User reviews

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.

N. Richard Nash adapted his play for the silver screen. Directed by Joseph Anthony, this is a wonderful insight into the core of human emotion. A hard glimpse at the look of low self esteem.

Katherine Hepburn plays Lizzie Curry, a young woman that lives with her father and brothers in a dusty prairie town. She is led to believe she will become an old maid. She of course has more brains than beauty and her emotions tell her that she needs to become a "woman".

Enter Bill Starbuck, played aptly by Burt Lancaster; Starbuck is a con man constantly on the move bilking his way through life. He convinces the Curry family he can end the drought by making it rain. He ends up in the barn with Miss Lizzie. Now she feels a new world has opened up to her.

Deputy File is too shy to tell Lizzie of his interest in her; until he finds Starbuck with her and wants to arrest him for his previous bad deeds. Lizzie has to make a big decision between the side of law and order or a life chasing dreams with a wanderer.

This movie deserves to be called a classic. The deep human element and the diverse relationships within the characters makes for a very interesting movie. Scenery and language may seem at times a bit hokey; but the realism is there. Great movie.

Besides Hepburn and Lancaster, this cast was full of good acting. Wendell Corey, Lloyd Bridges and Earl Holliman turned in fine jobs. Holliman's innocence and fresh spirit was a real highlight. The always cute Yvonne Lime also has a small part.

What's best, to live only in our dreams, only on the outside of them, or somewhere in between? N. Richard Nash has written a deceptively simple story about faith, reality, trust, and transformation in the script from his play, "The Rainmaker." Ably directed by Joseph Anthony, richly scored by Alex North, and lovingly played by Katherine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster, this is a poignant and surprisingly moving drama. While the secondary love interest between Earl Holliman and Yvonne Lime become a bit cloying and hokey at times, the main theme is beautifully enacted by two enormously gifted stars. "The Rainmaker" is an entertainment winner, while offering much substantive food-for-thought.

When I was younger & first saw this movie, what caught my eye was the stage-y production, the over-ripe acting- I was wrong. It's funny, but being a late 30-something divorcee with my own self-esteem issues, I now watch this movie & marvel at its depth.

This is a movie about so much more than a con man, an old maid and people stuck and unable to change. It's really about loving yourself. We've all heard the saying that you have to love yourself before someone else can love you. And that is what this movie is about. Believing in yourself even when that's the hardest thing. It's really the crux of the movie.

The casting is actually perfect. I cannot imagine anyone else as Starbuck. Burt Lancaster's magnetism and on-screen "je ne ce qua" and Hepburn's radiant simplicity are a match made in heaven. They compliment each other very well. The supporting cast is also well done. Holliman's exuberance is contagious and the sweetly supporting father and no nonsense brother Noah are well done but not over done.

I highly recommend this movie. Give it a chance & suspend your disbelief- that's part of what going to the movies is about.

P.S. Several people mentioned the last scene with Lancaster riding into the rain as being over done, cheesy or whatever. Yet it's just that kind of imagery that does indeed stick with you after the movie. It may seem overblown the first time, yet upon subsequent viewings, I love the effusive and memorable affect it has on the viewer. :)

Sturdy film adaptation of a well-received stage drama. Burt Lancaster is perfectly suited to theatrical role of a con-man out West who befriends a folksy family and convinces them he can make it rain on their drought-ridden land. N. Richard Nash's play becomes hearty vehicle for a hand-picked cast, with Lancaster mercurial as ever and Katharine Hepburn appealing as a sweet spinster who could use the rain--and then some! A bit encumbered and awkward at the beginning, though this is compensated for by the handsome production and sterling players (including Wallace Ford, Wendell Corey and Lloyd Bridges). Material later transformed into the 1963 Broadway musical, "110 in the Shade". **1/2 from ****

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.

