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By Kathryn McGarr , based on child development research. How do we rate?

Excellent singing and dancing in '50s musical.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Oklahoma! is the 1955 movie adaptation of the classic Rogers & Hammerstein musical. Those expecting harmless and wholesome 1950s entertainment may be shocked at the amount of sexual innuendo throughout the movie. For instance, a traveling salesman refers to his lover as his …

Why Age 8+?

A surprising amount of sexual innuendo throughout. Man shown spying on a woman a

Arson and a knife fight ending in the villain's death. Curly sings a song that b

Jud drinks booze from a jug.

"Hell." A surprising amount of sexual innuendo.

Any Positive Content?

At the "box social," men bid on women's picnic baskets to win the chance to dine

Some stereotyping -- for instance, the hard-bargaining salesman is Persian, and

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A surprising amount of sexual innuendo throughout. Man shown spying on a woman as she's undressing. A kaleidoscope called the "Little Wonder" implied to have photos of naked women. Male character describes a burlesque dancer as being "as round above as she is below." A salesman calls his lover his "Persian Kitty" because of their "soft round tails." Female character sings a song called "I Cain't Say No" about her inability to say no to the advances of her male suitors. A farmhand keeps photographs of naked women on his wall -- not shown, but pointed out by a man who enters his room. When a salesman asks the man if he's interested in purchasing more photos of naked women, he says that he's no longer satisfied by these photos, and needs a real woman. Female character shown skinny-dipping in a swimming hole (no nudity).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Arson and a knife fight ending in the villain's death. Curly sings a song that basically encourages Jud to kill himself. Fist fights between farmers and cowboys. Rifle shots. The "Little Wonder," in addition to being a kaleidoscope showing pictures of naked women, forces out a switchblade into the eye or face of the viewer if it's turned far enough. Jud spies on Laurey as she changes clothes and essentially stalks and harasses her.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

At the "box social," men bid on women's picnic baskets to win the chance to dine with the basket-maker. The outdated concept comes across as a harmless and quaint frontier tradition. Jud's bachelor shack has pin-ups on the walls, and it's implied that the kaleidoscope he buys has pictures of nude women.

Positive Role Models

Some stereotyping -- for instance, the hard-bargaining salesman is Persian, and is also played by a white man with his face shaded darker.

Parents need to know that Oklahoma! is the 1955 movie adaptation of the classic Rogers & Hammerstein musical. Those expecting harmless and wholesome 1950s entertainment may be shocked at the amount of sexual innuendo throughout the movie. For instance, a traveling salesman refers to his lover as his "Persian Kitty," because they have "soft round tails." A woman sings a number called "I Cain't Say No" about her inability to turn down the amorous advances of her male suitors. A farmhand keeps photos of nude women on his walls (nudity not shown, but pointed out by others), and when the salesman asks if he's interested buying more pictures, the farmhand says, in so many words, that he wants to be with a real woman as he's no longer satisfied by the pictures on his walls. A man returns from Kansas City with a kaleidoscope called the "Little Wonder" that shows photos of nude women when viewers look into it, but if they turn it too far, a switchblade pops out. Curly sings a song to Jud that basically encourages him to commit suicide. Jud spies on Laurey as she changes clothes and essentially stalks and harasses her. Fighting between farmers and cowboys. Rifle shots. The salesman, by the way, is stereotyped as a hard-bargaining Persian, and he's played by a white man (Eddie Albert) whose face is shaded dark. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (14)
• Kids say (9)

Based on 14 parent reviews

We couldn't finish it. Too much sexual harassment, innuendo, and does the story have a point?

Family fun with a dark ending, what's the story.

Most of this frontier musical takes place on the day of the box social, a party where women's picnic baskets are auctioned for charity. After spitefully refusing Curly's (Gordon MacRae) offer to escort her, Laurie ( Shirley Jones in her movie debut) agrees to go to the dance with Aunt Eller's rough-edged farmhand Jud Fry. Of course, as much as Curly and Laurie protest in public, they secretly love each other. Unfortunately, Jud is both jealous and vengeful, and things escalate quickly. While this love triangle does momentarily turn violent, another bickering threesome keeps the movie light and comical. Ado Annie, a somewhat clueless girl who "cain't say no" (Gloria Grahame), can't decide if she should marry smooth-talking peddler Ali Hakim (Eddie Albert), who obviously has no interest in wedded bliss, or her well-intentioned cowboy fiance, Will Parker.

Is It Any Good?

Rodgers and Hammerstein's memorable tunes make OKLAHOMA! an eternally fresh and enjoyable musical classic. The opening scene, when cowboy Curly rides through cornfields singing "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin,'" sets the tone for this colorful, tuneful, and upbeat frontier movie.

There are a couple of drawn-out dance numbers that will tempt you to fast-forward: one as girls freshen up at Laurie's house on the way to the box social, and a later ballet dream sequence -- an obligatory, bizarre, feature of many 1950s musicals. But these scenes aren't enough to keep this from the short list of must-sees for families who enjoy musicals, or for kids just getting started on the classics.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Jud's behavior and how he might have justified it. How do the others treat him? What are his reasons for fighting Curly? Why does Laurie change her mind about Curly? How does Ali Hakim treat women? Is the box social concept acceptable in today's society?

Were you surprised by the amount of sexual innuendo throughout the movie?

How does the movie employ stereotypical depictions of characters based on ethnicity or gender? How was this typical for the 1950s in particular?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 11, 1955
• On DVD or streaming : April 27, 1999
• Cast : Gloria Grahame , Gordon MacRae , Shirley Jones
• Director : Fred Zinnemann
• Studio : Magna Corporation
• Genre : Musical
• Run time : 145 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : July 25, 2024

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What to watch next.

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Musicals for kids, dance movies.

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Oklahoma! Review

10 Oct 1955

145 minutes

When Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s first musical opened in 1943, rival producer Mike Todd cast the verdict, “No girls, no gags, no chance.” It went on to become the most influential show in Broadway history before touring for a decade. Unfortunately, Hollywood had copied most of its innovations by 1955, when Fox was allowed to produce this adaptation.

So while the score remains outstanding, with Hammerstein’s cosily direct lyrics complemented by Rodgers’ daring blend of operetta and folk, the film has a reverence that curtails its exuberance. Moreover, the performances are similarly underwhelming, with the exception of Gloria Grahame’s Ado Annie. But despite its flaws, the combination of musical magic and nostalgia make this a classic.

Oklahoma! (1955)

Oklahoma! was the first of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical collaborations, and it changed the face of musical theater.

