La montagne des neuf Spencer

This movie was very enjoyable. It was fun, heartwarming & great story for the whole family. If you like "The Walton's" you will like "Spencer's Mountain" Henry Fonda does a wonderful job trying to care for his "babies" This movies proves that not all dreams have to come true to be happy. Sometimes you can be happy right where you are if you are, if you only give life a chance. Maureen O'Hara couldn't of done better as her role as Clay Spencer's wife. Also Wally Cox was super as the new preacher in town. This movie will have you laughing and crying. It is one of the best. I have watched this movie many times and know I will watch it several more times.

Henry Fonda throughout his career showed a great flair for playing rustic characters and endowing them with dignity. In fact that was his introduction to film when he did the movie version of the play that made him a star, The Farmer Takes A Wife. Of course as Fonda started playing more of a variety of roles he was less and less in rustic settings.

His last role of this type was as Clay Spencer in Spencer's Mountain a feel good family type picture with a rather interesting take on the facts of life. Country folks like the Spencers who deal a lot in livestock are familiar with the breeding process so it's not a huge big deal with them. At least it's not in this film as Mimsy Farmer is ready to finish James MacArthur's eduction in that regard. One of the best scenes in the film is Henry Fonda bringing over his bull to mate with one of Dub Taylor's cows with everybody looking on. I guess they're starved for entertainment in that part of the country.

In fact MacArthur's further education is what drives the film. He's the oldest of Fonda's and Maureen O'Hara's nine children and the first to graduate high school. His teacher Virginia Gregg wants to see him get ahead and go to the university. But the financial and other obstacles are considerable. Even the new minister Wally Cox tutors MacArthur in a needed Latin course.

If the Spencers bear no small resemblance to the Walton family that's because Earl Hammer who created the Waltons also wrote the novel this film was based on. Spencer's Mountain is beautifully photographed in the Grand Teton mountains of Wyoming, just as pretty and more majestic than the Walton's Appalachians. Delmer Daves who directed Spencer's Mountain also directed Jubal a few years earlier, a western also set in the Grand Tetons. The cinematography is just as good, but the resemblance stops there because Jubal is quite the adult western.

Spencer's Mountain marked the farewell performance of Donald Crisp who was 81 years old when he filmed this and had a career going back to the earliest silent films. He was a grand character actor who played an awesome variety of parts. Here he's in his family patriarch persona as Fonda's father married to Lillian Bronson in the film. Crisp won his Oscar as the family patriarch in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley.

Spencer's Mountain did good box office and it's a nice family film. But Henry Fonda's new agent passed on a Broadway play called Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf and signed his client for this. Fonda never forgave the agent, I can't really blame him.

I don't know what the other guy was talking about, but I found this movie to be great. Henry Fonda as the head of the family was jovial, but stern. Maureen O'Hara was her usual tough, but beautiful leading lady. The story was engaging, the scenery is breath-taking, and makes one yearn for those old films that made going to the movies an event, something really special. I'm also glad it's finally out on DVD, as my pan and scan VHS copy isn't the greatest. Plot-wise, it followed the life of the Spencer family and their many adventures, if you will. The plots weren't all over the place, it was just documenting the various happenings in the Spencer family. Anyone with a heart will love this movie!

"Spencer's Mountain" is an enjoyable family drama with touches of humor throughout. The outdoor scenery is spectacular. The film was shot in Grand Teton National Park, around Jackson Hole, WY, and in California. The movie is based on a 1961 novel of the same title, by Earl Hamner Jr. Some of the characters and experiences in the film are from his background, growing up near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia during the Great Depression.

Hamner would write another novel in 1970 that further expands on his boyhood growing up as the oldest child in a large family. That book, "The Homecoming: A Novel About Spencer's Mountain," led to the 1971 movie by the same title that in turn spawned the nine-year TV series, "The Waltons."

I don't know why this film was set in Wyoming instead of Virginia, but the expansive shots of the scenery could be one reason. By the middle 20th century, it would have been hard to find shots like that in Virginia that didn't show much more modern development. "The Homecoming" was also shot in Wyoming in 1971, although the story was clearly set in Virginia.

Many people who watched the later film and then the Waltons on TV (1972- 81) didn't know that this movie was part of Hamner's story of Walton's Mountain as well.

The cast of "Spencer's Mountain' is very good. Henry Fonda excelled as Clay Spencer. Another reviewer commented about the types of role he played, and I agree that Fonda was best with this type of role. He also was good with dramatic roles, but he didn't have the stuff for comedy. He was mildly OK in a couple that he made, but not too good in the others. That's probably why he made so few comedies. His forte in Westerns was as the bad guy.

Maureen O'Hara is wonderful as Olivia Spencer and James MacArthur plays Clayboy. That's the role that Richard Thomas had in the later film and the series as John-Boy. The rest of the cast are all quite good.

This is a somewhat different story than what Hamner writes for the Waltons. The special home that Clay starts to build for Olivia, and then the fire that destroys it. It's an interesting and entertaining movie that most should enjoy.

Leonard Maltin calls the film "mawkish", and he is right on, but it is still great fun. Mimsy Farmer's Claris is a hoot ("friction, friction, friction!")! Excellent use of the Jackson Hole locations, especially the Triangle X guest ranch, which served as the Spencer homestead and is still in operation here. Two trivia notes: Bronwyn Fitzsimmons, who played the college secretary, is Maureen O'Hara's daughter in real life. According to AMC Magazine, Henry Fonda showed some off-screen interest in her that O'Hara had to squash. Fonda did the film even though he thought it was so corny it would set U.S. movie-making back 20 years. Also, you have Wally Cox's character listed as GoodMAN, but the name was actually GoodSON. Highly recommended.