Calloway le trappeur

"You can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar"--an old proverb

"Those Calloways" is a live action DIsney film which has long ago faded into obscurity. I decided to watch it because of its impressive cast. However, if you try to watch it on Disney+, you are forced to watch a quick blurb about how the film isn't politically correct. The only 'offensive' things I saw were hunting and trapping and a non-American Indian playing an Indian. In other words, Disney is appealing to REALLY sensitive people out there...and if you see the film, ignore this blurb. By the way, this isn't all that easy because I found if you stop and re-start the film, it makes you watch this statement again.

As for the movie, it seems to epitomize the word 'okay'. It is nice is some ways but in others it could have stood some improvement. In particular, Mr. Calloway is big into preserving the geese from over hunting....but he yells and bellows so much. You can actually understand why many folks DIDN'T listen to him. A John Muir, he was not!

Apart from that, it's the type of live action film Walt himself loved, as it emphasizes a bygone era in America and old fashioned values. Considering his love of the late 1800s and early 1900s, setting the film during the Coolidge administration (1923-1929) isn't a surprise.

Overall, the film features some nice story and nice acting (apart from Brian Keith...the character who seemed to be yelling all the time). It's not a film I'd rush to see but don't let Disney's current warning scare you away...it's not offensive unless you hate hunting and can't get past Frank DeKova playing an Indian...though hundreds of films and TV shows of the 1950s-60s featured this. I don't like it because it's more realistic to have American Indians playing American Indians, but I have pretty thick skin.

Those Calloways is a family film from the Walt Disney Studios about a man who was raised by the Indians in rural Vermont and as such has an appreciation for nature that his fellow whites fail to see. As this film is set in the early years of the last century, Brian Keith's character would have an ally in the White House who would be making conservation a prime policy initiative in his presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt would have appreciated Cam Calloway's concern for the wild geese who pass over his part of Vermont going south for the winter. Their passage is something noted and revered by the Indians who helped raise Keith. But his concern for the geese is not something that his family, wife Vera Miles and son Brandon DeWilde, share with the same enthusiasm.

But if Miles and DeWilde are not on the same page as Keith, the rest of the town just ain't even reading the same book. The only real ally that Keith has is storekeeper Walter Brennan. A fast talking salesman played by Phillip Abbott wants to turn their little corner of Vermont into a duckhunter's paradise that might make the town some real money. Naturally they're resentful of Keith who is seeming to take the bread out of their mouths.

Those Calloways has a good cast and a sincere message about conservation. It's not delivered however in the best fashion and the audience never really gets it, why Brian Keith is so passionate about those geese. It's not one of the Disney Studio's better efforts.

My friend and I watched this movie, a favorite of hers, which I had never viewed, and we both liked it. I always like Brian Keith in every movie he was in whether that was action, rough-and-tumble, as well as fatherly roles like "Family Affairs", maybe especially "Hard Castle and McCormick," which I loved even though it didn't last long as a series. I realize, now, how critical the Nielson Ratings and the deep pockets of one's sponsor truly are.

Keith is so in character, I worried at one point where he broke his leg in the story, whether he was still doing his own stunt work at age 44. I certainly hope not.

Vera Miles sans makeup, hair in a bun, acted like a woman used to roughing it as a wife, mom and woman - not always liking that reality, but continually re-accepting it as part and parcel of her love for Cam. The movie does a good job of demonstrating that both life and love come at a price, but that the risk of seeking what you really want in life is worth the cost.

Even the dog, the blackbird and the bear had their own wranglers in this local-color flick.

I liked the idea of being totally invested in a dream, in idealism, in fervent values, to point where you would stake everything, life itself, to make that dream actually happen - even against overwhelming odds, formidable, moneyed interests, calloused and remorseless antagonists.

The Canadian geese stole every scene they were in. Pythagoras would revere their straight lines of flight, each new group parallel to the flight above them.

The movie made me think of a saying on the back of a T shirt I observed today at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure for Cancel in Kalamazoo, something Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "What lies behind us and what lies before us are not as important as what lies within us."

Tremendous cast: Brandon De Wilde, Vera Miles, Ed Wynn, and Brian Keith as well as Tom Skerritt at age 31. He looks like a young kid.

The movie looks and sounds exactly like what it truly is - a Disney film from 1965, where music telegraphs every upcoming dramatic moment, and violence, blood and gore and so forth are not shown.

At the same time, in our age of IRS corruption and interminable political partisanship, it is heart-warming to see two people renew their love for and commitment to each other, again and again, knowing that, as Langston Hughes wrote, "Life ain't been no crystal staircase."

Such a total lack of pretense in this movie! That sort of pure, ingenuous sincerity, is rare in the world of film and in life where deep concerns for profit, market share, pragmatism, and the every-man-and-woman-for-himself-and-herself world many adopt, crushes out the little important things in life like tenderness, patience, and honesty.

Many of the scenes in this movie have the look of a filmed stage play, and I say that in a complimentary way.

If our local Civic Theatre cast and acted out this dramatic vehicle, it would be tantamount to furnishing audiences with a far more innocent age, a more pure one where people say exactly what they mean and where people mean exactly what they say, even the villains.

I yearn for such unaffected directness.

Family drama from Disney, the kind of folksy yarn the studio seemed to revel in during this era. Do-gooder adaptation of Paul Annixter's novel "Swiftwater" concerns Vermont couple and their son at odds with the rest of the town over their attempts to save a flock of geese from game-hunters. Mixes elements of melodrama, outdoor adventure, teen romance and nature asides, but too little humor. Running a seat-numbing 131mns, the picture was never popular with the matinee crowds despite beautiful scenery and a good cast including Brian Keith as the head of the house; Vera Miles as his frontier wife; Brandon de Wilde (pulling a James MacArthur) and Linda Evans (lovely) as the young sweethearts; and Walter Brennan as an old coot named Alf. OK yarn wears "values" on its sleeve, but is really too solemn and lethargic to appeal to anyone except nostalgic adults and Disney-philes. Score by Max Steiner, his only time working for the Mouse. **1/2 from ****

Disney which is best known now for their animated films made a number of good movies with real actors and actresses. This 1965 feature is one of those movies. An excellent cast of talented actors headed up by the late Brian Keith and the beautiful Vera Miles tells the tale of a family whose dream is to create a sanctuary for wild Geese. Certain interest groups have other ideas however for the fate of the Geese. If you've never seen this Disney movie from the mid 60's then check it out on the Disney channel or rent it. A young Linda Evans and Tom Skerritt also costar along with Brandon DeWilde the legendary Walter Brennan and Ed Wynn.