Artistic/Entertainment Value

Moral/spiritual value, age appropriateness, mpaa rating, caveat spectator.

Breaking from both traditional musical comedies and Gilbert & Sullivan style operettas — in which show-stopping production numbers and comedy came first and character and story were secondary — Oklahoma! for the first time placed lyrics and dance at the service of character and story development. With this inversion, Rodgers & Hammerstein created a distinctively modern dramatic form, the musical play.

After Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews, the Fred Zinnemann ( A Man for All Seasons ) Oklahoma! is the best-loved Rodgers & Hammerstein film adaptation, deservedly so. Many of the songs are worthy classics, including "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’," "Surrey with the Fringe on Top," and "Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City" (a couple of omitted songs were less savory and aren’t missed, and a few lyrics have been sanitized as well).

Leads Gordon McRae and Shirley Jones (in her first role) bring ample charm as well as strong singing to the story’s depiction of frontier romance as a battle of the sexes with plenty of fraternizing with the "enemy."

In supporting roles, Charlotte Greenwood is perfection as the irrepressible Aunt Eller, and Gloria Grahame plays Ado Annie, the girl who "cain’t say no," with comic restraint rather than licentiousness. Rod Steiger makes menacing Jud Fry more human — and therefore creepier — than he’s often portrayed; the film effectively debunks his creepy antisocial isolation and fantasy fixations, extolling instead healthy social engagement.

In addition to the usual heap of extras, the new 50th anniversary DVD edition includes two different versions of the film, shot simultaneously but in different takes with different equipment: Disc 1 features the ultra-widescreen Cinemascope version of the film (previously unavailable on DVD), while Disc 2 features the widescreen Todd-AO version featured on the previous DVD edition I haven't compared the two versions, but there are indications that the Disc 2 transfer may be inferior to the earlier DVD.

Those who care about such things (you know who you are) may want the earlier edition for the Todd-AO version even if you get the anniversary edition for the Cinemascope version. Or you could wait for yet another DVD special edition with good transfers of both versions. Others will happily make do with one or the other.

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Now Playing

Big changes come sweeping down the plain in radically reimagined ‘Oklahoma!’

It’s sultry and saucy and silly and serious and sometimes, especially at the end, so standoffish that it feels like it’s slapping you.

Sasha Hutchings stars as Laurey and Sean Grandillo portrays Curly in the national tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!”

Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

The new touring production of “Oklahoma!” is not your grandparents’ version of the lush, ultra-classic 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about the great future of America. Or your parents’ version. Or perhaps, your version. But it’s extraordinary in every sense of the word.

It’s wonderfully weird and weirdly wonderful. It’s radical while remaining true to the text of the original and forcing us to see — or hear — it anew. It’s dark — sometimes literally as blackouts and floods of dark colors are not uncommon. It’s also very funny, injecting the romantic comedy components with unending sexual tension expressing itself in insults.

It’s… everything, except ordinary.

The musical, which takes place in 1906 Oklahoma, as the territory is on the verge of statehood and its (supposedly) glorious American future of limitless possibility, is set by director Daniel Fish and scenic designer Laura Jellinek in a purely theatrical, timeless but contemporary-ish space, something like a bright beer hall or public picnic. The cast members hang around the picnic tables even when they’re not in the scenes, drinking Bud Light, occasionally shucking corn, often stomping to the beat of the songs to energize the festivities. It’s a party. But there are gun racks on the wall. With a lot of guns. A lot.

Many of the scenes are played with an emotional distance, with the actors — all superb — seeming to just say the lines without much inflection, and yet still capturing their characters. Interestingly, it’s both more artificial and more authentic simultaneously.

Jud Fry (Christopher Bannow, center), Laurey (Sasha Hutchings) and Curley (Sean Grandillo) cross paths in “Oklahoma!”

The full personalities of the characters and performers emerge more forcefully when they sing. The songs — and oh! does this show have the songs! — sound completely different than prior takes but come across brilliantly. A traditional-radical production would turn the tunes into contemporary country, but here the pedal string guitar and the rest of the seven-member onstage band invest “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’ ” and “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top” and the rest of one of best scores in history with a compellingly wobbly, eerie twang.

On Broadway, where this production won the Tony Award for best revival, the show was performed in-the-round. Re-staged for proscenium houses, the backdrop depicts a barn and a farmhouse amidst a sprawl of empty land awaiting planting — in a traditional version, that would surely be painted with corn stalks as high as an elephant’s eye. The proportions of the buildings are purposely flattened in a way that evokes American Gothic.

The lighting and staging of the tour place the focus even more on Laurey as the pure center of this tale. Played and sung skillfully by Sasha Hutchings, who understudied the role on Broadway, Laurey seems to be pondering often, seeming to wonder if something might be very, very wrong. She’s drawn to her rightful love interest Curly (Sean Grandillo), here a classic singing cowboy in the Roy Rogers tradition but with cute hair out of “High School Musical.” But she’s also both drawn to and repulsed by hired hand Jud Fry, who in this version is both the villain and the bullied, deeply damaged victim. As Jud, Christopher Bannow brings even more of a school shooter vibe than the character had on Broadway, urgently emphasizing Jud’s seething resentment at others’ sense of superiority.

Sis stars as Ado Annie in “Oklahoma!” now playing at the CIBC Theatre.

I wondered how they’d recast the actress Ali Stroker, who won the Tony for playing the naïve-but-naughty farmgirl Ado Annie in her wheelchair. Here, Ado Annie is played by Sis, a Black transgender woman wearing a curly blonde wig, who has the audience fully on her side from the minute she physically tosses around her much smaller love interest Will Parker (an endearing Hennessy Winkler).

If you’re not sure about all this — and it has, fairly, been satirized as “Woke-lahoma” — you should at least go for the first act. You’d still feel like you had a full evening and can leave, which people do, mostly feeling optimistic about the future.

The second act explodes all the Americana myths underneath the story even further, while clearly revealing that this undercurrent was there all along. That’s what’s shocking.

It starts by substituting the “Dream Ballet” with a solo modern dance, performed by Gabrielle Hamilton, from the original Broadway cast. It’s beautiful and expressive, alternating between flowing movement and gyrating pain that instantly brings to mind someone being shot.

The ending of this “Oklahoma!” manages to be both shattering and enlightening, turning what used to be a happy ending into a view of how our criminal justice system favors the powerful.

The last number, a reprise of the title song, feels as if everyone is singing the song of optimism so hard because they’re trying to purge their underlying trauma.

In this version, it’s clear that despite the lyric saying so, Oklahoma is not OK.

