The Missouri Traveler

An odd look back at "simpler" days where things really weren't really so simple, at least for the mysterious young boy (Brandon De Wilde) who shows up in Missouri, getting much attention as he passes through a small town. He catches a ride with the dark souled Lee Marvin and meets a kind, caring stranger in the noble Gary Merrill who, being reminded of himself as a youngster, begins to look after him. Strange agreements with Marvin see Dr Wilde taking residence in an abandoned house on Marvin's property and taking care of a wild horse that Marvin gave to Merrill to settle a debt. Marvin cruelty teaches De Wilde the hard facts of life, constantly reneging on verbal deals he made with him, repeating over and over, "It's not worth anything unless you have it in writing".

Often disturbing, thus is a surprisingly adult for a supposed family coming from Walt Disney's Buena Vista studio. Some folksy elements make this almost a Currier and Ives painting, with dark twists and turns. Paul Ford adds both humor and pathos to the role of the lovable old tavern owner who was forced to stop selling beer and start selling chili that nobody likes. Others among the ensemble are Kathleen Freeman and Frank Cady. But with Marvin's constant darkness, it's difficult to see the light at the end of the horse race. An odd example for Disney to try more serious themes, presented in a way that leaves the taste of sour grapes in the viewer's mouth.

"The Missouri Traveler" is a film from Disney that seems to reinforce the values that Walt himself had growing up in this same state. He talked about the joy of growing up in small town Missouri and his Main Street USA at Disney World and Disneyland are modeled after this ideal.

The story begins with Biarn (Brandon De Wilde) walking down a country road. Tobias (Lee Marvin) stops to give the boy a lift into town. While it's obvious the boy is on the run, since he appears to be only about 13, the townsfolk don't question this and are quite taken with him. In fact, in a way, the people take him on as a special project, as they see he's very hard working, decent and honest. But there's a problem.... Tobias is a bit of a jerk and he seems to repeatedly make life tough for the kid. What's to become of this odd rivalry?

"The Missouri Traveler" is a very sweet film that manages to balance sentimentality and schmaltziness with entertainment. In other words, it doesn't overwhelm you with too much false sentimentality and the story works for many reasons. Of course the writing is good, but so is the nice direction and the great cast of actors....who are mostly character actors who really make you love the town. One of Disney's best live action films.

Most of the other reviews make me cringe - not because they're so out there, but because they show how much individuality and gumption today's Americans have given up for a malevolent government safety net. Years ago, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas told a college graduating class (I forget whether it was at Ole Miss, or his alma mater University of the Holy Cross in Worcester Mass.) the one thing that has stuck in MY head, ever since..."the awful truth is, when you're in America, you're on your own." In the 1800s and even into the early 1900s, orphaned kids weren't given special dispensation for being orphans and such kids grew up damned quickly. The fact that so many succeeded in so many economic directions only spoke to the innate spirit of a man (or woman) when there was nothing to fall back on.

Most every review here does nothing but attempt to impose 21st-century social standards upon a world well over 100 years removed. I daresay someone from 1890 or 1900 would be nonplussed by the criticism of the world they considered normal by people today who've been coddled into complete infantilism. All one needs to do is to search the internet for a typical 8th-grade final junior high school graduation exam to see how much lowered today's standards have become...a 25-year-old today can't pass an exam a 13-year-old was expected to master 140 years ago. Biarn showed guts, spunk and quick wits to overcome the two deuces life dealt him. Thank the good Lord he wasn't the only one. Yes, it can be sappy at times but all in all this was a good watch.

The title role in The Missouri Traveler is played by young Brandon DeWilde, his last role essentially as a child star. Soon he'd be doing such adult stuff as Blue Denim, Hud, and In Harm's Way.

It's a nostalgic look at life at the turn of the last century in a small Missouri town where orphan kid Brandon DeWilde stops and decides to stay a while.

This is a nice easy to take film, moving along at a leisurely pace, but actually it has some serious issues. This is an orphan kid making his own way in the world, a world I might add without child labor laws. Young DeWilde is working for his keep, both as a sharecropper and as a horse trainer, well at least an assistant trainer.

Paul Ford gets a preparatory performance in this film for his later role as the mayor of River City in The Music Man. DeWilde has a couple of adult role models, the cynical Lee Marvin the guy who worked his way up to the top and the loquacious Gary Merrill who is the town newspaper editor. Both give DeWilde some good lessons about life.

In fact both Merrill and Marvin get into a knock down drag out fight that was copied, but lovingly from John Ford's The Quiet Man.

The Missouri Traveler was released through Buena Vista Productions in the beginning years of that company before it exclusively was the distributor for Walt Disney. It's a nice film, especially for family viewing with a lot of good lessons in it.

Missouri Traveler is an okay movie; you and your kids can enjoy it at least once. Biarn is a runaway from an orphan's home who happens across the small town of Delphi, where he settles into an abandoned farm and makes a life on his own with both the help and interference of various of the townsfolk. Brandon DeWilde's performance as Biarn is rather underplayed, almost to the point of making him seem a bit dull; this is probably his weakest film performance but even so he's okay in it. There were so many differences between the book and the movie though, and I wonder why the movie version was changed so much. In the movie, most of the theme seems to be Biarn rising above Tobias Brown's taking advantage of him, but in the book the themes are much deeper and more numerous; just by being himself, Biarn affects many of Delphi's townsfolk to an extent nobody realizes until the end of the story. This unexpected depth of the plot has unfortunately not made it from the book to the movie. Even so, watch The Missouri Traveler - and if you and/or the kids like the movie, get the book. Read it, have your kids read it, or read it to them at bedtime... it's nearly 300 pages and you'll learn the REAL story of the Missouri Traveler. The movie is 'nice' but only a taste of the actual story; I would really like to see this one remade, staying faithful to the actual story. It would be so much better.