To prove that he was not merely an athletic actor in the Errol Flynn mould, Burt Lancaster would occasionally dabble in film adaptations of serious stage plays from the likes of William Inge and Tennessee Williams; this is his third such attempt – albeit taken from a lesser-known author (N. Richard Nash) and with a more optimistic outcome (in fact, it was later musicalized on Broadway as "110 In The Shade")! That 1964 revamp shared with this straight film version its director Joseph Anthony, here making his first of just six efforts in that capacity. For a self-proclaimed atheist, Lancaster did his fair share of hammy, arm-waving 'preaching' on the screen and this is his first instance as such – portraying travelling con man Bill Starbuck whose "rainmaking" capabilities are just what this film's drought-ridden Southern town needs; on the other side of the coin is "plain" old- maid-in-the-making Lizzie Curry played by an overage Katharine Hepburn. I have to admit to a curious antipathy towards this most decorated of screen actresses and, indeed, her (by turns) moving and embarrassing performance here garnered nominations at the Oscars (her seventh), BAFTAs (third) and Golden Globe (second); the film itself earned a handful of other awards (Earl Holliman was named Best Supporting Actor at the Globes) and nominations (a second Oscar nod for Alex North's typically fine score; Golden Globe nods to Lancaster and the film; and another one for Nash at the Writers Guild Awards). Unsurprisingly embracing (as opposed to eschewing) its theatrical origins given the "performance" subtext that permeates the entire plot, the film has its fair share of good scenes which (apart from the opening sequence) revolve around the eight characters that seemingly inhabit this town: Wendell Corey (as the 'widowed' deputy), Lloyd Bridges (as Hepburn's equally cynical brother), Cameron Prud'Homme (as her well-meaning father), the aforementioned Holliman (as her spunky younger brother), Wallace Ford (as the elderly Sheriff) and Yvonne Fedderson (as Holliman's red-cap wearing girlfriend); the whole makes for a pleasant if not especially outstanding romantic drama about the interior beauty of lonely people. For the record, the play was later also brought to the small screen in 1982 by a past master of the medium (John Frankenheimer) with Tommy Lee Jones and Tuesday Weld in the leading roles.

This movie always leaves me smiling. Sure, it's not a masterpiece of cinema, and one has to be willing to go with the staginess of it (it was, after all, a play originally), but there's such an exuberance to the performances and gentleness to the story that the movie wins you over. In fact maybe there is something appropriate about the obvious artifice of the sets, since the movie is about the roles that people play and the dreams that they cherish. Certainly Lancaster's charming con man is a master of the orotund and theatrical spiel. Another haunting Alex North score that occasionally recalls some of the poignant themes that he wrote for "A Streetcar Named Desire."

An American romance-comedy-drama; A story about a confidence artist who arrives in a Southwest American farming town beset by drought. He convinces the despondent residents that he can make it rain, while instilling confidence in a lonely farmer's daughter, skeptical of him, but who is running out of ideas to find a companion. The best thing to say about the film is the brilliance of the two Golden Globe nominated lead performances: Katherine Hepburn is sincere and heartfelt as the lonely spinster in rural Kansas, and Burt Lancaster works at full pelt, as the witty and charismatic conman, transcending his character with an exalted dreaminess. Both actors help to raise the film a full notch. It is a quaint farce, prepared without much change from its original stageplay, and therefore is mainly dialogue driven, foregoing exterior locations and imaginative camerawork. The screenplay is very sentimental and wistful, often corny in scenes not involving the two leads, and contrived and prosy between the two romantic leads, so much so that the drama is lost to gaudiness by the third act. The fifteen years difference in age between Cameron Prud'Homme and Katherine Hepburn - as father and daughter - seems less convincing on screen, and sometimes Hepburn fails to suppress her higher social scale accent among the rubes. But, overall, the film is a success. It lacks in the comedy stakes and rambles in the drama, but it gains hugely from bold performances, and from being earnest in its old-fashioned sensibility for entertainment.

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.

Another of Kate Hepburn's ageing spinsters, to set aside her travelling lady in Italy in 'Summer Madness'. This time she's the unmarried sister in a house of men, whose heart gets a kick start by a visiting 'rainmaker', in the shape of Burt Lancaster.

Hepburn and Lancaster give charm and credence to what might have been an extremely ridiculous scenario. The whole is pretty stagey but it has heart which shines through. Good support from Lloyd Bridges, Wendell Corey and others. Funnily enough the part of the youngest brother was set for Elvis Presley's debut - wonder if he'd have been able to pull it off?

Lizzie Curry (Katharine Hepburn) is a spinster taking care of her father HC and her two brothers (Lloyd Bridges, Earl Holliman). Deputy Sheriff File is a widower and holds a secret crush for Lizzie. The town is suffering from a drought, and everybody is desperate for water including the Currys. Then comes Bill Starbuck (Burt Lancaster) who claims to be a Rainmaker. Is he a huckster or is he real? More importantly, he could bring Lizzie out of her rut.

