Spencer's Mountain | |
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Directed by | Delmer Daves |
Screenplay by | Delmer Daves |
Based on | Spencer's Mountain 1961 novel by Earl Hamner Jr. |
Produced by | Delmer Daves |
Starring | Henry Fonda Maureen O'Hara James MacArthur Donald Crisp Wally Cox Mimsy Farmer |
Cinematography | Charles Lawton Jr. A.S.C. H.F. Koenekamp, A.S.C. (second unit) |
Edited by | David Wages |
Music by | Max Steiner |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date |
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Running time | 118 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $4.5 million (rentals) [1] |
Spencer's Mountain is a 1963 American family drama film written, directed and produced by Delmer Daves, from the 1961 novel of the same name by Earl Hamner Jr., [2] and starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara. [3] The supporting cast features early appearances by James MacArthur, Veronica Cartwright and Victor French, while longtime film actor Donald Crisp (in his final screen role) portrays "Grandpa" Spencer. Wally Cox, Virginia Gregg, Lillian Bronson, Whit Bissell and Dub Taylor also appear.
The movie, although set in Wyoming, is an inspiration for the long-running CBS television series The Waltons (set in the eastern U.S., in the Appalachian, Allegheny and Blue Ridge mountain chain and the upper southern Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia).
As the patriarch of a large and growing family that resides in the Grand Teton Mountains in Wyoming during the early 1960s, dirt-poor sawmill worker Clay Spencer is fiercely independent yet dedicated to his family. He navigates issues of religion and education to eke out a brighter future for his offspring.
Clay Sr. is the oldest of eight boisterous brothers, all of whom live within visiting distance (and apparently all single). Clay's elderly parents also live nearby on the mountain, named "Spencer's Mountain", after their pioneer family.
Hardworking wife Olivia is loving and faithful, kept busy with household tasks and contending with her husband's rough-hewn ways, which include periodic drinking sprees in town and a vocal refusal to attend his wife's local church services.
Eldest son "Clay-Boy" aspires to attend college and build a career away from the mountain. To do so, he must earn a scholarship and be approved and admitted by university officials. He fears that his unpolished family, particularly father Clay Sr., may hinder his pursuits.
Clay-Boy must also contend with the amorous pursuits of teenage neighbor Clarissa, daughter of the wealthy local mill owner Col. Coleman, who employs Clay Sr. and acts as de facto power figure of the mountain community. Clarissa's amorous campaign with the Spencer boy includes several brazen attempts to seduce Clay-Boy, brazen enough for folks who observe several incidents to draw comparisons to barnyard animals in heat.
Meanwhile, since his marriage to Olivia, Clay Sr. has dreamed of building a spacious house farther up on the mountaintop for the two in which to retire. Periodically, he breaks away from work to continue the long building process on this house, using building materials that he has been able to assemble with great effort and sacrifice. However, after ten or more years, the mountaintop house remains mostly an unfinished frame.
Eventually, Clay-Boy wards off the attentions of Clarissa, and completes an independent-study tutoring course in ancient Latin (required for his particular type of scholarship). His admission to the state university is approved, but Clay Sr. realizes that the family cannot afford both his longtime dream house and sending his son to college. As a result, he decides to sell the mountain house property to direct the profits to Clay-Boy's college expenses, and sadly torches the unfinished structure of lumber framing.
Olivia is shocked by Clay's actions and assumes that he must be delirious with grief at the loss of the house. He responds with a laugh, telling her that the house had indeed been his dream, but insignificant when compared to the chance of sending their son to college. In the end, Clay-Boy is admitted to college and bids farewell to his family.
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Spencer's Mountain takes place in Wyoming's Teton Range (site of a nearby famous National Park) of the Rocky Mountains in the western United States, as photographed by cinematographer Charles Lawton Jr., in color using Panavision. It was filmed in and around the mountain valley town of Jackson, and features the nearby Chapel of the Transfiguration.
Although the original 1961 Hamner novel is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western Virginia, creator and author Earl Hamner Jr. said in 1963 that producer, director and screenwriter Delmer Daves wanted more physically imposing mountains to emphasize the characters' isolation and struggles with their environment. [5]
The 1961 novel and the 1963 film, however, became the basis for the long-running television series The Waltons , which premiered in 1972. The series restored the setting from the film's Wyoming to the novel's original Virginia, and placed the action in 1933, during the beginnings of the Great Depression. The series also differed from both the film and novel by playing down adult themes, including alcoholism and infidelity in its early seasons episodes, until it became established and more secure in its popularity in the mid-to-late 1970s.[ citation needed ]
Spencer's Mountain was the second of three films co-starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara. Twenty years earlier, they starred in the 1943 war drama film Immortal Sergeant , (set in the then current Second World War's North African invasion and campaign) and then, ten years after the making of Spencer's Mountain, they played the leads again in the 1973 made-for-television film adaptation of The Red Pony, taken from famous author John Steinbeck's earlier 1937 novel The Red Pony , also directed and co-written by earlier Spencer's Mountain second unit director Robert Totten (1937-1995).
