Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

***Seven Brides for Seven Brothers*** is a 1954 American musical film, directed by Stanley Donen, with music by Saul Chaplin and Gene de Paul, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and choreography by Michael Kidd. The screenplay, by Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, and Dorothy Kingsley, is based on the short story "The Sobbin' Women", by Stephen Vincent Benét, which was based in turn on the ancient Roman legend of the Rape of the Sabine Women. *Seven Brides for Seven Brothers*, which is set in Oregon in 1850, is particularly known for Kidd's unusual choreography, which makes dance numbers out of such mundane frontier pursuits as chopping wood and raising a barn. Film critic Stephanie Zacharek has called the barn-raising sequence in *Seven Brides* "one of the most rousing dance numbers ever put on screen." The film was photographed in Ansco Color in the CinemaScope format.

*Seven Brides for Seven Brothers* won the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture and was nominated for four additional awards, including Best Picture (where it lost the award to Elia Kazan's *On the Waterfront*). In 2006, American Film Institute named *Seven Brides for Seven Brothers* as one of the best American musical films ever made. In 2004, *Seven Brides for Seven Brothers* was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

## Plot

Adam Pontipee comes into a small mountain town after the winter to get some corn, farming equipment, and a wife. He is searching for a woman who is pretty, young, strong, loving, and a good cook. Whether he actually loves her doesn't matter; he wants a full-time maid more than a wife. Milly works at a local bar where the men of the town come in droves to eat her tasty grub and ask her to marry them, but she always refuses with a smile and another helping of food. But she falls in love with Adam the moment he walks through the door, and is soon on her way, much to the trepidation of the town pastor and Milly's aunt, to the Pontipee farm in the mountains. There she finds that Adam has six younger brothers and that the whole bunch are unmannered lumberjacks with no idea of how to treat a woman. But Milly's tough love soon smooths out some, if not all, of the brothers' rough edges. She decides that if the brothers want to find wives they should first learn how to treat a lady and how to dance as well.

On a trip to a barn-raising social in town, Adam's six brothers fall in love with six very close and very sought-after young girls and have a wonderful synchronized dance with them and a dance fight with their suitors. When they return to their farm, they are completely lovesick over the girls. Adam is thoroughly amused and Milly is sad for them. But Adam comes up with a somewhat dubious plan to kidnap the six girls to be the brothers' brides! Modeling his scheme on the story of the Romans' kidnapping of the Sabine women, the brothers go into town and kidnap their sweethearts. They take them back to the Pontipee farm, but not before making such a ruckus that they cause an avalanche that snows in the mountain pass leading to the farm. Now, the girls are stuck at the farm all winter.

Of course, the girls and Milly are furious with Adam and his brothers. Milly sends the boys off to sleep in the barn "with the other livestock." Adam is so infuriated that he goes off to a hunting cabin to wait out the winter by himself. In the meantime, Milly tells the girls that she is pregnant, and will have a baby in the spring. Over the course of the winter, the brothers gradually fall back into favor with the girls, and by the time spring and Milly's baby come, the couples have all reunited - except for Milly and Adam. Gideon, the youngest brother, goes to Adam's cabin to ask him to come back. Adam learns for the first time that he has a daughter. He eventually returns, and he and Milly make up. After the mountain pass clears, the menfolk from the town make their way up to the cabin to rescue the girls - who now have no intention of leaving their Pontipee beaus. After hearing Milly's baby cry, the pastor asks the girls whose baby he heard. The girls cry out in unison, "Mine!" The last scene of the movie is a (literal) shotgun multiple wedding for the 6 brothers and their brides.

## Cast

The Brothers and their Brides:

* Howard Keel as Adam and Jane Powell as Milly
* Jeff Richards as Benjamin and Julie Newmar as Dorcas
* Matt Mattox as Caleb and Ruta Kilmonis as Ruth
* Marc Platt as Daniel and Norma Doggett as Martha
* Jacques d'Amboise as Ephraim and Virginia Gibson as Liza
* Tommy Rall as Frank and Betty Carr as Sarah
* Russ Tamblyn as Gideon and Nancy Kilgas as Alice

## External links

* *Jacket Magazine*: some background information