Taglines: The more he gets into trouble, the more he gets under her skin!
Baby the Rain Must Fall movie storyline. With her infant daughter Margaret Rose in tow, Georgette Thomas pulls up stakes from Tyler, Texas to head to Columbus, Texas to be reunited with her husband, Henry Thomas, who has just been released from prison on parole. Columbus is Henry’s hometown. Margaret Rose has never met her father. Henry is not yet ready for this reunion as he is an irresponsible soul, who has problems looking after himself, let alone a wife and infant daughter.
People in Columbus are doing whatever they can to help Henry, people such as Slim, the Deputy Sheriff who has known Henry since they were kids, and the Tillmans, who have given him a place to live as well as a job to do chores around their house. However, Henry is reluctant to give up songwriting and performing with his rockabilly band, the honky-tonks where he plays the environments which exacerbated his previous life problems.
Henry has the unrealistic belief that he will become the next Elvis Presley. Beyond these issues, the biggest obstacle in the Thomases becoming a happy, united family may be Miss Kate Dawson, the judgmental woman who raised Henry. Miss Kate, who still acts as his unofficial voice of reason and who believes the only right path for Henry is to go back to school, believes that Henry has never made a good decision on his own.
Baby the Rain Must Fall is a 1965 American drama film starring Lee Remick and Steve McQueen, directed by Robert Mulligan. Dramatist Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay, based it on his play The Traveling Lady. This is Glen Campbell’s film debut, in an uncredited role.
About the Story
Georgette Thomas (Lee Remick) and her six-year-old daughter Margaret Rose (Kimberly Block) travel from the East Texas town of Tyler to (unknown to him) meet her husband Henry Thomas (Steve McQueen) in his small coastal prairie southeastern Texas hometown of Columbus, Texas. Henry is a somewhat irresponsible rockabilly singer/guitarist, he has recently been released from prison after serving time for stabbing a man during a drunken brawl, and wasn’t thinking of Georgette at all.
Henry tries to make a home for his family (he seemed to be unaware of his daughter), but Kate Dawson (Georgia Simmons), the aging spinster who raised him after his parents died, remains a formidable presence in his life and tries to sabotage his efforts. She threatens repeatedly to have him returned to prison if he fails to acquiesce to her demands to give up singing, go to school, and get a real job.
He resists this, and even convinces Georgette he will be a “star” someday, as he continues playing and working a part-time job with the Tillmans. When Kate Dawson finally dies, the evening after the funeral Henry drunkenly destroys her possessions (several shots show the belt she beat him with, untouched, hanging on a door near her bedroom), leaves with the silver willed to Catherine, then wrecks his car on the cemetery gate and desecrates her grave site.
Henry is destined for prison again, and Georgette and Margaret Rose will leave Columbus with Henry’s childhood friend, the local sheriff’s deputy, Slim (Don Murray). Slim has tried to help straighten Henry out, since before the arrival of Georgette and Margaret Rose to Columbus at the beginning of the movie, and failed. Slim and Georgette have clearly fallen in love, even as Georgette does her best to love and gently comfort her self-tortured and cold husband Henry, unsuccessfully.
In the final scene, after an indeterminate time has passed and they have loaded their vehicle and driven away from the rented house, Georgette sees Henry (as does Slim) in the barred back of a sheriff’s vehicle at a road crossing stop and turns Margaret Rose away before she sees him, bound on his way back to “the pen”.
Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965)
Directed by: Robert Mulligan
Starring: Steve McQueen, Lee Remick, Don Murray, Paul Fix, Ruth White, Josephine Hutchinson, Estelle Hemsley, Carol Veazie, George Dunn, Kimberly Block, Zamah Cunningham, Charles Watts
Screenplay by: Horton Foote
Cinematography by: Ernest Laszlo
Film Editing by: Aaron Stell
Set Decoration by: Frank Tuttle
Art Direction by: Roland Anderson
Makeup Department: Ben Lane
Music by: Elmer Bernstein
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: January 15, 1965 (United States)
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