Many Rivers to Cross (1955)

Best movie of this year hands down!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

It is a film reflecting a period, more than a genre. because it is western and comedy and love story and beautiful eulogy to the people of frontier. and occasion for Robert Taylor to be seductive at whole. its virtue - to translate, in right manner, the atmosphere of "50. and to use , in inspired manner, the humor , remembering, in other context, same spiced, the couple Hepburn - Tracy. and, maybe, it is the axis of a story with old flavour and a lot of fun, mixed with tension, in package of old fashion sweat moral lesson.

Saw "Many Rivers to Cross" when it came out originally, then just recently -- in a boxed set of westerns from "Costco". I was 13 when I first saw it--and didn't remember much about it. Now, I know why, there's nothing memorable about it. This was an effort to equal the popularity and success of "The Quiet Man", a "comedy" with a roughly parallel tone and marriage-spoof/conflict. It even brings back Victor McGlaughlin in an almost identical role as "Man". The bad mistake with "Rivers...Cross", is that just because a Western has a comedic tone, it doesn't mean it should insult the genre right down to the spokes and horse's hooves. Some respect should be shown,if only a minimum, regards sets, script continuity, costumes and the times when the film is supposed to occur. Plus, if the budget requires a mostly studio effort, then some vigor should be made in the studios scenes to make them appear roughly genuine. If this were a weak "B" second feature from a minor studio maybe the poor quality could be excused; however, the cast was first rate, and this was allegedly an "A" movie. So, as an "A" movie, it completely failed for me. Lastly, it wasn't funny at all.

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?!?!

This movie is one that I have watched (over the last forty years) with my mom and then later my daughter many times. It is one of our favorites. In it you will discover that Robert Taylor (best known for his beautiful face and romantic roles) has a flair for comedy and makes good use of a wonderful supporting cast.Victor McLaughlin is himself (but that's just fine by me), James Arness plays straight man and a young Alan Hale Jr. (before Gilligan's Island) combine with the perennially juvenile antics of Russ Tamblin to provide and hour and a half plus of escapist entertainment and downright good old fashioned laughter.The beautiful Eleanor Parker plays a tomboy like no other we've seen but that's okay, too. This one's for fun and for the trivia purists, too. There are many connections to television shows that some of the cast will appear in years later. See how many you can find. Hint...check out the director, etc.The higher up the berry tree, the sweeter grow the berries, the more you hug and kiss a girl, the more they want to marry!