How the West was Won (1962)

Three directors, about 10 major stars and a new Cinerama system add up to a three-hour Western epic that traces 50 years of Prescott family history, from their trip West to the days when the West was settling down.

One daughter, Eve (Carroll Baker) falls in love with a trapper (James Stewart). But he’s the wandering sort, set in his “sinful” ways and bound to Pittsburgh to be sinful after selling his beaver pelts.

When Eve loses both of her parents in a raft accident on the rapids, she decides to settle and start farming where they are buried. Reluctantly, the trapper agrees to settle down with her, until he and his oldest son are called by duty to serve for the North in the Civil War.

Meanwhile, the other daughter Lily (Debbie Reynolds) dreams of big-city life and figures she should be heading East, not West. But she finds herself performing song and dance routines for men in St. Louis and dreaming of marrying one who is rich.

Then she falls for a gambler named Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck). He isn’t rich, but she might just be. Word comes that one of her admirers has left Lily a gold mine in California. So she heads West in a wagon train; Cleve follows along.

Only the mine turns out to be played out by the time she reaches California. Cleve, dreaming of marrying rich himself, abandons her. She returns to singing and dancing for a living, until they meet again on a steamboat.

This time, Cleve has an idea for making a fortune by getting in on the ground floor of the railroad’s westward expansion.

Review:

Certainly better than your average Western. How could it not be with a cast that includes James Stewart as the trapper, Gregory Peck as the gambler, Richard Widmark as a money-hungry railroad boss, Henry Fonda as a buffalo hunter and John Wayne as a Union officer who convinces Gen. Grant not to resign.

But in an attempt to cover the westward expansion from the days of the fur trappers to the days when the West was settled, the filmmakers bite off an awful lot of ground and a lack of attachment to characters means this falls short of classic status.

It was the first film to use the Cinerama system, and the directors clearly tried to take advantage, delivering spectacles like the trip down the rapids, a buffalo stampede into a railroad camp and, perhaps most impressive, the final shootout aboard runaway train cars between Eve’s now aging son and a snarling bandit played by Eli Wallach.

The extended cast list is like a who’s who’s of Western character actors — Lee Van Cleef even has a small role as a river pirate and son of Walter Brennan’s Col. Jeb Hawkins. Narration is provided by Spencer Tracy.

Directors:
John Ford
Henry Hathaway
George Marshall

Cast:
Carroll Baker … Eve Prescott Rawlings
Debbie Reynolds … Lily Prescott
Gregory Peck … Cleve Van Valen
James Stewart … Linus Rawlings
Gerorge Peppard … Zeb Rawlings
Lee J. Cobb … Marshal Ramsey
Eli Wallach … Charlie Grant
Henry Fonda … Jethro Stuart
Richard Widmark … Mike King
Carolyn Jones … Julia Rawlings
Karl Malden .. Zebulon Prescott
Robert Preston … Roger Morgan
Thelma Ritter … Agatha Clegg
John Wayne … Gen. Sherman
Andy Devine … Cpl. Peterson
Harry Morgan … Gen. Grant
Brigid Bazlen … Dora Hawkins
Walter Brennan … Col. Jeb Hawkins

Runtime: 162 min.

Main theme:
“The Promised Land”

Memorable lines:

Julia: “There ain’t no sense to you, Eve. You want to be a farm wife, but you don’t want to marry a farmer.”
Eve: “Neither do you.”
Julia: “Of course not. I don’t want to have nothing to do with farms. I want silk dresses and fine carriages and a man to smell good. What I want’s back East, not West. I’ll get there yet. You watch.”
Eve: “You don’t know what you want yet. It’s the man that counts, not where he lives.”

Linus Rawlings, introducing himself to the Prescotts: “I’m hungrier than sin and real peaceable like.”

Eve: “Do I look good to you?”
Linus Rawlings: “Ain’t you being just a little forward.”
Eve: “Well, you’re headed upriver and I’ve headed down. There just ain’t no time to get these questions answered.”

Thelma Ritter to Julia: “You know what? I have a feeling you’re going to draw men like fish to the bait. Maybe I can catch one of them while they swim by. You got yourself a partner.”

Morgan: “For you, childbearing would come as easy as rolling off a log.”
Julia: “Well, I think I’d rather roll off a log, Mr. Morgan.”

Julia: “Mr. Morgan, all my life I’ve wanted to marry a rich husband. Can I blame Cleve for wanting to marry a rich wife?”

Zeb Rawlings: “There ain’t much glory in lookin’ at a man with his guts hangin’ out.”