Oh, What a Beautiful Movie!

A Todd-AO screen capture from "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!" in "Oklahoma!"

DALLAS — “Oklahoma!” opens with one of the most familiar moments in all of musical comedy, as a cowboy comes singing out of the dawn, declaring “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!” I’ve seen that moment many times, and it never fails to thrill me, but I’ve never seen it quite as I saw it here last Monday night, when the movie played during the USA Film Festival.

That was because I’d never seen the film version of “Oklahoma!” as it was originally photographed, in the Todd-AO process that was revolutionary in 1955 and would still be revolutionary today, if Hollywood were interested in using it. The movie was shot by Fred Zinnemann in 70mm. Eastmancolor on Mike Todd’s pioneering wide screen process, which used a wider screen that CinemaScope, VistaVision or any of the other mid-’50’s attempts to stretch the size of the screen image. It was recorded on six-track stereo that was clearer and more brilliant than any other movie sound system.

A wider screen and better stereo were technical breakthroughs, but what made Todd-AO revolutionary was the speed at which the film moved through the projector. Since the introduction of talking movies in 1929, all movies had been photographed and projected at 24 frames a second. That was the industry standard, and nobody thought to challenge it until Mike Todd–showman, impresario and inventor–dared to ask what it might look like if you ran the film more quickly through the projector–if you ran it, say, at 30 frames a second.

The answer is that the film would look amazingly brighter, cleaner and more brilliant, and it would have an additional illusion of depth. Todd was making a twofold advance in the quality of the image. His 70-mm. film was twice as large as standard 35-mm. film, so it could carry twice as much detail. And by running six additional frames a second through the projector, he could increase the available frames by 25 percent.

The Todd-AO process required special projectors, since almost all existing projectors were 35-mm. and the tradition of the 70-mm. “roadshow attraction” was actually being launched by “Oklahoma!” The movie opened to spectacular reviews in 1955 and did good business, but wound up playing mostly in its 35-mm. version, the only one most people have seen.

Some of the projectors installed for “Oklahoma!” and the other early roadshows are still in place, however, and they’ll be used this summer when the resurrected original Todd version of “Oklahoma!” goes into national release. Rights to the movie have been purchased from the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate by the Samuel Goldwyn Co. which has struck new 70-mm. prints from the master negative and also restored a five-minute stereophonic overture, intermission and closing music.

This version of “Oklahoma!” is actually part of a boomlet in the resurrection of classic films. After the spectacular success of Abel Gance ‘s “ Napoléon ” (1927), a four-hour silent classic restored by film historial Kevin Brownlow and presented in a series of hard-ticket bookings in 1982 by Francis Ford Coppola , distributors began looking around for other lost or misplaced classics that might still have life at the box office. Later this year, in addition to “Oklahoma!” there will be six other major re-releases.

“A Star is Born” was the 1954 version of a durable Hollywood tragedy that had been filmed twice before, as “What Price Hollywood?” (1930, and as “A Star is Born” (1934) with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March , and would be filmed again in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson . For the 1954 version, director George Cukor (who also directed “What Price Hollywood?”) cast Judy Garland as his heroine, opposite James Mason . The movie was a critical success and has become a cult classic, but it was also the center of a 30-year controversy concerning 30 missing minutes.

The story is Hollywood legend. Cukor finished his film and moved on to another assignments. The studio, Warner Bros., decided that at three hours the film was too long, and so half an hour was cut out. Those 30 minutes included three complete musical numbers starring the legendary Garland (“Lose that Long Face,” “Here’s What I’m Here For” and “Shampoo Commercial”), as well as parts of dramatic scenes.

They were not simply cut. They were destroyed, lost in both their positive and negative forms–or so everyone, Cukor included, believed for three decades. Then film historian Ron Haver of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art got the backing of the Motion Picture Academy for a marathon search through the Warner Bros. archives. And in a long-neglected New York warehouse he fund 20 minutes of the lost footage, including all three musical numbers.

The restored version of “A Star is Born,” using production stills to represent the 10 minutes still missing, will premiere on July 7 at Radio City Music Hall, and then play Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and San Francisco.

For at least 10 years, and in one caes for 35 years, five films by Alfred Hitchcock have been held completely out of sight. This autumn, they will return. They were the five that Hitchcock personally controlled the rights to, including all four movies he made with James Stewart .

They included “ Rear Window ” (1954), with Stewart and Grace Kelly , which ranked with “ Psycho ” and “North by Northwest” as one of the master’s most famous films; “ Vertigo ” (1958), with Stewart and Kim Novak , considered by many critics to be his best film; “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956), with Stewart and Doris Day , “ Rope ” (1948), with Stewart and Farley Granger ; and “The Trouble with Harry” (1955) with John Forsyth and Shirley MacLaine .

“ Rope ,” based on the Leopold-Loeb murder case was an experiment Hitchcock believed had failed; he tried to create the illusion that the entire movie had ben filmed in one uninterrupted shot. “The Trouble with Harry” was a macabre comedy about as dead body that kept popping up; Hitchcock liked it, but the public hated it. The other three movies were box-office hits.

Hitchcock kept them out of release to increase the demand for them, enhancing their value to his estate. Now the estate has sold them to Universal Classics, which is striking new prints from the master negatives.

“Oklahoma!” will be be the first of these rediscovered classics to play around the country, and the Goldwyn Co. hopes it will tap a natural vein of affection for its big, simple, cheerful and hopelessly energetic production. The movie version was personally supervised by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, who had held if off the screen for 12 years. They insisted on a film version that woudl remain faithful to the stage production–and indeed, the characters, dialogue and songs remain essentially unchanged from the theater version.

But director Zinnemann, fresh from his success with “From Here to Eternity” (1953), added his own cinematic touches, including filming extended sections outdoors. Although sound stages and sets are used for some of the scenes, many of the big ones (including “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!” and “ Kansas City “) were shot and recorded in vast open spaces, with cloud and land and cattle herds in the background. The movie picks up an exuberance from its locations (mostly in Texas, not Oklahoma), and it picks up additional freshness from its then-little-known stars, Godon MacRae, Shirley Jones and Rod Steiger . It also got a show-stopping performance from Gloria Graham, whose version of “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No” won applause from the Dallas audience.

How will these revivals perform at the box office? It’s hard to say. All of them are being pitched to film buffs, of course. In addition, “Oklahoma!” is being pitched directly to middle Americans as a reminder of the kind of musical they don’t make anymore, and probably will never make again. “A Star is Born” has something really special to offer (not just a new print, but three never-before-seen Garldn production numbers). And Hitchcock’s “ Rear Window ” is such a good, thrilling movie that it could plausibly become a box-office hit all over again for a new generation.

