A Glittering Cast: How the West Was Won

1962 Western
From MGM & Cinerama
Directed by Henry Hathaway, 
John Ford and George Marshall

Starring
Carroll Baker
Walter Brennan
Lee J. Cobb
Henry Fonda
Carolyn Jones
Karl Malden
Agnes Moorehead
Gregory Peck
George Peppard
Robert Preston
Debbie Reynolds
Thelma Ritter
James Stewart
Eli Wallach
John Wayne
Richard Widmark

Not only does this film have a glittering cast, it is, according to the press releases, the greatest cast of stars ever together in one motion picture.  As a great fan of those, great glittering casts, I must agree.  And to that fabulous list above, we will be adding another dozen or so actors later.  As a lover of westerns, let me add there's really never been one quite like How the West Was Won.  I feel it's safe to say there's certainly never been a western more ambitious.

The film, at two hours and 44 minutes, richly details the winning and settling of the American west.  This old cowboy could never want more than that in a western.  Tell me about those settlers, farmers, adventurers, explorers, mountain men, trappers, plainsmen, cowpokes, lawmen, railway workers and all the thousands and thousands of men and women who helped bring to life this beautiful land. 

The big film moves seamlessly through five sections: The Rivers, The Plains, The Outlaws, The Railroads and the Civil War.  This is such a mammoth production that three directors were hired for the year-long shoot.  Henry Hathaway helmed three parts...  The Rivers, The Plains and The Outlaws.  George Marshall directed The Railroad and John Ford steered The Civil War.

We open with The Rivers, about an 1839 migration focusing on the Prescott family, one of several trying to find a way west.  They are Karl Malden and Agnes Moorehead (deans of character actors) and their daughters, Debbie Reynolds and Carroll Baker, and two young sons.   Baker falls for mountain man James Stewart who is reluctant to settle down.

Stewart and the others come across a camp of river pirates, lead by Walter Brennan and his daughter Brigid Bazlen, who attempt to rob them.  It is foiled but not before we witness some good, old-fashioned, slam-bang fun.

Stewart says goodbye to an unhappy Baker and she and her family take off on a raft in another exciting scene as the parents perish in the rapids.  Stewart returns as the parents are being buried and elects to settle down and marry Baker.  She wants them to stay right where they are and build a farm.

For The Plains, Reynolds finds herself in St. Louis and becomes a music hall entertainer.  She meets gambler Gregory Peck and soon falls for him but he has little to do with her until he finds out she has inherited a gold mine in California.  They both join a wagon train heading west.  Reynolds shares a wagon with feisty Thelma Ritter.  Wagonmaster Robert Preston falls for Reynolds and wants to marry her but she only has eyes for Peck.

Another of the great scenes is the Indian attack on the wagon train.  While the film is chock full of superb stunt work, it is certainly in fabulous display in this scene.  There are stunts involving Peck's and Preston's characters jumping on teams of horses as they try to release the front horses and there is an unusual shot from inside a covered wagon that is tumbling down a hillside.

Reynolds' gold mine proves to be a bust but she and Peck marry anyway.  We revisit Baker who is now a widow with a grown son, George Peppard, who is about to go off and fight in the Civil War.

The Civil War segment is my least favorite but thankfully it's also the shortest.  Along with Peppard it features John Wayne (as General Sherman), Harry Morgan as (General Grant), Raymond Massey (in another turn as Abe Lincoln) and Russ Tamblyn as a confederate deserter.  When the war is over, Peppard gives his home over to his brother and heads out west.

The Railroad sequence acknowledges the Pony Express and the telegraph that came after it.  Peppard is now part of the cavalry with duties that include keeping peace with the Indians.  He is assisted by buffalo hunter Henry Fonda but challenged by railroad boss Richard Widmark who, due to his recklessness, causes the Indians to stampede a large herd of buffalo through the railroad camp.  Another great scene, flawlessly staged, filmed and edited.

The Outlaws features Peppard now as a marshal in Arizona and married to Carolyn Jones and the father of three young children.  He runs into an old nemesis, Eli Wallach, whose brother Peppard killed earlier and Wallach wants revenge.  He gets it on board a train with Lee J. Cobb, another marshal, also along to help Peppard with Wallach and his henchmen.

I have seen some thrilling train sequences in my day and this one deserves inclusion among the best.  The stunt work is super exciting although, sadly, stunt man Bob Morgan (actress Yvonne de Carlo's husband at the time) lost a leg when long logs being transported on the train break loose and Morgan's leg was crushed.