Katharine is acting too big, but I guess it's the style of the era. Burt is masterful as the big showman. He has the big personality to pull it off. However his motivations are too unclear for the audience to root for fully. When you add Lloyd Bridges, there are truly big star power at work. And they can paper over any minor imperfections.

Not knowing anything about this movie, I happened to pick it up on TCM (Turner Classic Movies). What a pleasing, warm and emotional experience have I just had!

The definition of a great movie is one that "talks" to you, and this one, with its universal themes of dreams and self belief, did just that.

Folk who complain about the cheesy sets and so on have missed the point. This is a film about the human condition. Each character has a place, and is well crafted. Each character is properly formed. Loved that the Rainmaker developed as a character too.

The ending was the best part.

Full credit to the screen writer. In creating this piece, fittingly to the themes he created, did something worthwhile with his life.

The Rainmaker is directed by Joseph Anthony and written by N. Richard Nash. It stars Burt Lancaster, Katharine Hepburn, Wendell Corey, Lloyd Bridges, Cameron Prud'Homme and Earl Holliman. Music is by Alex North and VistaVision/Technicolor cinematography is by Charles Lang.

Starbuck (Lancaster) is a conman who arrives in the little town of Threepoint and promises to deliver the rain to end the town's crippling drought problem. More telling, perhaps, will be his impact on the Curry family...

N. Richard Nash wrote it as a television play and would then see it hit the Broadway stage, so he was the logical choice for screenplay duties here. The film very much feels like a play, with very pronounced acting and sharp dialogue, it's also - at just over two hours in length - far too long for a talky based production. Thirty minutes could quite easily have been shaved off here. There's also the contentious casting of the Oscar Nominated Hepburn, who in many people's eyes - myself included - is miscast and just doesn't sit right in the role, leaving it to Lancaster to bring the flight and breeze to light up the piece.

However, to enjoy the art of acting brings some rewards, it's also a pic of crafty humour and features a story of considerable humane substance. That one man, a scallywag, can have such a positive impact on a sterile backwater family, builds nicely to an ending that is a complete joy, a real smile raiser. It's also handsomely photographed by Lang, the colour lensing so smooth, and the production design, backed up by North's most appealing musical score, ensures you know that the makers cared about what they were doing. Relationships on set were initially rocky, but the principal stars would come to be friends and speak fondly of their time on the film. 6/10

Footnote: The material would also be turned into a musical titled 110 in the Shade.

I loved this movie when I first saw it 40 years ago. I remember being dazzled by Burt Lancaster's performance. Seeing it again, Burt Lancaster's performance is still wonderful, but I see a lot more flaws in the film as a whole.

People have weighed in on the central issue of Katherine Hepburn's performance. Some think it is a great performance and some think that she is miscast. I think both are right. She does a wonderful acting job, filled with nice moments, but she is miscast in the role. She breaks what I will name now as the "Seven Year Rule". While an actor or actress can easily always play older, they should never play a character more than seven years younger than they are. You can get away with playing a high school student until you're about 24. After that, it looks fake. By the way, this rule works for male actors too. Gary Cooper ruined "Love in the Afternoon" when at 56 he tried to play a 40 year old having an affair with a 20 year old looking Audrey Hepburn.

In this movie, Hepburn, who was 49 at the time, was playing a character who was supposed to be around 30. She could have passed for 42, but no-one could have mistaken her for a 30 year old. At 30 a woman desperate for a man to marry her is still a source of comedy, at 42, it is really a source for bathos. Still at times, she does make you look past her age and feel the depth of emotion of the character.

The camera placement and editing of the movie really does make it look like a stage play, although the sets are quite nice and realistic.

Also, the second and third acts are really slow. If redone today, at least 20 minutes and perhaps 30 would have to be cut to give it a more modern pace. For example, a scene where the deputy is invited for dinner drags on for almost 15 minutes. It could easily have been done in 5 minutes or less.

Still, we're getting some beautiful technicolor here and we're getting Burt Lancaster in one of his most exuberant and charming performances. He is having so much fun with the part that it is impossible not to enjoy the movie when he's on-screen (which is only about 40 minutes, alas.

Apparently, Elvis Presley was up for the Earl Holloman role. While Hollowman did win a Golden Globe, he now seems to be overacting. Probably Elvis would have done as well and made the movie a much bigger hit.

"The Rainmaker" is a film that I had never seen or heard of and I wasn't sure if it would be worth the time to watch, but I am pleased to say that it was. I am not a big fan of either of these stars but they were well cast and good in these roles. It is undeniably a stagey film based on a play but I don't mind that if the dialogue is good, which it was here. Give this one a chance, while the beginning is slow it becomes enthralling as it goes. My rating: 7/10.