All of these revivals are looking for audiences much larger than those found on the traditional “revival circuit.” And why not? If a Frenchman named Abel Gance can make box-office history 54 years after his movie’s premiere, why can’t Judy and Hitch and Rodgers and Hammerstein sell some tickets, too?

“Okalhoma!” played in Todd-AO at Ebertfest in 2000.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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‘Oklahoma!’ review

Transferring to the West End, this radical take on Rodgers & Hammerstein is a dark, wild, sexy ride

Time Out says

Interview: Anoushka Lucas, the struggling singer-songwriter who accidentally became the star of ‘Sexy Oklahoma!’

When I started hearing salacious rumours online about a New York production of the Rodger & Hammerstein classic nicknamed ‘Sexy Oklahoma!’, I knew I had to see it, seduced by the promise of a staging that would  strip all the gingham kitsch and yeehawing jollity from this 1943 musical.  

I was raised on Golden Age movie musicals, but was disillusioned with their sanitised aesthetic, with the Technicolor sheen that the friends I attempted to convert had bristled at.  Since then, director Daniel Fish’ s massively hyped production has soared from New York's St Ann's Warehouse to Broadway, before being remounted (with some original cast in place) at London's Young Vic. A West End victory lap was inevitable. And I was chomping at the bit (to use an appropriately Western metaphor) to finally experience it. It turns out that when people say ‘Sexy Oklahoma!’, they really mean it. Not because this production’s full of rippling biceps or heaving bosoms – or even actual sex – but because it’s an edgy, rock ‘n’ roll depiction of a community whose only way to cut loose is by having sex or firing a gun. And they do plenty of both. With sex so firmly in the foreground, everything about this story shifts. In traditional productions, boy-crazy farm girl Ado Annie is pure comic relief. When she sings ‘I'm just a girl who can't say no!’, it's a straightforward excuse for some jolly old-timey slut-shaming. But here, Georgina Onuorah plays an Annie whose desires can't be so easily laughed at: she tenderly cradles her more prim and proper friend Laurey (Anoushka Lucas) in her arms as she sings about loving that's ‘sweeter than cream’, centimetres away from a kiss. And this Laurey is rapt, not judgemental. Laurey’s own desire is meant to be reserved for all-American good guy Curly, who traditionally easily sees off the sexual threat from brooding farmhand Jud. But here, that central love triangle is a true three-way. Arthur Darvill’s Curly is a strange, nervy character who kind of hates, kind of is obsessed with his rival: Patrick Vaill's mesmerising, vulnerable Jud. And Laurey wants him, too; her eventual wedding to Curly is soaked in blood and regret. Even before this production's resolutely unhappy ending, it's miles away from the kind of sickly fare West End audiences are so often fed on. Visually, it’s sparse and determinedly unpretty, Wyndham Theatre’s gilded auditorium contrasting oddly with a stage lined with blonde plywood and guns (an echo of Jamie Lloyd's iconoclastic MDF-filled ‘The Seagull’ last year). Its flattened performances stifle some of the original’s laughs - here, trader Ali Hakim is de-exoticised, with Stavros Demetraki delivering his lines with monotone detachment, not ‘comedy’ foreignness. And its dream ballet is closer to a nightmare, performer  Marie-Astrid Mence dancing through green light and vast billows of smoke to the sound of brilliant orchestrator Daniel Kluger's jagged, shredded take on this musical’s score. Cowboy boots fall to the stage around her, like the detritus of some kind of vast farmhand orgy in the heavens above her.

Some audience members might feel cheated of their uplifting Western jolly but if you love ‘Oklahoma!’ enough to seek out this production, you're bound to be at the very least fascinated by the strange brutality it reveals at the heart of its story. It's a reminder that although ’40s social conservatism stopped Rodgers & Hammerstein from referencing sex directly, it didn't stop them from using lust as the engine that powers their musical. And if you don't know ‘Oklahoma!’? Go, and hear its deathlessly brilliant melodies tainted by the popping of beer ringpulls or Nirvana-esque vocal fatalism. Maybe you’ll even want to seek out the peppier but magical originals, afterwards. 

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Oklahoma! review: You certainly won’t forget it in a hurry

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I fear for anyone who might see there’s a new production of Oklahoma! on in the West End and book for it, expecting a jolly night out.

For US director Daniel Fish’s radical spin on the Rodgers And Hammerstein musical, which has transferred to the Wyndham’s Theatre after being the hottest of tickets at the Young Vic last year, is the opposite of easy entertainment.

From the moment that typically sunny anthem Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’ is turned into something altogether more downbeat and dirge-like, it’s clear we’re not in the traditional Oklahoma! anymore: instead of cornfields and ‘yee-haws’, we get a stripped-back, gun-lined set, and a Midwest American milieu governed by brooding eroticism and an ever-looming threat of violence.

Turning cowboy Curly, the musical’s notional romantic hero into a hard-edged anti-hero, Arthur Darvill is superb, as is the whole ensemble, among them Liza Sadovy’s atypically tough Aunt Eller and Patrick Vaill’s ethereally unsettling Jud Fry.

Best of all, though, is Georgina Onuorah, who has a ball and provides much-needed light relief as man-juggling bon vivant Ado Annie: her rendition of I Cain’t Say No is a delightfully lascivious showstopper.

It has to be said that this production loses a little from being in a proscenium arch theatre now, where at the Young Vic the staging was in-the-round, and so that much more immersive.

But it’s still incredibly powerful, with a finale that ventures into the emotionally brutal realm of Greek tragedy and leaves its characters spattered in blood. You certainly won’t forget it in a hurry.

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Oklahoma! (1999 TV Movie)

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Review: Daniel Fish’s brooding, deconstructed ‘Oklahoma!’ electrifies the Ahmanson

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Of all the impressive feats director Daniel Fish pulls off in his thrilling deconstruction of “Oklahoma!,” the most impressive might be that in deromanticizing the musical he somehow manages not to kill off the romance at the heart of the show.

This Tony-winning revival arrives at the Ahmanson Theatre, where it opened Thursday, bearing a multitude of red flags. A “Know Before You Go” email from Center Theatre Group spells out that this modern-dress production features “actors of different races, backgrounds, sexualities, gender identities, and religions in a company of storytellers reflecting the rich diversity of America.”

