| Spencer's Mountain | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Delmer Daves |
| Screenplay by | Delmer Daves |
| Based on | Spencer's Mountain 1961 novel byEarl 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 | |
| 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 Hollywood actor Donald Crisp portrays "Grandpa" in his final screen role. Wally Cox, Virginia Gregg, Lillian Bronson, Whit Bissell and Dub Taylor also appear. The movie, although set in Wyoming rather than the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, is a forerunner (or early alternate version) of the television series The Waltons.
The film centers on the trials and tribulations of the Spencers, a family living in the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming during the early 1960s.
As the patriarch of a large and growing family, dirt-poor sawmill worker Clay Spencer is fiercely independent yet dedicated to his family. He navigates issues of religion and education in order to eke out a brighter future for his offspring.
Hardworking wife Olivia is kept busy with household tasks and contending with her husband's rough-hewn ways, which include periodic drinking sprees and a vocal refusal to attend church services.
Clay Sr. is the oldest of eight boisterous brothers, all of whom live within visiting distance (and apparently all single). Clay's elderly parents still live on the mountain, named "Spencer's Mountain", after their pioneer family.
Eldest son Clayboy aspires to attend college and build a career away from the mountain. To do so, he must earn a scholarship and be approved by university officials. He fears his unpolished family, particularly father Clay Sr., may hinder his pursuits.
Clayboy must also contend with the amorous pursuits of voluptuous teen neighbor Clarissa, daughter of the wealthy mill owner Col. Coleman, who employs Clay Sr. and acts as de facto power figure of the mountain. Clarissa's campaign includes several brazen attempts to seduce Clayboy, brazen enough for other characters and family members to draw comparisons to barnyard animals in heat.
Meanwhile, ever since his marriage to Olivia, Clay Sr. has dreamed of building a spacious house farther up the mountain 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 he has been able to assemble with great effort and sacrifice. But after ten or more years, the mountain house remains mostly an unfinished frame.
Eventually, Clayboy wards off the attentions of Clarissa, completes an independent study course in Latin and his admission to college is approved, but Clay Sr. realizes the family cannot afford both the dream house and sending his son to college.
As a result, he decides to sell the mountain house property to direct the profits to Clayboy's college expenses and torch the unfinished structure.
Olivia is shocked by Clay's actions and assumes he must be delirious with grief at the loss of the house. He responds with a laugh, telling her the house had indeed been his dream, but insignificant in comparison to the chance to send their son to college.
In the end, Clayboy is admitted to college, bids farewell to his family and, when asked by a fellow passenger on his bus if he is going far, replies, "Right far".
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Spencer's Mountain features the majestic scenery of Wyoming's Teton Range, as photographed by cinematographer Charles Lawton, in color using Panavision. It was filmed in and around the town of Jackson and features the nearby Chapel of the Transfiguration. Although the original novel was set in the Blue Ridge MountainsofVirginia, Hamner said in 1963 that Daves wanted more imposing mountains to emphasize the characters' isolation and struggles with their environment.[5]
The novel and the film became the basis for the long-running television series The Waltons, which premiered in 1972. The series switched the setting from the film's Wyoming back to the novel's Virginia and placed the action in 1933 during the Great Depression. The series also differed from both the film and novel by playing down adult themes including alcoholism and infidelity.
Spencer's Mountain was the second of three films co-starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara. Twenty years earlier, they starred in the war drama Immortal Sergeant, and, ten years after Spencer's Mountain, they played the leads in the made-for-television film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel The Red Pony, directed and co-written by Spencer's Mountain second unit director Robert Totten.
In May 1963, The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther contrasted the "slicked up...synthetic and essentially insincere" film with 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 in July 1963 noted that the location photography, at Grant 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]
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Films directed by Delmer Daves
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