Well Deserved Praise

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Sporting a title seemingly more appropriate for a reggae song (maybe because it later WAS the title of a reggae song, on Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come" album), "Many Rivers to Cross" (1955) is rather an odd hybrid of screwball comedy and action-packed Western, filmed in CinemaScope and Technicolor. Dedicated to the women of the Kentucky frontier, the picture introduces us to a trapper and hunter named Bushrod Gentry, a roving free spirit in the Kentucky of what the viewer must infer is the early 19th century. After a run-in with a band of Shawnees, and suffering a fairly serious knife wound in his arm, Bushrod lays up at the home of Cadmus Cherne (Victor McLaglen, in one of his final films), his wife, four sons and daughter, Mary Stuart. Unfortunately for old Bushrod, Mary takes an instant hankering to him, vowing to make him her husband...no matter what! What follows are some very amusing sequences in which Mary gets her blowhard suitor Luke Radford (Alan Hale, Jr.) to fight with Bushrod, a shotgun wedding is concocted, a shooting match goes down, and those pesky Shawnees mass for another attack, during which time Mary drives Bushrod to the point of distraction with her incessant, borderline maddening attentions....As played by hunky Hollywood leading man Robert Taylor, Bushrod is an extremely likable fellow, as handy with a whip as Indiana Jones and better looking in a coonskin cap than Fess Parker in TV's "Daniel Boone" show of almost a decade later. As manly as can be, even a knife through the arm doesn't prevent him from engaging in a fisticuffs dukeout with Radford THE VERY NEXT DAY! Stretching the viewer's credulity a bit further, however, is Bushrod's determined efforts to AVOID Mary Stuart's amorous advances. Played by Eleanor Parker at the very peak of her gorgeousness, a hot-blooded spitfire just seething with sexuality, Mary is quite a gal, despite her annoying ways. That director Roy Rowland (who had worked with Taylor the previous year on the great film noir "Rogue Cop") could go an entire picture without giving Parker a single close-up, or show off her brilliant red hair to better effect, really does boggle this viewer's mind (granted, I know next to nothing about making pictures). Eleanor was one of Hollywood's most sensational-looking actresses of the '50s (check her out in 1952's "Scaramouche" if you don't believe me), and to keep her in medium range in any given shot is a waste of raw material, sez I! Still, the film has its compensations. Parker shows herself to be an excellent PHYSICAL comedian here, taking pratfalls, swimming, fighting, shooting guns and arrows, rolling in the dirt and so on; a great dramatic actress in a rare comedic role. She and Taylor make a wonderful, handsome couple (as they had the previous year in "Valley of the Kings"), to put it mildly. Adding to this film's pleasures are James Arness (who later that year would embark on a little 20-year Western of his own, TV's "Gunsmoke") as a boisterous frontiersman, Russell Johnson as one of Mary's brothers (yes, along with Alan Hale, Jr., that's two future "Gilligan's Island" alumni in one film a decade earlier), and a catchy theme song, "The Berry Tree," that lilts its way through the entire picture (although it should be mentioned that the song's opening line "The higher up the berry tree, the sweeter grow the berries / The more you hug and kiss a gal, the more she wants to marry" is a possible non sequitur!). Oftentimes verging on the cartoonish with its action and hijinks, "Many Rivers to Cross" is lighthearted fun for the entire family. Oh, and a message to "the Academy": Howzabout a well-deserved, honorary Oscar for Eleanor while she's still with us?!?!

Played absolutely over the top, to the hilt, right down to the final scene. Perhaps the only false note in the entire film is where Taylor saves the child. Somehow its out of kilter with the rest of the antics in its pacing, otherwise this is always played for laughs, beginning to end.As someone noted the two principles are way too old for the parts, unless everybody in those days just LOOKED worse for the wear early, which they did of course. It would have been better to have made this ten years earlier then most of it would not have seemed so outlandish, but still its a better comedy than most. The trick is taking it on its own terms and its pure D old fashioned fun. Yet another example of MGMs notion of Disneyland. The final scene of Parker moaning over Taylor to attract the Indians to the scene and kill them, very funny and neatly done, easily worth the price of the ticket, or what must have been for those that saw it in the theater.

I saw this movie many years ago, and fully enjoyed it. Does anyone know the words to the song, "The higher up the berry tree"???? If so, please e-mail me @ txmoor50@yahoo.com------thanks. I really would love to get this info, as my mother is just wild about this song. I am really having a hard time finding anyone who can help me on this subject. I was probably about ten years old when I first saw this movie, and heard this song. I can still remember humming it to this day, but for the life of me I can't remember the words. Great movie though. My oldest brother can usually help me on any of the "movie classics", but even he wasn't able to come through to help on this one.

higher up the berry tree" it stuck with me and so did the fun of the movie. i remember that robert taylor just looked out of place to me but the movie stayed with me all these years. I have enjoyed it over the years and have seen it on tv a couple of times and i always recommend it to my friends. good.