boblipton

John Wayne (in his first starring role) leads the settlers from the east to their new home in Oregon, through forests, mountains, deserts, and Indian attacks.

Raoul Walsh's attempt to recreate the success of The Covered Wagon (1923) was a flop, and its problems are obvious: Wayne's line readings are bad, the problems with recording sound outdoors are overwhelming, and its immense budget (figures range for two to four million dollar) with movies at the start of a three-year attendance collapse made a profit impossible without a major star. Director Raoul Walsh wanted Gary Cooper, but Paramount said no. Tom Mix could have carried it, but he wasn't making pictures at the moment. The production company, Fox, was in a state of paralysis with William Fox injured in a car crash, and the Justice Department bearing down over anti-trust issues from his attempt to take over MGM. So they blamed John Wayne and moved on.

Even so, there's a lot to admire here, with excellent use of Fox's rarely used 'Grandeur' system of 70mm film overing magnificent images of desert and primary forest. Walsh and his team of cameramen offer some beautiful compositions that even today are astounding, with a horde of extras always doing something that makes sense under the circumstances. All hail the assistant directors: Sid Bowen, Clay Crapnel, Virgil Hart, Earl Rettig, Ewing Scott, and George Walsh!

When a father discovers that his son's high school teacher has assigned a book on a list of subversive literature, he stirs up the whole town against the teacher. But the fear of su subversion doesn't stop with the teacher.

Centron Films produced this film for the Methodist Church in the middle of the Red Scar of the 1950s. Even though Senator McCarthy had been humiliated, the country was still filled with people who thought that anyone who read anything that someone considered leftist was in danger of becoming a wild-eyed communist. Just as later writing about alternative sexuality filled people with the dread that their son or daughter would change their sexuality. It's as if they think being good is dull and being evil is fun.

Two sisters argue the value of taking home economics in high school. The one considering it speaks to a teacher and gets a long and dull lesson.

It's a world that no longer exists: one in which girls took home economics and boys took shop. This was in preparation for a one-income family in which the man went out and earned the money and the wife stayed home, took care of the home and children. Mine was a kinder-und-kuchen family, and in many way it was more important what was done with the money, raising children, living well but economically, than the way the money was brought in. That way of thinking has vanished and families, if they survive, are, except among the very rich, two-income families. So this film made sense when it was produced, if not now.