Main Cast: Lee Remick, Steve McQueen, Don Murray, Paul Fix, Josephine Hutchinson
Release Year: 1965
Country: US
Run Time: 100 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Adapted by Horton Foote from his own play The Travelling Lady, Baby the Rain Must Fall stars Steve McQueen as a troube-prone country singer and Lee Remick as his estranged wife. Released on parole after serving time for knifing a man, McQueen returns to Remick and their young daughter Kimberly Block. When he proves incapable of supporting his family, McQueen's violent nature erupts once more, with catastrophic results. Don Murray costars as a compassionate sheriff who tries to keep McQueen from straying off course. Though it seems to go on forever when seen today, Baby the Rain Must Fall was praised effusively by the critics in 1965 as a welcome change of pace for action star Steve McQueen; The film would make an interesting companion feature for the strikingly similar Horton Foote project Tender Mercies (1983). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Georgette Thomas and her six-year-old daughter Margaret Rose travel to a small southern Texas town to meet her irresponsible rockabilly singer/guitarist husband Henry when he is released from prison after serving time for stabbing a man during a drunken brawl. He tries to make a home for his family, but Kate Dawson, the aging spinster who raised him after his parents died, remains a formidable presence in his life and tries to sabotage his efforts, threatening to have him returned to prison if he doesn't acquiesce to her demands. When the woman finally dies, Henry drunkenly destroys her possessions and desecrates her gravesite. He is returned to prison, and Georgette and Margaret Rose leave town with local sheriff Slim.
The title song, with music by Elmer Bernstein and lyrics by Ernie Sheldon, was performed by Glenn Yarbrough during the opening credits. Yarborough's recording reached #12 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times observed, "As honest and humble as is the effort to make the viewer sense a woman's baffled love for a shifty and mixed-up fellow in Baby, the Rain Must Fall, there is a major and totally neglected weakness in this film from a Horton Foote play that troubles one's mind throughout the picture and leaves one sadly let-down at the end. It is the failure of the screenwriter — Mr. Foote himself — to clarify why the object of the woman's deep affection is as badly mixed-up as he is and why the woman, who seems a sensible person, doesn't make a single move to straighten him out . . . Granting that the wife is astonished and distressingly mystified at the neurotic behavior of her husband, this doesn't mean that the viewer is satisfied to be kept in the dark as to the reasons for the stark and macabre goings-on . . . As it is, we only see that these two people are frustrated and heart-broken by something that's bigger than the both of them. But we don't know what it is." [1]
Variety said the film's chief assets were "outstanding performances by its stars and an emotional punch that lingers . . . Other cast members are adequate, but roles suffer from editorial cuts (confirmed by director) that leave sub-plots dangling." [2]
