Spencer's Mountain (1963)

Spencer's Mountain is a 1963 film written, directed, and produced by Delmer Daves from a novel by Earl Hamner, Jr. The film starred Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara and in early appearances, James MacArthur, Veronica Cartwright, and Victor French. The novel and film became the basis for the popular television series The Waltons, which followed in 1972. Differing from both the film and novel, The Waltons watered down many of the adult themes, including alcoholism and infidelity. Spencer's Mountain was O'Hara and Fonda's second film together. They had previously co-starred in Immortal Sergeant (1943).

Spencer's Mountain features the majestic scenery of Wyoming's Teton Range, as photographed by cinematographer Charles Lawton in Panavision and Technicolor. It was filmed in and around the town of Jackson and features the nearby Chapel of the Transfiguration. The novel and the series were set in the Virginia Appalachians, but Hamner said in 1963 that Daves wanted more imposing mountains to emphasize the characters' isolation and struggles with their environment.

Film critic Judith Crist writing in The New York Herald Tribune said of the film, "sheer prurience and perverted morality" adding "it makes the nudie shows at the Rialto look like Walt Disney productions.

Synopsis

The film centers on the trials and tribulations of the Spencers, a family living in the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming during the early 1960s. As the patriarch of a large and growing family, Clay Spencer (Henry Fonda) is fiercely independent, yet dedicated to his family. While he resists the influence of religion, he struggles to remain faithful to his wife Olivia (Maureen O'Hara), to allow his son (James MacArthur) to attend college, and to build a new home for his family.

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