Standard practice in the upper echelons of the American theater these days, but someone is nervous about something. The source of this anxiety comes into focus later in the email: “What was once seen as a nostalgic and romantic vision of an idealistic prairie community with a tinge of brewing conflict is now a provocative, gritty, and sexy 21st-century commentary on America’s dark and oppressive histories.”

Theatergoers, particularly those with a fondness for the golden age of Broadway, can be militantly protective of classic American musicals. “Oklahoma!” sits at the center of this tradition. But this bracing modern production isn’t trying to start a culture war. It just wants us to see the show with fresh eyes.

The 1943 musical by Richard Rodgers, who wrote the music, and Oscar Hammerstein II, who wrote the book and lyrics, represents a leap in form in the integration of story and song that began years earlier with Hammerstein’s collaboration with Jerome Kern on “Show Boat.” The success of “Oklahoma!” helped consolidate the book musical’s rise over gag-packed revues, in which musical numbers could be passed from one show to another, so tenuous was their relationship to a larger plot.

Fred Zinnemann’s 1955 film, starring Gordon MacRae as Curly and Shirley Jones as Laurey, the stubborn young lovers determined not to betray their feelings for each other, brought “Oklahoma!” and its brilliant Broadway craftsmanship to the masses. But more importantly, the vision of America emanating from the big screen, with its glistening cornfields and folksy goodness and simplicity, was immediately incorporated into a nation’s self-esteem.

“Oklahoma!” is not just a musical but a cornerstone of the American myth. What’s ironic about this is that Hammerstein’s book, derived from Lynn Riggs’ play “Green Grow the Lilacs,” doesn’t stint from showing the sordid underside and lawlessness of American life.

Sexual violence lurks in the background of the story. Laurey hides in the house much of the day to avoid coming into contact with Jud, a hired hand on the farm she runs with Aunt Eller. A social outcast with a shady past, Jud has become obsessed with Laurey, who hears him pacing outside her window at night, like a predator waiting to pounce on a meal it has determined no other competitor will ever enjoy.

Curly is the man Laurey can’t get out of her mind, but her refusal to submit easily to his cocky affections keeps Jud’s hopes alive. When she agrees to go with Jud to a dance social, tensions explode between the men. Threats are made, guns are drawn and justice in the territory of turn-of-the-century Oklahoma, which is not yet a state but on the verge of becoming one, is capricious and sometimes bloody.

While it’s not technically accurate to say, as CTG’s email does, that the “revival is radically different from the original production without changing a word of the original text,” Fish in many respects hews closer than most to what Hammerstein wrote, at least until the ending, which requires some sleight of hand with the script.

The thrust of Fish’s staging is to get us to hear the musical drama in all its different registers. To that end, the characters speak to one another almost as if they were attending a meeting. Their words, delivered without undue distraction, assume pride of place.

The actors are arrayed on a set by Laura Jellinek that resembles a ramshackle community hall. A backdrop of Oklahoma landscape doesn’t reveal lush farmland but dry, unyielding prairie.

Settlers on this non-Edenic patch of earth must be tough and hardy. It’s no surprise then that the social interactions are rough and tumble. Sex is the main obsession, leaving a festive atmosphere that’s both highly charged and highly dangerous. There’s nothing dainty about the mating rituals in these parts.

Fish maintains a Brechtian distance between actor and role. Curly, played by Sean Grandillo with the guitar-slinging aplomb of a country-and-western recording star, has the straightest of hair. This is a minor disconnect, but it’s winked at by a production that has far more flamboyant tricks up its sleeve.

In defamiliarizing the usual trappings of the musical, Fish changes how it even sounds. The parade of heavenly musical numbers are orchestrated and arranged by Daniel Kluger for 21st century sensibilities. The band, inconspicuous but visible at the back of the set, slides easily between gently traditional and starkly contemporary modes under the music direction of Andy Collopy.

Sasha Hutchings, a Black actor who stars as Laurey and helps lead a multicultural ensemble, breaks up the monolithic whiteness of a musical that sings about the land without thinking too deeply about its complicated history. In her singing, as well as in her acting, Hutchings brings a plucky strength that doesn’t exclude fear, confusion or terrified vulnerability.

At St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, where I first saw this revival, and then on Broadway, Ali Stroker played Ado Annie, winning the 2019 Tony for her featured performance — the first actor who uses a wheelchair to do so. Now the role of this libidinously freewheeling comic character is played by Sis, a Black trans performer who infuses her numbers with thunderous energy.

Torn between two possible husbands, Ali Hakim (Benj Mirman), the peddler who enjoys playing the field, and Will Parker (Hennessy Winkler), the simple-minded swain desperate to marry her, Sis’ Ado Annie ricochets like a slippery pinball. When she singingly confesses, “I Cain’t Say No,” she’s not just being cute. This Ado Annie means business.

Jud, the villain of the musical, is a pariah who has to work doubly hard to keep a roof over his head. Christopher Bannow captures the character’s comprehensive loneliness. Sympathy is elicited without sentimentalizing a creep whose addiction to pre-digital-age porn may be the most touching aspect of his character. He suffers from having no one to love him. Unfortunately, the next steps he takes in his deranged path threaten rape and murder.

Fish conducts the scene that takes place in Jud’s lair in engulfing darkness. The blackout ratchets up the menace, but who’s the bad guy in this standoff between rivals for Laurey’s heart? Jud is obviously unhinged, but Curly is cruelly planting suicide as a romantic solution to Jud’s woes.

The lights go out again in a later scene, in which any fellow feeling for Jud is extinguished. Nerves are more frayed at this point, not only because Laurey seems to be in danger but also because of the terrifying gunshots that went off the last time the lights were cut.

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Video projections are sparingly introduced to give us close-ups of characters in extremis. The production never wants us to get too comfortable with how the show is proceeding. Indeed, Fish wrests us from any post-intermission relaxation with a reworked dream ballet sequence that begins in heavy-metal mode.

Not all of these daredevil directorial moves are eloquent, and the Ahmanson’s large proscenium stage objectifies the production in a way that distances the audience and subjects the shows to a more detached type of scrutiny. I hated the dream ballet in New York and found it even less expressive in Los Angeles. (No fault of lead dancer Jordan Wynn, who follows the aggressive choreography of John Heginbotham, which might be interpreted as a furious retort to Agnes de Mille’s groundbreaking achievement.)

Barbara Walsh upholds Aunt Eller’s standing as the soul of normality, even if normal is now being looked at more critically, if not cynically. Her role in the modified ending, which accentuates the bloodshed that the characters quickly hope to put behind them, may be the most chillingly faithful feature of this revamped revival.

