Many Rivers to Cross

This is an excellent movie. It may be too slow paced for those of you who are only looking for whiz-bang, but for others with a little more spirit it is a classic. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie several times. It captures a long lost frontier spirit and accurately portrays it on the screen. The music is good, but not overwhelming. It matches the pace of the story very well.

Robert Taylor is the freelance fur trapper who is passing through. On his way he is rescued by Eleanor Parker and her sidekick Sandak.

Following this, the battle of the sexes begins. It is frontier wits versus feminine charm, and guile.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

I have been searching for the theme song of this movie "The Berry Tree" since I saw it once as a 6 year-old kid in 1955 or 56. I've hummed the melody and sung the few lyrics I remembered since then. I finally got the VHS tape last week and what a pleasure. This is a fantastic frontier comedy and it brings back fond memories of me as a young kid wearing a Davy Crockett coonskin cap and singing the song. Here are the lyrics to the song if anyone else has wondered what they were for 45 years or so, as I had. From other comments here, this song made an indelible impression on almost everyone that has heard it.

The higher up the berry tree the sweeter grows the berry

The more you hug and kiss a gal the more she wants to marry

The berry tree's a wise old tree the sweetest fruit is his'n

But marryin' up with any gal is just like goin' to prison

(Bridge)

Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall Till I find the gal I want, a' gonna have none at all

Cause higher up.

This wonderful rollicking comedy set in the early days of the republic, roughly sometime in the Federalist era had to take its inspiration from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers from the year before. In fact two of the brothers, Jeff Richards and Russ Tamblyn are featured in Many Rivers to Cross.

The surprise to me in this film is Robert Taylor. At the time he did this film Taylor had been doing dramatic parts for many years. He did some comedy roles in his early days at MGM, but they were the modern sophisticated sort of stuff.

Robert Taylor is Bushrod Gentry, a frontier trapper who's a pretty fancy free and footloose sort of character very much like Adam Pontipee in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. But while it was Howard Keel who was looking for a wife in that film, here it's the woman who does the chasing and it's the woman who comes from a pretty frisky frontier family herself. Eleanor Parker is Federalist era Calamity Jane who takes a real shine to Taylor.

Of course she pursues Taylor through out the film, try as he may to get back to his trapping. Their last escape from some pursuing Shawnee Indians is an absolute comic riot.

Good as Taylor and Parker are, Many Rivers to Cross almost cries for a song or two other than the theme about the Berry Tree. In a musical I could have seen Howard Keel and Doris Day doing it easily.

In any event I'm sure that when Taylor and Parker settle down and commence to having children that they were the ancestors a hundred years later of that Pontipee clan in the Pacific Northwest.

I wasn't expecting much from this film - just something to pass a rainy Sunday.

What a wonderful surprise to find myself watching a screwball comedy about as good as Cary Grant or Irene Dunne could have hoped to make in the 1930's.

Give it a chance - you might love it like I did.

I watched this on TCM one night & my wife & I laughed so hard we almost fell off the couch!! This is one of those little movies that has something for everyone...comedy, action, a wonderful script, & characters that force you to like them. Robert Taylor was perfect as the footloose, frontier Romeo, & Eleanor Parker was never more beautiful & funny playing the love-sick woman who intends to "get her man" no matter what it takes...but make no mistake, she is no wimpy, sighing, helpless female...she really is "Steppin' Woman"!!!! The title song is so catchy that you'll have trouble not singing it for months afterward. Some of the dialogue is at one turn hilarious, then a few lines later, subtly humorous...a real scriptwriter's dream. There is nothing to offend anyone but lots of things to delight everyone. A great family film!!!!