"Many Rivers to Cross" is just plain old-fashioned movie entertainment. Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker play beautifully off one another, with a great comedy supporting cast. It includes Victor McLaglen, Sig Ruman, Rhys Williams, Alan Hale Jr., and James Arness. The pioneer plot seems a fresh setting for a comedy – now, if not also when this film came out in 1955. The script is very well written and directed. I think the actors were enjoying themselves in the making of this film. The often wooden and low-energy Robert Taylor seems to have relaxed some in his role as Bushrod Gentry. Eleanor Power is perfect as Mary Stuart Cherne. Although some of the outdoor scenes clearly are on a set, that doesn't detract too much because of the action. And, there's plenty of that. This film moves nicely from one skirmish or squabble to another humorous sequence. It isn't a loud laughter film, but one that brings many smiles and chuckles.An opening prologue dedicates the movie to the pioneer women of yore who stood by their men and helped settle the frontier (then Kentucky). It says, without them, most of we viewers wouldn't be here today watching this movie. So, one knows to expect the humor that follows. And, it delivers it in some clever and witty lines, and in rollicking scenes. At the opening, Mary Stuart is returning to her home from hunting game. She has an injured Bushrod in tow. Cadmus Cherne (Victor McLaglen) says, "Oh, she goes out for game for the larder, and brings back another mouth to feed."The movie has one of the funniest fist fights ever put on film. Bushrod and Luke Radford (Alan Hale Jr.) must lay out a dozen other men in their fight. There's an interesting sequence that shows a "nail shoot." Contestants vie by shooting at nails in trees, to pound them all the way in. Another very funny sequence occurs toward the end. Bushrod and Mary Stuart have a skirmish with Indians in a cave. Three of the Indians are done in, and only one is left outside the cave. But, he has a rifle. Bushrod says, "He ain't gonna leave the mouth of the cave unless we can draw him in here somehow. I'll tell you what – If he thought I was dead, he might come in here looking for you. Probably wants you alive to take home with him. Serve him right too." Mary Stuart says, "I might not look so bad in a tepee." The rest of that scene is hilarious.This is a fun, entertaining movie that the whole family should enjoy.

Sporting a title seemingly more appropriate for a reggae song (maybe because it later WAS the title of a reggae song, on Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come" album), "Many Rivers to Cross" (1955) is rather an odd hybrid of screwball comedy and action-packed Western, filmed in CinemaScope and Technicolor. Dedicated to the women of the Kentucky frontier, the picture introduces us to a trapper and hunter named Bushrod Gentry, a roving free spirit in the Kentucky of what the viewer must infer is the early 19th century. After a run-in with a band of Shawnees, and suffering a fairly serious knife wound in his arm, Bushrod lays up at the home of Cadmus Cherne (Victor McLaglen, in one of his final films), his wife, four sons and daughter, Mary Stuart. Unfortunately for old Bushrod, Mary takes an instant hankering to him, vowing to make him her husband...no matter what! What follows are some very amusing sequences in which Mary gets her blowhard suitor Luke Radford (Alan Hale, Jr.) to fight with Bushrod, a shotgun wedding is concocted, a shooting match goes down, and those pesky Shawnees mass for another attack, during which time Mary drives Bushrod to the point of distraction with her incessant, borderline maddening attentions....As played by hunky Hollywood leading man Robert Taylor, Bushrod is an extremely likable fellow, as handy with a whip as Indiana Jones and better looking in a coonskin cap than Fess Parker in TV's "Daniel Boone" show of almost a decade later. As manly as can be, even a knife through the arm doesn't prevent him from engaging in a fisticuffs dukeout with Radford THE VERY NEXT DAY! Stretching the viewer's credulity a bit further, however, is Bushrod's determined efforts to AVOID Mary Stuart's amorous advances. Played by Eleanor Parker at the very peak of her gorgeousness, a hot-blooded spitfire just seething with sexuality, Mary is quite a gal, despite her annoying ways. That director Roy Rowland (who had worked with Taylor the previous year on the great film noir "Rogue Cop") could go an entire picture without giving Parker a single close-up, or show off her brilliant red hair to better effect, really does boggle this viewer's mind (granted, I know next to nothing about making pictures). Eleanor was one of Hollywood's most sensational-looking actresses of the '50s (check her out in 1952's "Scaramouche" if you don't believe me), and to keep her in medium range in any given shot is a waste of raw material, sez I! Still, the film has its compensations. Parker shows herself to be an excellent PHYSICAL comedian here, taking pratfalls, swimming, fighting, shooting guns and arrows, rolling in the dirt and so on; a great dramatic actress in a rare comedic role. She and Taylor make a wonderful, handsome couple (as they had the previous year in "Valley of the Kings"), to put it mildly. Adding to this film's pleasures are James Arness (who later that year would embark on a little 20-year Western of his own, TV's "Gunsmoke") as a boisterous frontiersman, Russell Johnson as one of Mary's brothers (yes, along with Alan Hale, Jr., that's two future "Gilligan's Island" alumni in one film a decade earlier), and a catchy theme song, "The Berry Tree," that lilts its way through the entire picture (although it should be mentioned that the song's opening line "The higher up the berry tree, the sweeter grow the berries / The more you hug and kiss a gal, the more she wants to marry" is a possible non sequitur!). Oftentimes verging on the cartoonish with its action and hijinks, "Many Rivers to Cross" is lighthearted fun for the entire family. Oh, and a message to "the Academy": Howzabout a well-deserved, honorary Oscar for Eleanor while she's still with us?!?!

If you liked Robert Taylor, (Bushrod Gentry) in many of his films, you will enjoy this comedy with Eleanor Parker, (Mary Stuart Cheme). This film opens up with Bushrod traveling through the woods of Kentucky as a hunter to just sold $400.00 worth of furs at a trading post and the young girl at the post had her eyes on Bushrod for marriage, but this was not what Bushrod wanted in his life for a long time to come.Bushrod runs into an Indian who attacks Mary Stuart Cheme, and saves her from being scalped and raped. It was from that moment on that Mary Stuart was determined to have this man as her husband.There is plenty of comedy and Victor McLaglen, (Mr. Cadmus Cheme) gave a great supporting role along with many other famous actors. Enjoy.

Played absolutely over the top, to the hilt, right down to the final scene. Perhaps the only false note in the entire film is where Taylor saves the child. Somehow its out of kilter with the rest of the antics in its pacing, otherwise this is always played for laughs, beginning to end.As someone noted the two principles are way too old for the parts, unless everybody in those days just LOOKED worse for the wear early, which they did of course. It would have been better to have made this ten years earlier then most of it would not have seemed so outlandish, but still its a better comedy than most. The trick is taking it on its own terms and its pure D old fashioned fun. Yet another example of MGMs notion of Disneyland. The final scene of Parker moaning over Taylor to attract the Indians to the scene and kill them, very funny and neatly done, easily worth the price of the ticket, or what must have been for those that saw it in the theater.