Some may prefer “Oklahoma!” the old-fashioned way. But for those open to discovering the haunting underside of a sneakily complex musical, this production is boldly, brazenly alive.

A final word of warning to prospective theatergoers: You may never hum “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’” with the same lightheartedness again.

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'Oklahoma!'

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Oct. 16. (Call for exceptions) Tickets: $35-$150 (subject to change)  Information: (213) 972-4400 or centertheatregroup.org  Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes, including one intermission COVID protocol : Masks are required at all times. (Check website for changes.) 

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Charles McNulty is the theater critic of the Los Angeles Times. He received his doctorate in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from the Yale School of Drama.

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Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! is a heart-pounding, compelling revival

Greg Hicks (Andrew Carnes), Philip Olagoke (Cord Elam) and Georgina Onuorah (Ado Annie) in Oklahoma!

Oh, what a compelling production. Here we have an inventive take on the original Oklahoma! at London’s Wyndham Theatre. Director Daniel Fish picks familiar songs apart and draws out their shadowy undertones, all while retaining the signature upbeat score and first-class dancing of the musical tour de force. It’s a masterstroke of musical theatre which leaves everyone thinking – and dancing – long after the performance is done.

Little surprise, then, that this is  the play everyone’s talking about. After winning the Tony Award for best musical revival on Broadway, it came to London for seven weeks last year at the Young Vic, where it sold out. Now, it’s already tucked a couple of awards under its belt and is forecast to clean up at the Olivier’s on 2 April.

Sam Steiner’s thought-provoking fringe hit, in which daily dialogue is reduced to the length of a Twitter caption, heads to the West End with a starry double-act who more than prove their acting dexterity

Anoushka Lucas (Laurey Williams) and Arthur Darvill (Curly McLain) in Oklahoma!

‘There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow’: main character Curly opens the play with his familiar southern accent ringing out across the audience. It’s a plaintive but powerful rendition of  Oh, what a Beautiful Morning.  Arthur Darvill, who plays the character, has a magnetic voice, and a captivating stage presence. His hair flops across his face, his leather riding slacks hang over his jeans as if he’s just come off a horse, and – most interestingly – he strums a modern-day guitar as he sings.  

For the first half of the performance we are treated to the comfortable, original songs of the musical. Curly and Laurey spar over the upcoming ball with an attractive confidence; Curly boasts of his ‘shiny little surrey with a fringe on the top’ to a disbelieving Laurey and Will Parker sings of dancing girls back at Kansas city. Peddler Ali Hakim makes us laugh with his attempts to extricate himself from the love triangle he has somehow found himself in, Aunt Eller is familiarly fiesty. The actors give jaw-dropping performances, their voices are electric. 

Arthur Darvill plays Curly in Oklahoma!

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Electricity runs through the very heart of this musical revival. In the corner of the stage stands a microphone, complete with guitar, which Curly never sings without. Is he being painted as some sort of pop-star pinup heart throb? In the final scene, he appears in a white suit with flared trousers, which feels like a homage to the original King of Pop, Elvis Presley. Overhead, kaleidoscopic party banners flap happily, while coloured fairy lights adorn the roof of the theatre. Is this a homage to the garish colours of pop-art? The result is a striking combination of the rugged Oklahoma territory of 1906, an early 1940s Rogers and Hammerstein musical, and modern-day pop-culture. It’s spellbindingly unique.

What else makes this show original? There is an overwhelming sense of stasis which runs in the background of the first half of the play. All of the cast remains on stage, in character. Sometimes they’re sitting around a large trestle table, sometimes brooding in the background, but all of the time they’re watching others perform. Thus, the songs have a frenetic activity which, despite their cheerful pace, contrasts with the brooding sense running on in the background. 

Arthur Darvill (Curl McLain) and Anoushka Lucas (Laurey Williams) in Oklahoma!

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And there is a literal, bright, golden haze – but not on the meadow. Inside the theatre, the lights never dim, and yellow stage lights shine onto actors and audience with equal voracity. The audience are given a part to play in the performance. Most importantly, we’re not exempt from the sinister plot unfurling before our eyes, which culminates in the second half of the performance through the character of Jud Fry, played unfathomably sensitively by Patrick Vaill. As  Old Judd is Dead is sung by Curly inside Judd’s smokehouse, the stage and audience are submerged in pitch-black darkness, with only a night-vision camera on Judd’s face, along with projection. A single tear runs down his face as he imagines his own death. 

It’s a commentary on mental health, and so much more. Perhaps a nod to the modern-day dark side of social media? Or a literal, zoomed-in look at a character who is normally glossed over in other performances of  Oklahoma . We see him in microscopic detail. Somehow, we pity him despite his manipulative and abusive behaviour. 

Patrick Vaill (Jud Fry), Arthur Darvill (Curl McLain) and James Patrick Davis (Will Parker) in  Oklahoma!

When the final song comes round at a galloping pace, and the familiar words of  Oklahoma!  are pounded out on stage, the original song takes on a new meaning. Mid-way through, Judd is shot by Curly in what almost feels like an execution. As Curly’s face – and Elvis’ white suit – are splattered with blood, the finale is polluted with the dark subtext of unresolved mental health issues, and the harsh, unaccepting society of the deep south in the early 1900s. The final romp to the ‘land we belong to’ in the closing song feels like a vitriolic, territorial howl. It takes on a new meaning with dark currents of colonialism literally splattered across the main character, who is notably a white male. 

James Patrick Davis (Will Parker), Patrick Vaill (Jud Fry) and Rebekah Hinds (Gertie Cummings) in Oklahoma! 

Daniel Fish’s  Oklahoma! is a resounding ‘knockout’, as the posters say. But not quite in the way you might expect: the audience is knocked-out by the force of the play, as subtleties buried within a musical are teased out in a masterfully original way. Therein lies the beauty of a production which has rightly become a box-office sensation. 

