Spencer's Mountain
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Movie Reviews of Spencer's Mountain
Movie Review: Perfect movie for family viewing!
Summary: 5 Stars
The TV series 'The Waltons' was based on this book/movie. Excellent family viewing. I highly recommend it!Movie Review: Old Henry Fonda movie
Summary: 5 Stars
I loves that old movie and wanted to see it again. It was as good as I recalled.Movie Review: Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
A must have for any collector of classic movies! A real tear jercker for sure!Movie Review: Spencer's Mountain
Summary: 5 Stars
Terrific old movie. The condition and timeliness of it's arrival was great.Movie Review: Classic glossing-over of grinding rural poverty
Summary: 4 Stars
Anyone who lived through the Depression years out in the country could see immediately that the Spencer family, as shown in this film, are well off. Of course, we're dealing with 1950's Hollywood and Technicolor, with a mother who's had nine kids but looks like Maureen O'Hara, with stupendous scenery (not Virginia, as it should have been, but the Grand Tetons), and even the university Dean is always available for a chat. The women are all lascivious and luscious beckoning, while the men are older, hardened, but lusty old goats underneath.
There's a lot of bottom-smacking, which in the case of the supposedly teenage Clayboy (MacArthur from Hawaii Five-0, "book-em Danno"), sure looks weird. He's far too old for the part of the eager-beaver schoolboy, which makes his resistance to the local young tart even more absurd.
Hamner, the writer of the the semi-autobiographical story upon which this movie is based, certainly knew poverty. He wrote about his youth to show that it was a good one, in SPITE of the poverty, because of the family togetherness. One look at this glossed-over version of Appalachan-style poverty (man, those quarrymen's huts look like great vacation cabins!) will show you that Hollywood really, really, really hates to show reality.
However, all this being said, it's a pleasure to see old-time America in this film, with its family values, including the classic example of the father who refuses to go to church and listen to the preacher, because he enjoys cussing, dancing, kissing, drinking and so on. This is thoroughly thrashed out with the Dean and the preacher, who look at this blaspheming frontiersman and logsplitter as a nutcase, whose gleaming redhead wife will surely change him. Well, it's the free Latin lessons from the preacher for his college-bound Clayboy that force old SPencer to go to church, where any unfatigued eye will note, old goat Spencer is smack in the front row looking at the legs of the female choir. Otherwise, wife and kiddies always go to church. If this is typical American, well, gee, things were spiffy back then. A man could be okay as long as the wife went to church, and I suppose that now, both feel okay without church.
Those of you who've seen the series, "The Waltons", will think this a poor substitute for telling the 1930's Appalachian truth, but it's still worth a look-see for sheer Hollywood baloney. I like that November-May wedding down the road - now THAT old geezer looked Appalachian!
Henry Fonda is full of himself as always! Just like Jane!