The Rainmaker

[dreamer]

Now if somebody says, she couldn't be seductive, they are wrong aren't they ?

[dreamer]

[dreamer]

[dreamer]

[Hepburner]

This was a strange movie.

I posted somewhere else (forget where...what kate film..I think) that when I first saw this I hated it.
and thats true. I found it boring. And Lancaster pissed me off the whole time and I couldn't focus on Kate at all, let alone, the film.

Having watched it again, I'd like to change that.

I do enjoy it. It's still probably my least favorite (even under The Iron Petticoat ) but I did like HEAPS more the second time around.
It's an interesting role for Kate, I actually don't think it suits her really. She always said that she was the maiden aunt so she found a lot of truth in those roles, but this is such a pitiful one. In Summertime she is positive and tries not to bog down in being a spinster, but it still...looking, for everything else, this character is just sorry. I don't know. I found it strange, and a tiny bit hard to watch. Although I did admire her decision in the end, in not being something she's not.
At any rate Lancaster is annoying. I've decided that his character is annoying also, and that he's just playing it well. Or was he always like this? I've only ever seen Field Of Dreams, in which he was just cool, a sweet old doctor. Never seen his older films. If this is just how he acts - what an awful actor, so over the top.

Overall, on second watching, an odd but enjoyable film.


PS: GAH! when I posted this and viewed it, I realized I have deleted my avatar from photobucket! EEEK!

[Shaun]

I've only seen Burt Lancaster in two films beside this one--Sorry, Wrong Number and Judgement at Nuremberg. I didn't like him in either one. I never realised until now that I've never like him in anything I've seen him in (Rainmaker included).

[Richard]

I thought Lancaster was just fantastic in Judgement at Nuremberg. He did a film called Unforgiven in 1960 with Audrey Hepburn, and that was the first film, I think, that got me hooked on him.

I admit myself to not seeing much of his work, but surely I am not the only one here who actually likes Burt Lancaster? I think someone, Judy perhaps, can give us guys a Lancaster 101.

[Shaun]

My problem with Lancaster in Nuremberg was that I never believed he was German.

[Richard]

That'll do it.

[dreamer]

According to IMDb:
Paramount Studios wanted William Holden for the role of Starbuck. Bing Crosby wanted the role of Starbuck. Even Elvis was screens tested for the film, which should be his screen debut.

Could one of you guy's have imagined just one of them as Starbuck?

Having read who wanted to play Starbuck now, I grow even more fond of Lancaster as Starbuck - as I have been of him in many of his other films. (Try read his biography on IMDb, he was quite a personality).

Michal Freedlands book about Kate, tells that Lancaster wanted to play opposite Kate that much, that he made some sort of a deal with Hal Wallis with the promise to make the film Gunfight of the O.K. Corral just to get the part in The Rainmaker, a script he was not fond of and refused to learn the lines more than one day in advance. The total contrast of Kate.

Kate liked The Rainmaker so much and working with Hal Wallis, that she already then told Wallis that she wanted to work with John Wayne. It tok almost 25 years before it came to it.

Can someone correct me if I'm quoting something wrong?

[Richard]

Thanks for the tidbit, dreamer.

In regards to playing Starbuck Bing and Elvis are out, but I can imagine William Holden in that role.

[dreamer]

richard said:

Thanks for the tidbit, dreamer.

In regards to playing Starbuck Bing and Elvis are out, but I can imagine William Holden in that role.

William Holden is a good actor but I just can imagine him as Starbuck. Even though Lancaster anoys me a bit as I think he is overplaying. I just can't imagine anyone else for the part.

Am I the only one?

[Shaun]

I'm with Richard. I think Holden would have been great in the part. If Elvis had gotten it, hopefully Kate wouldn't have done it.

[Richard]

Holden had actually done a film in 1950 called Father is a Bachelor in where he played a similiar role to Starbuck. In that film, Holden plays a swindler and while on the run from police his character resides temporarily in a small country town where he plays father to a family of kids after learning that the children's mother and father were killed in an auto accident somewhere in Europe. The story is different from Rainmaker, but Holden got me thinking of Lancaster while watching.

Elvis and Kate... *shivers*

[Sherry]

I have to say that I like "The Rainmaker" and I do think that Lancaster did a great job playing Starbuck.
Starbuck is a swaggering braggart and a snake oil salesman -- (so to speak) so Lancaster needed to play the character big and broad and a bit over the top because it made him that much more interesting and appealing when he admitted to Lizzie that he was insecure and had dreams that had gone unfulfilled just as she had hopes and dreams. He changed her life and she and her family changed his. Ultimately both Lizzie and Starbuck emerged as stronger people and because we'd been allowed to see the change that came over Starbuck, it made his character more appealing. Just as Lizzie learned to love Starbuck, the audience does, too, because ultimately, he turns out to be a decent guy.
Plus, this film needed an actor playing the part who was masculine with a capital M, someone who was athletic and exuded danger -- an edge -- and Lancaster could do that very well. Lancaster in that tight black outfit reeked sex and danger and made him the perfect foil for Kate's character who was supposed to be the shy, skittish spinster attracted and yet repelled by him.
I can't imagine what a horror this film would have been with Bing Crosby(!) as Starbuck. Bad enough having to see him play the Cary Grant (C.K. Dexter Haven) role in "High Society" that awful musical version of The Philadelphia Story.