to-film adaptation. Robert Russell Bennett expanded his Broadway orchestrations, Jay Blackton conducted, and Agnes de Mille again choreographed. The film omitted very little from the stage production, cutting only two songs (Ali Hakim's "It's a Scandal, it's a Outrage" and Jud's "Lonely Room"), and thus ran two-and-a-half hours, much longer than most other screen musicals of the time. The movie of Oklahoma! revived an early talkie trend which had not lasted long—filming stage musicals virtually complete, and showing them as road show attractions (two performances a day, usually with an intermission, like stage productions). Although the film versions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel and The King and I did not have intermissions and cut more from the stage originals than did the film version of Oklahoma!, they also ran over two hours, followed the stage originals quite closely and retained most of their songs. South Pacific (filmed in 1958), as well as most other stage-to-film musical adaptations that came after it, did have an intermission and was also quite long, as was The Sound of Music. The trend of "road show" stage-to-film musicals lasted into the early 1970s, the last of them being the film versions of Fiddler on the Roof and Man of La Mancha.

[edit] DVD release

For unexplained reasons the original UK DVD release is a pan and scan version from a noticeably grainy Cinemascope print, even though the companion DVD of South Pacific was taken from a pristine Todd-AO master and presented in widescreen. The current US DVD release of Oklahoma! by partial rights holder 20th Century Fox is a double-disc release that includes both the Cinemascope and original 70 mm Todd-AO versions in widescreen. In March 2006 this version was also released in the UK as part of a set of remastered Rodgers & Hammerstein DVDs.

[edit] Musical numbers

[edit] Notes

Paul Newman screen tested for the role of Curly in the film but the role went to Gordon MacRae

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:


Musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein
Oklahoma! • Carousel • Allegro • South Pacific • The King and I • Me and Juliet • Pipe Dream • Cinderella • Flower Drum Song • The Sound of Music • State Fair
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