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Lumbering ‘comedy’
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Coming so soon after the studio’s splendid Westward the Women (1951), this labored frontier comedy with the same star, Robert Taylor, was a huge disappointment. Though the intro card raises our hopes by saying, “We respectfully dedicate our story to the frontier women of America” and goes on to say that “they were gallant and courageous”, in fact what we get is a trite romance.
It reminds us in tone of the studio’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers of the previous year, and the similarity is reinforced by the presence in Many Rivers of Russ Tamblyn and Jeff Richards. Not that Many Rivers is a musical; we are spared that anyway. There is only one song, crooned over the titles, though it is endlessly sung by characters, hummed and reworked orchestrally throughout the movie until we are heartily sick of it. But the two pictures look alike, with typical expensive but cheap-looking MGM studio work, garish colors, phony sets and slapstick ‘humor’.
Neither Seven Brides nor Many Rivers is a Western in any real sense. They just use ‘the West’ (in this case 1798 Kentucky) as a backdrop for foolishness. Robert Taylor as hero Bushrod Gentry has
a fair go at the comedy and doesn’t look too silly in his buckskins and coonskin cap. His nemesis, the faithless, untrustworthy and untruthful Mary Stuart Cherne (Eleanor Parker) is nothing short of maddening and you much regret Bushrod’s final capitulation to her.
a fair go at the comedy and doesn’t look too silly in his buckskins and coonskin cap. His nemesis, the faithless, untrustworthy and untruthful Mary Stuart Cherne (Eleanor Parker) is nothing short of maddening and you much regret Bushrod’s final capitulation to her.
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Much of it is frankly boring
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She has four brothers ready to believe her lies (e.g. that Bushrod has got her pregnant) and her father is Victor McLaglen, looking old and ill but still trying for the broad comedy he provided for John Ford. Alan Hale Jr as clodhopper Luke is Mary’s suitor and thus rival to Bushrod, though Bushrod does everything he can to get Luke and Mary to tie the knot. The trouble is that it just isn’t funny enough. The whole thing falls flat.
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Doubtless some people found it hilarious
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Then there’s an incongruous scene with James Arness when Bushrod saves his baby daughter from a fever. It jars and doesn’t fit.
Roy Rowland was a pretty well talentless director as far as our genre is concerned (he did the lackluster Bugles in the Afternoon and The Moonlighter, for example). He ended up directing spaghetti westerns in Italy, which was about his mark. he was best known for comedies but certainly he seems to have had little idea of how to turn out a good one this time, regardless of the high budget.
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Shotgun wedding
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The nearest the movie comes to being a Western is when the Shawnee attack. But they are only nameless Hollywood Indians who are fodder for Bushrod’s heroics.
Certainly the worst of Robert Taylor’s Westerns (if Western it be), this one can be safely skipped.
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Unworthy of Taylor
3 Responses
Gosh, I hate this movie. Such a let down! And not really a Western …. a little too 'early' a period to be a Western, nor does it really follow any of the tropes.
I love comedies – I even love Western comedies – but this leaves nothing to love.
Couldn't agree more!
Jeff
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