The story is about the Dabney family and it begins in Mississippi just before the Civil War. The Dabneys are a proud family and not in favor of secession. But they and the folks around them are a distinct minority and eventually they end up seceding from Mississippi once the state joins the Confederacy. Not surprisingly, the new Confederacy is NOT pleased that this county has joined the Union...and bad things are a comin'.But there's much more to the tale and it centers around Morna Dabney (Susan Hayward). She is vivacious and beloved by Clay--a man who loves the idea of war and secession. But when Morna is injured and it appears as if she'll never walk again, Clay shows his true colors...and the roguish Keith (Van Helfin) steps up and shows he really is a heck of a guy.This is enjoyable and with very nice acting. The only real problem is that what happens to the Dabneys and the county is pretty much foreordained and there are few surprises here. The story, by the way, was inspired by a similar situation in Jones county, where such a rebellion against the state of Mississippi occurred.

"Destry Rides Again" director George Marshall's American Civil War saga "Tap Roots" shares more in common with "Gone with the Wind" than "Free State of Jones." "North West Mounted Police" scenarist Alan Le May adapted James Street's 1942 novel about a Southern patriarch, Hoab Dabney (Ward Bond of "The Searchers"), who refuses to embark on war the rest of Mississippi with the Confederacy against Abraham Lincoln. "The Very Thought of You" writer Lionel Wiggam contributed additional dialogue. Since I haven't read Street's novel, I cannot attest to the film's fidelity to the novel. Hoab Dabney has a sprawling plantation style ranch in south central Mississippi that his ancestors carved out of the wilderness. The action unfolds on the eve of the war with everybody dreading the prospect of Lincoln taking up residence in the White House. Oddly enough, the protagonist of this spectacle isn't Hoab Dabney. Instead, newspaper publisher and writer Keith Alexander (a trimly mustached Van Heflin of "The Raid") is the central character. He totes a pair of black powder pistols and he dresses impeccably. Keith has his eyes on Hoab's beautiful, rambunctious daughter Morna (Susan Hayward of "Garden of Evil") who has her eyes glued on American officer Clay MacIvor (Whitfield Connor of "The Saracen Blade"), who hates Lincoln and resigns from the Union Army to become a Confederate officer when hostilities break out. Actually, despite the fact that Jones County native James Street was inspired to write his novel owing to the exploits of Newton Knight, he appears to have been inspired more by Margot Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind." The Newton Knight character Hoab Dabney retreats into the background as a muddled, misguided peripheral character who dominates the action with his refusal to follow Mississippi. The romance between Morna and Clay assumes paramount importance in this Universal-International production. Disaster strikes when Morna is thrown off her horse and injures her spine so badly that Dabney physician Dr. MacIntosh (Griff Barnett of "Santa Fe Stampede") informs everybody that Morna will never walk again. Hoab's close friend, a Native American appropriately named Tishomingo (Boris Karloff of "Frankenstein") rejects MacIntosh's diagnosis and vows to have Morna back on her feet and walking again. Tishomingo believes that relentlessly massaging the leg will restore Morna's ability to perambulate. Meantime, a disillusioned Clay strikes up a romance with Hoab's other daughter, Aven (Julie London of "Nabonga"), and Keith spots them pitching woo. Naturally, Keith moves in on Morna, but she initially rebuffs his advances. Eventually, and inevitably, these two will be drawn together, while Clay shed his blue uniform for a gray one, and Hoab decides to withdraw from the Confederacy. Clay is ordered to arrest Hoab, and Hoab assembles an army, but the Confederates have them surrounded and cut off from the outside world so that Keith cannot get a caravan of arms and ammunition through after the rainy season sets in and turns everything to mud. Marshall and his scenarists carefully set up the dramatic oppositions with Clay emerging as the chief villain and Keith as the steadfast hero. After Clay and his combined Confederate artillery and cavalry attack, Hoab staggers about in a daze when explosions rip his own plantation style ranch apart and this militia scrambles into the swamps. Despite the lack of historical accuracy and the "Gone with the Wind" template, "Tap Roots" isn't a bad movie, merely a formulaic one, but what is particularly galling is that the Confederacy is triumphant in the end when Jefferson Davis' minions were not so in reality. Hoab employs a "Gone with the Wind" maid, Dabby (Ruby Dandridge of "Cabin in the Sky") who does everything out of the goodness of her heart. Marshall does generate suspense and excitement during the final half-hour as it looks like Clay will wipe out Hoab's men despite Keith's best efforts. Universal-International looks like the studio blew a bundle on this Civil War epic. As somebody pointed in the goofs section, mountains can be seen rearing up in the background, and Mississippi has no mountains. Initially, I thought that they might have been pine-clad hills. The photography is excellent as are the performances and the lush production values.

1948's "Tap Roots" has been described as a poor man's "Gone with the Wind," and that pretty much sums up the simplistic plot, with Van Heflin and Susan Hayward supplying the love interest. As Hoab Dabney, patriarch of the Lebanon Valley in Mississippi, Ward Bond enjoys one of his most prominent movie roles, ably assisted by the scene stealing Boris Karloff, surprisingly cast as Choctaw Indian medicine man Tishomingo, equally adept at healing as he is wielding a mean whip. The slave-owning Dabneys decide to stay neutral as the Civil War gets underway, rousing the townsmen to defy the Confederates, regardless of the consequences (Jonathan Hale has one scene as General Joseph Johnston). By this time, Karloff made infrequent returns to the studio that made him a star (ending with 1953's "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"), and his casting was most definitely inspired by his recent portrayal of Guyasuta, Chief of the Senecas, in Cecil B. De Mille's "Unconquered" (1946). The darkly-complected actor had played a multitude of Native Americans, mostly villainous, during the silent era, but had only these two roles since the advent of talkies (his only sound Western was 1930's "The Utah Kid").

Nine years after losing the role of Scarlett in GWTW, Susan Hayward got her chance to play a Southern belle in 'Tap Roots'. While her emoting is more than sufficient, the weak script cannot live up to the expensive trappings and handsome production values of this minor technicolor epic from Universal.Van Heflin, a fine actor, is a dashing newspaper publisher involved with the saucy heroine, as are her brother (Richard Long), an Indian who practices primitive cures (Boris Karloff), and her sister (Julie London). Against a Civil War background in Mississippi, the cliches are all there--and for good measure there's even a fire that destroys a plantation. If you're expecting another GWTW, forget it. It's simply an enjoyable Civil War romance photographed in lush technicolor and designed to showcase Susan Hayward's ability to play a vixenish Southern belle. For added interest, Ward Bond is featured in a strong supporting role--just as he was in GWTW.Summing up: average entertainment but nothing spectacular.