Finian's Rainbow (film) Finian's Rainbow (film) Finian's Rainbow is a 1968 Irish-American musical film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Fred Astaire and Petula Clark. The screenplay by E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy is based on their 1947 stage musical of the same name. It is a fantasy about an Irishman and his daughter who steal a leprechaun's magic pot of gold and emigrate to the United States, where they become involved in a dispute between rural landowners and a greedy, racist U.S. Senator. The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and a Writers Guild of America
The Gold at the Starbow's End title is a word coined by one of the characters on the starship. It refers to the rainbow-like effect seen when stars are undergoing a relativistic Doppler effect. In the novel the crew of the "Constitution" exact revenge on Earth by sending a beam of "strange" particles back to the home planet, causing all nuclear materials to melt down harmlessly, reducing the population to poverty in the absence of nuclear power. The last section relates the events surrounding the return of the crew's children to Earth. Shortly after its original appearance in "Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact", "The Gold at the