Oklahoma! (Magna Theater Corp.) shows how far a man can go with one word of Choctaw. The Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein musical opened on Broadway on March 31, 1943, and enjoyed the longest run (2,248 consecutive performances) of any musical in world history. Counting the road companies (four) and the foreign productions (six), Oklahoma! was seen by more than 10 million and made more than $30 million. But that, as Rodgers & Hammerstein were well aware, was only the beginning. If Oklahoma! could make $30 million from 10 million theatergoers, what Mississippis of money might not pour back from the 13,520,000,000 movie admissions that are paid every year.
Rodgers & Hammerstein premeditated their killing carefully, and the screen version of Oklahoma!, which cost $12 million to make and distribute, seems sure to knock 'em dead in numbers perhaps without precedent—some observers are already predicting a $75 million gross. At least on the billboards, this dollarpalooza has everything that the Broadway musical had, along with Eastman Color, famous names, and a technique called Todd-AO—a brand-new, giant-screen process all its own. Oklahoma! will run at advanced prices (from $1.50 to $3.50) in 50 cities from coast to coast before it is distributed through regular channels.
And what will the customers get for their money? They will get what is surely one of the biggest musicals ever put on film. The Todd-AO screen is 50 ft. wide and 25 ft. high, and the picture lasts 2½ hours with one intermission. They will also get a picture that, whatever its merits as mass entertainment, bears about as much relation to the Broadway Oklahoma! as a 1956 Cadillac does to the surrey with the fringe on top.
The play itself was far enough from the frontier it pretended to present, and the worst thing about it was the atmosphere of Park Avenue hayride: its coy, commercial pretense that its outhouse-and-leotards folksiness was the essence of America itself. With its first frames the camera swallows this pretension whole. As the hero (Gordon MacRae) rides into the picture, looking about as indigenous as Gene Autry, and singing in a well-schooled voice about the corn that's as high as an elephant's eye, the camera glides through what is probably the most expensive field of the native grain ever grown.
"Just any average cornfield wouldn't do," a publicity release explains. "To recreate for people the world of their childhood wonders ... the producers got an agricultural expert . . . October-maturing corn had to be raised by July 14 . . . 2,100 stalks. 14 neat rows . . . hand-planted, hand-fed, hand-watered . . . reached the skyscraping height of 16 feet." Not only is this hyperbolic flora somewhat higher than is necessary—the eye of the average elephant is only about eight feet from the ground—but also it is of such rich green pluperfection that it looks like nothing more than a cardboard imitation from a decorator's window.