Reynolds, as Peppard's aunt, joins the family for the film's finale and it is such a treat for me.  The family is in a buckboard traveling through Monument Valley when they begin to sing the film's theme, Home in the Meadow, which morphs after one stanza into the spirited voices of chorale.  It is so glorious, this transitional scene, that I usually play it over and over.

We watch the old west become the modern west via flashes of Hoover Dam, a four-level freeway and ultimately San Francisco, its bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.  All the while narrator Spencer Tracy delivers the epilogue:

The west was won by its pioneers, adventurers and settlers and is long gone now.  Yet it is theirs forever, for they left tracks in history that will never be eroded by wind or rain, never plowed under by tractors, never buried in a compost of events.  Out of the hard simplicity of their lives, out of their vitality, of their hopes and sorrows, grew legends of courage and pride to inspire their children and their children's children.  From soil enriched by their blood, out of their fever to explore and be, came lakes where there were once burning deserts, came the goods of earth, mine and wheat fields, orchards and great lumber mills.  All the sinews of a growing country.  Out of their crude settlements, their trading posts came cities to rank among the great ones of the world.  All the heritage of a people free to dream, free to mold their own destiny. 

How the West Was Won owes its stunning, panoramic view to the Cinerama process.  It was a three-camera technique using three projectors on a deeply-curved screen.  It provides a 136-degree angle of vision that gives the audience a sense of being in the picture and provides seven channels of stereophonic sound.  An intermission was required so the three projectors could be re-threaded and the sound synchronized.

Only a dozen or so theaters in the U.S. were able to show Cinerama films.  The main films that were showcased in the beginning were essentially travelogues, gorgeous though they were. If one were watching a rafting scene, for example, there was a feeling of wanting to grab a towel and dry off.  

Only two films have been done using the three-camera Cinerama process, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and How the West Was Won, both from MGM.  And to be clear, the chief asset of this western is the commanding, beautiful visuals (almost the entire movie is shot outdoors).  Four Oscar-winning cinematographers plotted out the camera work and it perplexes me that they did not win an Oscar, another example of the short-sightedness of Oscar voters.  They did, however, step up with wins for best writing (perhaps a stretch) and film editing and sound, both very deserved. 

None of the actors was nominated for Oscars and none should have been although that is not meant as an insult.  Films that have an epic story to tell are often ones that have acting taking a decided  back seat to the story itself.  Of the large cast Reynolds & Peppard have the most screen time, each appearing in three of the five segments.  Reynolds has said that when she signed on, her character was to have drowned in the rafting scene.  But the decision was made to extend her role as a way to tie four generations of Prescotts together throughout the five segments.

Other actors in the large cast, not mentioned so far, are David Brian, Andy Devine, Lee Van Cleef, James Griffith, Jay C. Flippen, Mickey Shaughnessy, John Larch, Willis Bouchey, Karl Swenson, Chuck Roberson, Rodolfo Acosta and child actors Kim Charney and Chip Livingston.

MGM pulled out all the stops for How the West Was Won.  All of its production departments were put to work on this one film.  There were 77 sets.  Location work took place in numerous places in Illinois, Kentucky, Colorado, South Dakota, Utah, Oregon, Arizona and California.  Stunt people were hired by the dozens.  There were 12,000 speaking and non-speaking actors hired.  There were also scores of animal handlers to supervise the work of 630 horses, 150 mules and 2,000 buffalo.  There were mishaps galore.  Making a movie on this immense scale is never easy.  Adding to it all was the misery of working with Cinerama cameras.  Hathaway said making the film was a lot of trouble.

It would be oh so wrong to sign off without a mention of the music, certainly one of the most triumphant scores that I can recall... the winning of the west seems to require it.  That go-to conductor of western scores, Dimitri Tiomkin, was first approached but was unavailable.  Then the suits did what they all did... they looked for someone named Newman.  There were choices.  This one is Alfred who dazzled movie audiences for years with his musical gifts and most people find this one to be among his very best.  It appears on the esteemed American Film Institute's 100 Years of Films Scores list. 

Debbie Reynolds warbles three songs, including several renditions of A Home in the Meadow, which uses the tune of Greensleeves.  There is also that splendid chorus referred to earlier and they close out the film with a dramatic rendition of the title tune.

How the West Was Won was a massive commercial success and not just in the country it honors but worldwide.  The Library of Congress has selected it as a culturally significant film.  As a work that celebrates the settling of the American west, so far, I don't think it can be beat.

Here's that trailer, brought to you with enthusiasm...

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