In May 1963, The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther contrasted the "slicked up...synthetic and essentially insincere" film with the original text and plot of the novel, "[which] tells a very real and very moving story of a dirt-poor family that lives in the hard-scrabble, unglamorous mountains of southwest Virginia." [6]
A review in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette daily newspaper in July 1963 noted that the location photography, at Grand Teton National Park, is "vast and beautiful", but the screenplay was basically a soap opera with excessive sentimentality with no restraint; there was "too much talk" and "a general falseness about what could be a moving truth". [2]
Film critic Judith Crist, writing in the New York Herald Tribune , criticized the adult aspects of the movie's plot, saying it showed "sheer prurience and perverted morality", and added that "it makes the nudie shows at the Rialto look like Walt Disney productions". [7]
The Waltons is an American historical drama television series about a family in rural Virginia during the Great Depression and World War II. It was created by Earl Hamner Jr., based on his 1961 book Spencer's Mountain and the 1963 film of the same name. The series aired from 1972 to 1981.
Jackson is a resort town in Teton County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 10,760 at the 2020 census, up from 9,577 in 2010. It is the largest town in Teton County and its county seat. Jackson is the principal town of the Jackson, WY-ID Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Teton County in Wyoming and Teton County in Idaho. The town, often familiarly or mistakenly called Jackson Hole, derives its name from the valley in which it is located. Jackson is a popular tourist destination due to its proximity to the ski resorts Jackson Hole Mountain, Snow King Mountain, and Grand Targhee, as well as Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park.
Maureen O'Hara was an Irish-born naturalized American actress and singer, who became successful in Hollywood from the 1940s through to the 1960s. She was a natural redhead who was known for playing passionate but sensible heroines, often in Westerns and adventure films. She worked with director John Ford and long-time friend John Wayne on numerous projects.
Richard Earl Thomas is an American actor. He is best known for his leading role as budding author John-Boy Walton in the CBS drama series The Waltons for which he won an Emmy Award. He also received another Emmy nomination and two Golden Globe Award nominations for that role.
Earl Henry Hamner Jr. was an American television writer and producer, best known for his work in the 1970s and 1980s as the creator of two long-running series, The Waltons and Falcon Crest. As a novelist, he is best known for Spencer's Mountain, which was inspired by his own childhood and formed the basis for both the film of the same name and the television series The Waltons, for which he provided voice-over narration. at the beginning of most episodes to set the scene and provide context and occasionally at the end of the program.
Schuyler is a census-designated place (CDP) in Nelson County, Virginia, United States, close to Scottsville. The population as of the 2010 Census was 298.
Victor Edwin French was an American actor and director. He is remembered for roles on the television programs Gunsmoke, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven, and Carter Country.
Virginia Lee Gregg was an American actress known for her many roles in radio dramas and television series.
Andrew Duggan was an American character actor. His work includes 185 screen credits between 1949 and 1987 for roles in both film and television, as well a number more on stage.
Delmer Lawrence Daves was an American screenwriter, film director and film producer. He worked in many genres, including film noir and warfare, but he is best known for his Western movies, especially Broken Arrow (1950), The Last Wagon (1956), 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Hanging Tree (1959). He was required to work exclusively on studio-based films after heart trouble in 1959, one of which, A Summer Place, was a huge commercial success.
Family Classics is a Chicago television series which began in 1962 when Frazier Thomas was added to another program at WGN-TV. Thomas not only hosted classic films, but also selected the titles and personally edited them to remove those scenes which he thought were not fit for family viewing. After Thomas' death in 1985, Roy Leonard took over the program. The series continued sporadically until its initial cancellation in 2000.
Immortal Sergeant is a 1943 American war film directed by John M. Stahl for 20th Century Fox. Set in the North African desert during World War II, it stars Henry Fonda as a corporal lacking in confidence in both love and war, Maureen O'Hara as his girlfriend, and Thomas Mitchell as the title character. The film was based on the 1942 novel of the same name by John Brophy.
The Chapel of the Transfiguration is a small log chapel in Grand Teton National Park, in the community of Moose. The chapel was sited and built to frame a view of the Cathedral Group of peaks in a large window behind the altar. The chapel, which was built in 1925, is owned and operated by St. John's Episcopal Church in Jackson.
Chicken Every Sunday is a 1949 American comedy film directed by George Seaton. The screenplay by Seaton and Valentine Davies is based on the 1944 play of the same title by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, which was based on the memoir by Rosemary Taylor.
The Battle of the Villa Fiorita is a 1965 British drama film, based on the 1963 novel by Rumer Godden, directed by Delmer Daves. It stars Maureen O'Hara and Rossano Brazzi.
The Red Pony is a 1973 American made-for-television drama western film directed and co-written by Robert Totten, based on the 1937 novel The Red Pony by John Steinbeck. The film features Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara, Ben Johnson and Jack Elam.
Maureen O'Hara (1920–2015) was an Irish singer and actress from Dublin, who worked primarily in American film and television. She was born into a close-knit and artistically talented family; her mother was a contralto vocalist, and her three sisters and two brothers were budding actors and musical performers. O'Hara received music and dance lessons at the Ena Burke School of Elocution and Drama, becoming a member of the Rathmines Theatre Company when she was 10 years old. While still a teenager, she won several Radio Éireann Players contests to perform with them. She also won the Dublin Feis Award, for her performance as Portia in The Merchant of Venice. O’Hara was a member of the Abbey Theatre School, and a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music.
"An Easter Story" was the final episode of the first season of The Waltons. It was also the first two-hour show of the series.