Alan Hale Jr. | The Stop Button

If there’s some lost Frontier genre–not a Western, because there aren’t horses or cowboy hats–but a Frontier genre, with trappers and woods and… I don’t know, some other stuff, Many Rivers to Cross is probably not the ideal example of its potential. I realize now, mentioning it, Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans is probably the ideal. Regardless, Many Rivers to Cross is unfortunately not the ideal of much anything. Any film co-starring Alan Hale Jr. and Russell Johnson long before “Gilligan’s Island” ought to offer some comedic value along absurd lines, but this one doesn’t. Many Rivers to Cross is a comedy, however. It’s just not a funny one. Everything in the film–with the exception of a dying baby–is for a laugh. Given the story, with Eleanor Parker’s frontier-woman (the film is dedicated the frontier-women no less) chasing Robert Taylor’s bachelor trapper, it’s a lot like a Road Runner cartoon–except one with really offensive portrayals of American Indians.

The Indian thing bugged me a little bit because it was played so much for laughs. Hollywood had known since, what, 1939, playing Indians as villains was lame and Many Rivers is from 1955. It was so lame, the first mohawked Indian I saw, I thought it was all a joke, like Taylor had this Indian running cons with him or something. I was rather disappointed it turned out to be otherwise; not just because it would have been less offensive, but because it might have been interesting.

The movie’s short–ninety-five or so–and it’s split evenly in two parts. One part has Victor McLaglen as Parker’s father, the other part has Taylor mostly alone (though James Arness shows up for a bit). Both McLaglen and Arness are good. Both Parker and Taylor are good. The film’s just not any good. Without the Indian element, I’d call it inoffensive fare (and I doubt it was intended to be anything more). A programmer, actually–yep, it’s a programmer.

★★

CREDITS

Directed by Roy Rowland; screenplay by Harry Brown and Guy Trosper, from a story by Steve Frazee; director of photography, John F. Seitz; edited by Ben Lewis; music by Cyril J. Mockridge; produced by Jack Cummings; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Robert Taylor (Bushrod Gentry), Eleanor Parker (Mary Stuart Cherne), Victor McLaglen (Cadmus Cherne), Jeff Richards (Fremont Cherne), Russ Tamblyn (Shields Cherne), James Arness (Esau Hamilton), Alan Hale Jr. (Luke Radford), John Hudson (Hugh Cherne), Sig Ruman (Spectacle Man) and Russell Johnson (Banks Cherne).


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THIS FILM IS ALSO DISCUSSED IN SUM UP | ELEANOR PARKER, PART 2: TECHNICOLOR.

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I know nothing about baseball, but I’m pretty sure it’s against the rules to doctor the ball to guarantee no one can hit it….

The discussion of that dishonesty never comes up in It Happens Every Spring. Otherwise, it’s a nice little late 1940s Fox feature with the cast to match–Paul Douglas, Jean Peters, and Ray Collins. Douglas and Peters are particularly good, with Peters in the thankless girlfriend role that I don’t think she played often or at least, I’ve never seen her in it before. She and Douglas only have a scene together, but it makes you wish they’d done a movie together. Douglas is, of course, great.

It’s Ray Milland, as the forty-seven-year old “kid,” who comes off worst. He’s not particularly charming and the film’s incredibly dull when he’s moving the story along. It’s not even his obvious maturity that makes him so boring, it’s his distance from the whole thing. Spring doesn’t have much of a story (it fails to be either an American baseball film or a character piece), but it’s got a cast. Milland seems to have no interest in it. He’s not putting anything into the picture.

The writing is all right in spots–I particularly love how Douglas can get any piece of dialogue out and make it sound good–and it’s by Valentine Davies, who worked on The Bridges at Toko-Ri, which is great. Still, he couldn’t make this film move. It’s less than ninety minutes and it drags.

It occurs to me that I’ve only ever seen two other Milland pictures: Dial M for Murder and The Big Clock, both years ago. I don’t remember him ever impressing me. Spring does nothing to contribute. He’s just so ineffective, kind of like they wanted Cary Grant and couldn’t get him.

But Paul Douglas is great.

★½

CREDITS

Directed by Lloyd Bacon; screenplay by Valentine Davies, based on a story by Davies and Shirley W. Smith; director of photography, Joseph MacDonald; edited by Bruce B. Pierce and Dorothy Spencer; music by Leigh Harline; produced by William Perlberg; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Ray Milland (Prof. Vernon K. Simpson), Jean Peters (Deborah Greenleaf), Paul Douglas (Monk Lanigan), Ed Begley (Edgar Stone), Ted de Corsia (Manager Jimmy Dolan), Ray Collins (Prof. Alfred Greenleaf), Jessie Royce Landis (Mrs. Greenleaf), Alan Hale Jr. (Schmidt) and William Murphy (Tommy Isabell).

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Tag Archives: Alan Hale Jr.

Many Rivers to Cross (1955, Roy Rowland)

It Happens Every Spring (1949, Lloyd Bacon)

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