The Rainmaker

This lively play was a 1954 hit on Broadway and a 1956 film. It concerns an elderly Western rancher, his three children, and an itinerant con artist who boasts he can save their drought-parched herd by creating rain. The major focus is on the spinster daughter, Lizzie Curry, who naturally falls for the con artist. The relationship is aided by that fact that Lizzie's father and two brothers seem more worried about her marital prospects than about the drought that's killing their cattle.