Oklahoma! is on now at Wyndham’s Theatre, London; oklahomawestend.com  

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The Screen: 'Oklahoma!' Is Okay; Musical Shown in New Process at Rivoli

By Bosley Crowther

• Oct. 11, 1955

AT long last, "Oklahoma!," the great Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein 2d musical show, which ran for more than five years on Broadway, has been brought to the motion picture screen in a production that magnifies and strengthens all the charm that it had upon the stage.Photographed and projected in the new process known as Todd-AO, which reflects the images in color from a wide and deep Cinerama-like screen, the ever-popular operetta was presented before an invited audience at the Rivoli last night. It will be shown at two more invitation "premières" tonight and tomorrow night. Then it begins its two-a-day public showings on Thursday at the Rivoli.Inevitably, the question which leaps to every mind is whether the essential magnificence and gusto of the original has been retained in the sometimes fatal operation of transfer to the screen. And then the question follows whether the mechanics of Todd-AO, which is being inaugurated with this picture, are appropriate to articulate this show.To the first question, there is only one answer: under the direction of Fred Zinnemann—and, we might add, under the hawk-eyed observation of Messrs. Rodgers and Hammerstein—a full-bodied "Oklahoma!" has been brought forth in this film to match in vitality, eloquence and melody any musical this reviewer has ever seen.With his wide-angle cameras catching backgrounds of genu-wine cornfields and open plains, red barns, yellow farmhouses and the blue sky full of fleecy clouds, Mr. Zinnemann has brought into the foreground all the warm, lively characters that swarm through this tale of the Oklahoma Territory and sing and dance its songs. By virtue of the sweeping motion picture, he has obtained a fresh, open-air atmosphere to embrace the same rollicking romance that tumbled upon the stage. And because he had the fine assistance of choreographer Agnes De Mille, he has made the dances and ballet of the original into eloquent movements that flow beneath the sky.In Gordon MacRae he has a Curly, the cowboy hero of the tale, who is wonderfully relaxed and unaffected (to this reviewer's delighted surprise). And in Shirley Jones, a strawberry-blonde newcomer, he has a Laurey, the girl Curly courts, so full of beauty, sweetness and spirit that a better Laurey cannot be dreamed. Both have excellent voices for the grand and familiar Rodgers' tunes. They are best, as one might hope and reckon, in the lyrical "People Will Say We're in Love."Charlotte Greenwood's rangy Aunt Eller is an unmitigated joy. She has added a rare quality of real compassion to the robust rusticity of the role. And Gene Nelson's lanky Will Parker is a deliciously light-footed, dim-witted beau to the squeaky and occasionally pretentious Ado Annie of Gloria Grahame.Rod Steiger's Jud Fry is less degenerate and little more human and pitiful than he is usually made, while Eddie Albert's Ali Hakim is the least impressive figure in the film. Both characters have been abbreviated, and a song of each has been dropped.As for the "Out of My Dreams" ballet, with James Mitchell and Bambi Linn dancing the roles of Curly and Laurey, it is an exquisitely fluid and colorful thing, expansive and imagistic. The dancing boys and girls are as lithe as reeds. In colorful costumes and hairdos, they are pumpkin-seed-country come to town!To the question of whether the dimensions and the mechanism of Todd-AO are appropriate to the material, one can only say that the generous expanse of screen is fetching, but the system has disconcerting flaws. The distortions of the images are striking when the picture is viewed from the seats on the sides of the Rivoli's orchestra or the sides and rear of its balcony. Even from central locations, the concave shape of the screen causes it to appear to be arched upwards or downwards, according to whether one views it from the orchestra or the balcony.While a fine sense of depth is imparted with some of the outdoor scenes—notably one looking down the rows of a cornfield and in a thrilling sequence of a horse-and-wagon runaway—the third-dimensional effect is not insistent. The color in the present film is variable. Some highly annoying scratches are conspicuous in many otherwise absorbing scenes.However, the flaws in mechanism do not begin to outweigh a superlative screen entertainment, which is endowed with excellent sound and runs for two hours and twenty-five minutes, with a ten-minute pause for air."Oklahoma!" will have a special, invitational "première" showing tonight at the Rivoli for Gov. Raymond Gary of Oklahoma and other state officials, as well as guests from the civic, stage, screen, television and radio fields.Governor Gary is scheduled to ride a white horse in the van of a cavalcade of surreys from the St. James Theatre on Forty-fourth Street, west of Broadway, to the Rivoli, at Broadway near Forty-ninth Street, where he will be welcomed by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein 2d.Governor Gary is slated to "annex" the Rivoli Theatre into "Oklahoma Territory" by stepping into transplanted Oklahoma soil in front of the theatre. He will also raise the Oklahoma flag atop the theatre building."Oklahoma!" which was screened for the press yesterday, will be shown again Wednesday night before an invited audience under the sponsorship of the Vocational Advisory Service.

OKLAHOMA!, screen play by Sonya Levien and William Ludwig, from the musical comedy with music by Richard Rodgers and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein 2d, based on a play by Lynn Riggs; directed by Fred Zinnemann; produced by Arthur Hornblow Jr., in the Todd-AO process; distributed by Magna Theatre Corporation. At the Rivoli.Curly . . . . . Gordon MacRaeLaurey . . . . . Shirley JonesAunt Eller . . . . . Charlotte GreenwoodWill Parker . . . . . Gene NelsonAdo Annie . . . . . Gloria GrahameAli Hakim . . . . . Eddie AlbertJud Fry . . . . . Rod SteigerCarnes . . . . . James WhitmoreCertie . . . . . Barbara LawrenceSkidmore . . . . . J. C. FlippenMarshal . . . . . Roy BarcroftDream Curly . . . . . James MitchellDream Laurey . . . . . Bambi LinnThe Dancers—Bambi Linn, Marc Platt, James Mitchell, Jennie Workman, Kelly Brown Lizanne Truex, Virginia Bosler, Evelyn Taylor, Jane Fischer.

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Revisiting 'Oklahoma!', A Problematic And Influential Technical Marvel That Reshaped The Movie Musical

(Welcome to  Out of the Disney Vault , where we explore the unsung gems and forgotten disasters currently streaming on Disney+.) Hollywood's eras come in waves. It's hard to imagine now, because we're still in the crest of the current one, but the superhero era is a wave that will eventually – yes, really, even if it takes decades – ebb. Before superhero movies, there were blockbusters of vastly more stripes, somehow managing to avoid interconnected universes or the like. The Walt Disney Company is at the convergence of the current wave, with Marvel and Lucasfilm underneath their vast umbrella. But right now, Disney+ is inadvertently giving its audiences a chance for a bit of a history lesson of what blockbusters used to look like, with the streaming arrival of the 1955 musical adaptation of Oklahoma! . Yes, it's true, there was once a time when blockbusters weren't about the world ending, but were about simple love stories given grand treatments.

