Many Rivers to Cross

Film appreciation by Robert Siegel of The Digital Bits

Warner Brothers has recently released the MGM classic Many Rivers to Cross on DVD. The movie, filmed in color on eye-filling locations in the redwood forest country of Northern California, was the story of a woman-shy Kentucky trapper who can take on half a dozen deadly Indians single-handed, but who meets his Waterloo when he tries to avoid capture at the hands of a determined and predatory 1798 pioneer girl. Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker teamed up romantically for the film. Their previous co-starring films were Above and Beyond, in which Miss Parker enacted Taylor's wife, and Valley of the Kings, for which both stars traveled to Egypt. It marked the third teaming of Taylor and Miss Parker. The supporting cast was headed by Victor McLaglen, the Academy Award winning actor who celebrated thirty years in film with this movie. Other prominent roles were filled by Russ Tamblyn and Jeff Richards, who played two of the brothers in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, as well as James Arness and Alan Hale Jr, who would go on to play the skipper in Gilligan's Island.

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In Hollywood, where marksmen were usually hired because of their ability to hit the target on the bull's-eye, Carl Petti enjoyed the distinction of being in demand because he always missed. Petti, among other accomplishments, threw knives, tomahawks and other lethal weapons at the stars. Sometimes, for variety, he lashed them with a 20-foot bullwhip and pierced them with arrows. "There's not much competition," he said during an interview. "The only other knife-thrower in town is my father. I get killed by Taylor and he throws a knife at me." Filming of this scene in the backwoods of Cloverdale, California was achieved with a unique realism. Director Roy Rowland staged the sequence in an isolated gorge of the Russian River. At the end of the scene, Petti, "killed" by the knife, lay on his back. When the cameras stopped turning, he opened his eyes to see a vulture circling above him. Petti's very first job in pictures was to coach Taylor in handling a six-shooter for Billy the Kid. "Bob has an unusual advantage over most actors," he declared. "He is ambidextrous. He can make a fast draw or spin a revolver with either hand. My job on Many Rivers to Cross was sort of a post-graduate course for Taylor, who learned to handle a bullwhip in a picture called Westward the Women." However, in this film, the story called for him to use it as a deadly weapon. "Few people realize it, but a bullwhip in the hands of an expert is a deadly weapon. It can cut a man to ribbons. Handling a whip or tossing a hatchet on a crowded set calls for extreme control and split-second timing. There is no substitute for practice."

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For years around the MGM Art Department, is was said that the only thing Hans Peters could not do, with all apologies to the song, was to make a tree. During filming, the Metro wigs had to revise their statement. Peter made a tree and, moreover, shipped it to Cloverdale along with other props. This shipping of coals to Newcastle not only raised quizzical eyebrows among the locals, justly proud of their arboreal surroundings, but served to show what Peters had always done, namely to be certain that the right props would be available. "Director Roy Rowland, Jack Cummings, the producer, and I had previously scouted the area," said Peters. "We selected sites along the Russian River, on Rock Pile Mountain, along Sulpher Creek and other sections. They were accessible only to jeep and mountain goat but they were the ideal backgrounds for the story. One exciting sequence takes place on the bank of a river where Robert Taylor ambushes four Indians, with the aid of a long rope and a convenient tree. The tree had to be just right in angle and shape. It had to overhang the river, and two strategic branches had to extend from its trunk. In this instance, Mother Nature failed to co-operate, so we brought our own tree. A set, no matter how picturesque or novel, is of no use unless you can get actors and cameras in it. I try to make the set sufficient in itself, leaving the ground area clear of unnecessary objects or obstacles. Sometimes that can take weeks of preparing a site before even going on location."

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Rare MGM artist's painting of Robert Taylor and Elenanor Parker.

Eleanor Parker was tutored by one of Hollywood's ace marksmen for the film. For those not familiar with a "nail shoot," it is a test of skill in which the contestants, shooting with rifles from 40 paces, attempt to hit nails which have been lightly driven into posts spread five feet apart. The process took weeks to teach to Parker, who was not used to doing this type of maneuver in any of her pictures. The release of the Many Rivers to Cross marks the first time the movie has been issued on DVD.