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for Rodgers and Hammerstein, and the new show boasted a stellar list of investors including Mary Martin and Josh Logan (star and director, respectively, of
South Pacific
), Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner (directors of the Theatre Guild, who had produced
Oklahoma!
and
Carousel
), and producer Billy Rose. 143 The curtain went up on the first Philadelphia preview of themusical on September 17, but it opened to very mixed reviews. Problems with the script, on which Lerner had been working for several years, led to the addition of a three-week Boston preview through most of October, with an extra week after that for final polishing before the Broadway debut on November 12. As part of this process, several songs were added to the score. 144
         In the middle of the stress, Lerner could at least enjoy a momentary respite with the successful opening of
An American in Paris
in October. The film, which starred Gene Kelly, Oscar Levant, 145 and Leslie Caron 146 under the direction of Vincente Minnelli, received glowing reviews and became instantly admired for its artistic vision and ingenious sets, going on to win six Oscars, including one for Lerner’s screenplay. 147 But his mind was entirely on his current production, which had been in his head for years and brought him back into contact with Loewe. In an article titled “Painting the Wagon,” published the night before the opening, Lerner admitted that it had not been an easy project:
         The show itself was a brute to write. There was too much material. It was hard to coordinate it all and distill it to its purest meaning. Many of the incidents in the show are based upon actual fact. Comstock, of the Comstock Silver Lode, bought his wife from a man who didn’t want her and a bill of sale was actually drawn up to consummate the purchase. In
Paint Your Wagon
Ben Rumson (played by James Barton) becomes involved in a variation of that incident. There is a scene where a woman and a child arrive in a camp that has not seen a woman or a child for over a year and a half. The incident is verbatim from an old record. There is a courtroom scene held in a saloon on a Sunday morning after services in which the judge is sentencing a man. His speech is based upon an actual one. These are only a few incidents that come readily to mind, but there are others.
             Musically, Fritz went through the same trial and error that I did on the book. Over thirty songs were actually written. Half that number are in the show now. The reason so many songs were discarded was mostly a matter of style. The Western flavor is a hard thing to pin down. James Barrie once said that he could not define charm but he knew when somebody didn’t have it. That’s very much like Western flavor. In the writing of the songs we weren’t sure what we had but we certainly knew when it wasn’t there. 148
         After seven weeks on the road and two delays to the New York opening, the show’s critical reception was not as immaculate as might have been hoped, but neither was it a disaster. Brooks Atkinson, for instance, called it “bountiful and exultant,” and although he said it was not up to the “artistic standard” of
Brigadoon
because it was “not quite so meticulously edited and organized,” for the most part “good humor and romantic beauty” made
Paint Your Wagon
“a very happy evening in the theatre.” 149 In an additional article, written five days later, Atkinson commented specifically on Lerner’s work: “For
Paint Your Wagon
Alan Jay Lerner, author of
Brigadoon
, has written a more literate book. He is trying to recapture some of the comic naiveté of life in an old mining town. In the second act he runs into some mass resistance that impedes the movement of the production but the first act is freely sketched, spontaneous and convivial. As a whole
Paint Your Wagon
is so heartily enjoyable that a job of loosening and shortening the second act might still be worth