Word: clan
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...mountain mothers spread their olympian "dinner-on-the-ground" in the groves of scrub oaks around the graveyard. The kids darted among the weathered tombstones and their rednecked fathers gathered to smoke and discuss politics and family ties. The Adams clan was distinguished by red ribbons, the Webbs wore yellow, and green ribbons identified the Crafts. By high noon, 600 cousins were on hand...
When the entire clan is gathered, Mr. Hobbs continues such chores as garbage disposal, and evenings finds it impossible to concentrate on a book against theoretical talk that outrages his practical intelligence. "Dollars are only symbols," he hears. "Wealth is the natural resources of a country. . ." Running a finger under his shirt collar, his voice trembling, Mr. Hobbs explodes: "It was dollars that bought that beef tonight that you all gobbled up so cheerfully. It was dollars that bought that bottle of gin that disappeared before dinner. Nobody ever handed me any natural resources, and I never paid a grocery...
Producer Disney was almost as true in story as in style to the old Scots legend. Rob Roy (Richard Todd) is chief of Clan MacGregor, A.D. 1715. He loves a High land lassie, Helen Mary (Glynis Johns), but hesitates to marry her as long as he is fighting the English. Against them he wages a brilliant guerrilla war that finally discredits the British Secretary of State for Scotland, the cruel Duke of Montrose (Michael Gough), and brings a true Scottish patriot, the Duke of Argyll (James Robertson Justice) back to power. In the end, Rob, his bagpiper and his sword...
What most wins the heart in Rob Roy, more even than the beauty of its backgrounds, is its modesty. The gathering of the clan for Rob Roy's wedding is, for instance, no massive conclave, but a nice little country get-together of 30 or 40 people. The famed battle of Sheriffmuir is not mounted as a mighty spectacle, with thousands of warriors arrayed on either side, but is shown as it must have been fought: with a gaggle of half-armed crofters opposing a fairly small troop of British regulars. Producer Disney seems to have had an idea...
...past. One of her books (Paul Revere and The World He Lived In) took the 1942 Pulitzer Prize in history; another (The Running of the Tide) won the 1947 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer $150,000 novel contest. Regional devotion comes naturally to Esther Forbes, daughter of a pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts clan, one of whose 17th-century members died in jail while awaiting trial for witchcraft. There is little witchcraft, unfortunately, in Author Forbes's latest novel, Rainbow on the Road, and the plot is frugal even by Yankee standards. A solid fog of research muffles her characters, but whenever...