Oklahoma! , of course, is not a Walt Disney Pictures release – it was presented in theaters by 20th Century Fox, arriving 12 years after the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage show essentially transformed the very meaning of what a Broadway musical was or could be. Oklahoma! is one of the few truly important and earth-shaking musicals to turn into a movie; when it premiered in 1943 on stage, it proved that a Broadway musical could fully weave in its singing and dancing sequences to an overall story. (You may think that's pretty commonplace now, and it is. That's because of the huge success of Oklahoma! .) Though its story may seem simple, Oklahoma! felt revolutionary at the time. So it made sense that Fox would want to adapt to the big screen this wildly popular love story set against the backdrop of the American West at a time of growth. Just as the stage show felt distinctive, so too would the film. Hollywood was not lacking in movie musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, but one era was winding down as Oklahoma! would help usher in the next one. The era of soundstage-bound MGM musicals like An American in Paris and Singin' In the Rain was at its tail end, as audiences began flocking to their television sets instead of movie theaters. Studios wanted to draw in audiences once again, on a massive canvas that could tell stories the way TV simply couldn't at the time. By the mid-1950s, studios were experimenting with how they would showcase their films in different widescreen methods; the wider the better. Some of the formats included CinemaScope, VistaVision, Cinerama, and Todd-AO, among others. Oklahoma! would be the first of its kind – the first Todd-AO film released in theaters, at an aspect ratio of 2.20:1. But the technology of Todd-AO, named in part for producer Michael Todd, had yet to be fully adopted by major movie theaters across the country. So Oklahoma! , directed by Fred Zinnemann, was filmed twice, once in Todd-AO and once in the more widely used CinemaScope, at an aspect ratio of 2.55:1.

First of all, the important news: though there are really two versions of Oklahoma! (seeing as the CinemaScope version has different takes of every shot within the film), the one you can stream right now on Disney+ is the Todd-AO version. And your eyes may take a little time to adjust to that reality. It's not just that the aspect ratio is different, making for an experience slightly less wide than the now-traditional 2.35:1 aspect ratio for modern films. It's that Oklahoma! in Todd-AO was shot at 30 frames per second, not the standard 24 frames per second. The good news is that 30 frames per second doesn't create the same heightened surreality of The Hobbit at 48 frames per second. But it does mean that Oklahoma! is sometimes unnervingly gorgeous, with sumptuous cinematography by Robert Surtees that soars through cornfields and depicts the lush beauty of the American West (though Arizona subs in for Oklahoma for the exterior shots) with a level of crispness rarely seen. The flip side is that some of the interior shots have a slight soap-opera feel, as if the facsimile of a movie set becomes faker at a higher frame rate. But largely speaking, Oklahoma! is a movie any cinematography nerd should watch, just to see what this now-defunct format looks like. When the overture and opening credits, both presented on black screens, end and the camera tracks through a cornfield to meet the upbeat cowboy Curly (Gordon MacRae) as he belts out "Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin', it's truly thrilling to watch. Rodgers and Hammerstein's status as musical legends was established with the set of songs they crafted here. (Disney theme-park fans will appreciate that a number of the songs in the film serve as instrumental background music in Main Street, U.S.A. in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, too.) That aforementioned opening number, as well as the title track, "The Surrey With The Fringe on Top," "I Cain't Say No," and others are permanently etched in popular culture. These songs are close to being as unbeatable as anything from Rodgers and Hammerstein's later musicals like South Pacific or The Sound of Music , the latter of which you can also stream on Disney+.  But you have to do a fair bit of compartmentalizing with Oklahoma! . The show was recently revived on Broadway (pre-pandemic) to massive critical acclaim, in no small part because the new version grapples with the reality that this story is...oh, fairly racist and sexist when you think about it for more than a few seconds. The story could be a simple enough love triangle – there's Curly, the pretty farmgirl Laurey (Shirley Jones, in her film debut), and the rough farmhand Jud (Rod Steiger) who wants Laurey and is willing to resort to violent ends to get what he wants. But said story takes place in the turn-of-the-century period right before Oklahoma shifted from being a territory once belonging to Native Americans to a full-blown state of the Union. Even if you leave aside the full erasure of Native Americans and their culture from the story (both on stage and screen), you're left with a story where women and men occupy very old-fashioned gender norms of the early 20th century. And there's also racial whitewashing in the form of Ali Hakim, a Persian peddler played for comic relief by the very white actor Eddie Albert. In the same vein as I've asked in this column before, I would love to know – oh, the money I'd give to have the experience – how Disney and its consultants come to the decision of what films and TV shows do or do not merit the pre-show content warning. Considering that Albert's take on Ali Hakim includes an accent best defined as Vaguely, Insultingly Foreign, and songs like the aforementioned and bouncy "I Cain't Say No" are meant as a charming depiction of a woman who can't resist spending time with lots of different men...well, what exactly would merit the content warning? We can argue about how effective the vagueness of that content warning is. They never actually explain to viewers what potentially offensive content is about to be depicted. But when a film such as Oklahoma! arrives on a family-focused streaming service without context of any kind, there's a disturbing conclusion: someone at Disney+ is asleep at the wheel.  Oklahoma! , if you can leave its outdated elements aside (and I don't blame you if you can't), is the progenitor in many ways of the next era of movie musical and worth watching for that reason too. With this film, studios would make splashy, expensive, and lengthy musicals, meant to make clear to audiences that television sets aren't as transportive as a massively wide silver screen. Oklahoma! , including its overture and entracte, clocks in at just under 150 minutes, but that doesn't include its intermission – many more musicals in the next decade-plus would push and move beyond the three-hour mark.

Oklahoma! has an impressive legacy even as it's lined with questionable content from top to bottom. (Not enough is said about the film's ending, in which Curly and Jud have an inevitable fight after the latter sets a fire at Curly and Laurey's wedding. The fight leads to Jud being killed by his own knife, followed by a makeshift trial meant to absolve Curly of any wrongdoing so he can go on his honeymoon. Everyone in town, save the federal marshal, would rather solve things in a Wild West form of justice, which the film depicts without acknowledging its grim underbelly.) By creating an event status around movie musicals, Oklahoma! ushered in an era of expansive genre filmmaking that brought in some of the best directors in the industry to try their hand at a different kind of story, from Robert Wise with The Sound of Music to George Cukor with My Fair Lady . The true legacy the film leaves behind, and the one that would be nice to have something acknowledged via Disney+, is its visual one. Even if you're an intrepid enough viewer who's wisely turned off the motion-smoothing technology on your HDTV (and if you haven't, you really should), you may get initially thrown off by the way that Oklahoma! looks. You don't need motion smoothing to know that this film looks slightly unexpected, in both jarring and exciting ways. That 30-frame-per-second shooting style via Todd-AO is deliberate, and a welcome glimpse at a time in American filmmaking when studios went all-in financially on event filmmaking, even if no one was wearing a cape or boasting superpowers. Dive into this film and see what studio filmmaking used to be.

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