How the West Was Won (1962)

A family saga covering several decades of Westward expansion in the nineteenth century - including the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the building of the railroads.

Directors:

John Ford, Henry Hathaway

Writer:

James R. Webb

Stars:

James Stewart, John Wayne, Gregory Peck

Won 3 Oscars. Another 7 wins & 5 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Carroll Baker	...	Eve Prescott
Lee J. Cobb	...	Marshal Lou Ramsey
Henry Fonda	...	Jethro Stuart
Carolyn Jones	...	Julie Rawlings
Karl Malden	...	Zebulon Prescott
Gregory Peck	...	Cleve Van Valen
George Peppard	...	Zeb Rawlings
Robert Preston	...	Roger Morgan
Debbie Reynolds	...	Lilith Prescott
James Stewart	...	Linus Rawlings
Eli Wallach	...	Charlie Gant
John Wayne	...	Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
Richard Widmark	...	Mike King
Brigid Bazlen	...	Dora Hawkins
Walter Brennan	...	Col. Jeb Hawkins

Storyline

Setting off on a journey to the west in the 1830s, the Prescott family run into a man named Linus, who helps them fight off a pack of thieves. Linus then marries daughter Eve Prescott (Carroll Baker), and 30 years later goes off to fight in the Civil War with their son, with bloody results. Eve's sister, Lily, heads farther west and has adventures with a professional gambler, stretching all the way to San Francisco and into the 1880s.

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Plot Keywords:

arizona | ulysses s. grant character | abraham lincoln character | national film registry | arizona territory | 

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Taglines:

It's here! The mightiest adventure ever filmed!

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Genres:

Western

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Certificate:

G

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Arapaho

Release Date:

20 February 1963 (USA)

Also Known As:

Das war der wilde Westen

Filming Locations:

Old Tucson - 201 S. Kinney Road, Tucson, Arizona, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$15,000,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$46,500,000

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$50,000,000, 31 December 1969

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM),Cinerama Productions Corp.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

164 min

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (35 mm prints) Cinerama 7-Track (Westrex Recording System)

Color:

Color (Metrocolor) (uncredited)

Aspect Ratio:

2.89 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

By August 12, 1963, the film had grossed $17,000,000.

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Goofs

When Cleve leaves the poker table on the ship, he puts down his cards twice. First he lays them down, then he throws them.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Narrator: [as the camera pans over the Rocky Mountains] This land has a name today, and is marked on maps. But, the names and the marks and the maps all had to be won, won from nature and from primitive man.

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Crazy Credits

Opening credits: Except for historical events and characters, the events and characters depicted in this photoplay are fictitious and any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

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Connections

Referenced in Biography: Darryl F. Zanuck: 20th Century Filmmaker (1995)

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Soundtracks

(Fifteen Miles On) the Erie Canal
(uncredited)
Traditional
Sung off-screen by Dave Guard and The Whiskeyhill Singers
Judy Henske, Cyrus Faryar, David Buck Wheat

User Reviews

How Hollywood Struck Back Against Television

In the early 1960s Hollywood found itself under attack by television so had to wheel out some big guns . THE LONGEST DAY and HOW THE WEST WAS WON were a couple of these howitzers . Film,s that lasted several hours full of episodic structure with big names playing the characters . Watching these type of movies years later you can see the thinking behind them but do seem overblown with hindsight and you can also see why film makers wanted to make more intense movies via New Hollywood in the 1970s

That said HTWWW is by no means a bad movie . If there's a problem with it it's the narrative problem of trying to squeeze 100 years of history in to three hours of cinema and to a large degree the film succeeds to a large extent . It also deserves some credit for using Debbie Reynolds and George Peppard - neither of whom were the biggest names in the movie - to play the main linking characters

And yet the problem of the narrative is impossible to overcome entirely successfully . The story remains episodic and has every cliché under the sun . Men are men and women are thankful . White men tend to be extremely good or extremely bad and the indigenous population are noble savages who become mere savages when white man speak with forked tongue . There's also the annoying production value of people standing in front of back projection which jars with the numerous establishing shots taken on location. It's also a conservative film with God frequently getting a name check

But for the most part it's an entertaining Western even for those of us who don't like the genre . Perhaps the reason it does work is because it's so traditional where the world is portrayed in black and white , a world that has never existed in the first place