Page 58 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

the house, tying the farm mule’s hind legs together—without allowing any ques-
tions and certainly without acting sensibly. Lizzie, who is flabbergasted by all this,
admonishes her father, H. C.:

lizzie: You’re making a big fool of yourself! Where’s your common sense?
h. c.: Common sense? Why, that didn’t do us no good—we’re in trouble. Maybe
we better throw our common sense away.
lizzie: For Pete’s sake, hang on to a little of it! (76)

Starbuck counters: “You gotta take my deal because once in your life you gotta
take a chance on a con man! You gotta take my deal because there’s dyin’ calves
that might pick up and live! Because a hundred bucks is only a hundred bucks—
but rain in a dry season is a sight to behold! You gotta take my deal because it’s
gonna be a hot night—and the world goes crazy on a hot night—and maybe
that’s what a hot night is for!” H. C. responds, “Starbuck, you got you a deal!”
While the family is busy performing their rainmaking rituals, Starbuck
romances Lizzie, getting her to acknowledge her own beauty. Here is where real
confidence is built. But Starbuck, also known as Tornado Johnson, is wanted for
selling four hundred tickets to a rain festival when it did not rain, peddling a thou-
sand pairs of smoked eyeglasses to view an eclipse of the Sun that never happened,
and selling six hundred wooden poles guaranteed to turn tornadoes into a gentle
spring breeze (152). In a final confrontation with the town officers of Three Point,
one of whom is sweet on Lizzie, Starbuck throws the $100 on the table and makes
a dramatic escape. He returns soon thereafter, just as the drought breaks and a
storm is unleashed overhead: “Rain, folks—it’s gonna rain! Rain, Lizzie—for the
first time in my life—rain!” (as he takes the money and races out for the second
time, pausing only long enough to wave to Lizzie). “So long—beautiful!” (182).
The Rainmaker opened on Broadway at the Cort Theatre, New York City, on
october 28, 1954, with Darren McGavin as Bill Starbuck and Geraldine Page as
Lizzie Curry. London’s Daily Mail called the production “a beautiful little com-
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edy with a catch in its throat.” one reviewer commented that Starbuck capti-
vated Lizzie and her family “neither to connive nor corrupt but because he must
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live in a glow of esteem, and what to do in that case but radiate it oneself?”
A 1956 film version starred Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn. New Yorker
film critic Pauline Kael observed:

The cowtown spinster suffering from drought is Katharine Hepburn, and the man
who delivers the rain is Burt Lancaster. The casting is just about perfect. Lancaster
has an athletic role, in which he can also be very touching. His con man isn’t a

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