Much of the fun of watching this film is seeing Beery pull out all stops in trying to upstage eight-year-old O’Brien -- often to no avail since the grave little actress had a natural way of commanding attention. O’Brien later would recall Beery’s grinch-like behavior toward her during location filming in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the adjoining Grand Teton National Park: "There were just enough lunches for the cast and crew, and when my back was turned he’d steal mine."
To confuse or disorient scene-stealing children, Beery was known to pinch them hard just before a scene was shot -- a practice he tried on O’Brien until her mother and director S. Sylvan Simon realized what was happening. "They had to put blocks between us so he wouldn’t pinch me," O’Brien said. She also remembered that Beery’s adopted daughter, who was working as an extra, broke her glasses during filming and Beery "made her work extra hours to pay for them."
O’Brien had happier memories of Main, who was "fun" -- if a bit eccentric, wearing wet toilet paper on her arms because she was terrified of the mosquitoes and other insects on location. "And when we would go into the log cabin to eat, she’d set a place for her dead husband and talk to him at the table." O’Brien also enjoyed the Apache tribe who worked on the film and was thrilled when they made her an "Indian princess." She remembered the excitement of bears appearing on the porch of a log cabin owned by Beery, who had recently filmed another movie in the area and had become quite a fixture on the local scene.
Producer: Orville O. Dull
Director: S. Sylvan Simon
Screenplay: William R. Lipman, Grant Garett, from story by D. A. Loxley
Cinematography: Charles Edgar Schoenbaum
Editing: Ben Lewis
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Youngblood
Costume Design: Irene, Valles
Original Music: David Snell
Principal Cast: Wallace Beery (Zed Bascomb), Margaret O’Brien (Emmy), Marjorie Main (Abbey Hanks), J. Carrol Naish (Bart Yancy), Frances Rafferty (Dora), Marshall Thompson (Jimmy Holden), Russell Simpson (Elijah Walker), Warner Anderson (Luther Mason).
BW-111m. Closed captioning.
by Roger Fristoe