A worthy film, even if I guessed the ending after I'd read a brief summary of the plot. No doubt showing the theatrical origins, several scenes seemed to go and on and could have done with some editing. As has already been remarked, sometimes the cast seemed about to break into song.

I don't know what ages the characters were meant to be, but Katharine Hepburn was some 14 years older than Lloyd Bridges and 20 more than Earl Holliman. Ironically I thought that Lizzie was quite attractive - slim figure, agile, appealing personality - and it was hard to credit that she'd only been kissed once. But I guess it was difficult to find a plain actress who could carry off the role effectively, most fitting this description being only "character" players.

Burt Lancaster lit up all the scenes in which he appeared - but then he always did, whatever the role.

"The Rainmaker" is, officially, a Western. It is set in a small town rural town in the West, (probably in the 1920s or 1930s, to judge from the cars and costumes we see), but it bears little resemblance to most Westerns from the fifties. This was the decade when the cinema first faced serious competition from television, and spectacular Westerns featuring exciting action sequences shot against the dramatic scenery of the American West were one of Hollywood's major weapons in its fight against the newcomer. ("Shane", "The Naked Spur", "The Searchers" and "The Big Country" are all good examples). This film, by contrast, is adapted from a stage play, and it shows.

The plot is a simple one. It is a hot summer and the area is suffering from a severe drought. A man calling himself Bill Starbuck arrives in town, promising that he can make it rain. A spinster named Lizzie Curry falls in love with him. The film tells the story of the effect which Starbuck has on Lizzie and the other townspeople. The film's message is, effectively, "learn to love yourself and to believe in yourself". Starbuck, of course, is not a genuine rainmaker but a con-man; even his real surname is not Starbuck but Smith. The important thing is that he projects such assurance and self-belief that others accept him as genuine, and under his influence Lizzie, hitherto put upon and patronised by her father and two brothers for whom she acts as housekeeper on the family cattle ranch, learns to believe in herself too.

I have never seen the play on which "The Rainmaker" is based, so I do not know how well this story might work on the stage. (I understand that it is a staple of the American theatre, but on this side of the Atlantic both the play and its author, one N. Richard Nash, are virtually unknown). Unfortunately, the film does not work for me, and when I recently saw it on television I was disappointed; I had been hoping for something far better, given that it stars two actors as talented as Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn.

Part of the problem is miscasting. Hepburn is quite wrong for the part of Lizzie for three reasons, namely age, looks and personality. We never learn exactly how old Lizzie is, but I think we are supposed to assume that she is considerably younger than Hepburn's 49 years at the time the film was made, possibly in her thirties. Secondly, Lizzie is supposed to be plain, whereas Hepburn in her youth was considered one of Hollywood's most beautiful actresses, and even in her late forties was still strikingly handsome. Thirdly, and most importantly, Hepburn spent most of her career playing strong, independent and capable woman, and is not really credible as a downtrodden, put-upon spinster lacking in self-confidence. Her "Best Actress" Oscar nomination today seems incredible. (Mind you, there seems to have been something odd going on at the Academy Awards for 1956; that was the year which saw Don Murray's bizarre "Best Supporting Actor" nomination for his awful performance in "Bus Stop" and Kirk Douglas unaccountably losing "Best Actor" to Yul Brynner). Lancaster as Starbuck is better suited to his role, but this is not one of his great performances and he was to be far better as another charismatic con-man, Elmer Gantry, four years later.

My other problem with the film is to do with the direction. I was not surprised to learn that Joseph Anthony was a theatrical director who directed Nash's play on stage but had never previously directed a movie, as he seems to have made this film on the basis that there was no essential difference between the two media. There is little attempt to open the story out and little in the way of action; most scenes take place indoors and consist mainly dialogue rather than physical action. The result is a static, talky film, dominated by interminable conversations. Another reviewer claims that the film could have been far better had it been made by a major cinema director such as Fred Zinnemann or George Stevens who would no doubt have escaped from the "filmed theatre" style of film-making and made maximum use of the greater freedom which the cinematic medium offers. That is doubtless true, but I suspect that Zinnemann or Stevens, or any of the other great directors of the period, would have demanded from the producers more artistic freedom and a much greater budget than Anthony appears to have had at his disposal. 4/10