Finian's Rainbow

Coppola's first and only mainstream Hollywood feature was a troubled production and shows no signs of the iill-suited director's genius. 

A 69 year old Fred Astaire plays mysterious Irishman, Finian, who his beautiful daughter Sharon (Petula Clark), arrive one day in Rainbow Valley, a small Southern town of tobacco sharecroppers in the mythical state of Missitucky with a pot of gold he has stolen from a leprechaun (Tommy Steele). That's probably as much of the fairy-tale plot as you need to know.

Shot on a Warner's back lot in twelve weeks for $3.5 million it is faithful to the 1947 Saidy-Harburg-Lane musical on which it is based but whereas that was progressive for its times (its treatment of black/white relations) this conceit is anachronistically twee and it went down to bigger budget musical rivals like Funny Girl and Star!.

Hermes Pan, Astaire's choreographer from the dancer's glory days was hired at the latter's insistence but dumped and Coppola staged the dance numbers himself.

 

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