How the West Was Won (1962) on Netflix
Zebulon Prescott leads his family west along the Erie Canal toward the frontier. On the Ohio River they meet Linus Rawlings, a trapper bound for Pittsburgh, drawn to Prescott's daughter Eve.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.1/1025,862 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Over the decades of the nineteenth century, one pioneer family takes part in the westward expansion of the United States. Zebulon Prescott and his wife Rebecca take their daughters, Eve and Lilith, west toward the frontier on the Erie Canal. Pulled through the first stretch by barge, they build rafts to continue down the Ohio River. Along the way they meet Linus Rawlings, a mountain man carrying his furs to Pittsburgh, and he and Eve are drawn to each other, though he is not ready to settle down. The two part company, and the Prescotts travel on down the river toward the frontier.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about How the West Was Won (1962)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Stuntman Bob Morgan, husband of Yvonne De Carlo, was seriously injured and lost a leg during a break in filming a gunfight on a moving train for the Outlaws portion, when chains holding logs on a flatbed car broke and crushed him as he crouched beside them.
- Bing Crosby approached the studio with a television spectacular called How the West Was Won, based on photographs of the Old West in Life, with profits earmarked for St. John's Hospital and an album recorded with Rosemary Clooney; MGM purchased the film rights from Crosby.
- Filming required that the actors be artificially positioned out of dramatic and emotional frame and out of synchronization with one another; only when the three-print Cinerama process was projected upon a Cinerama screen did their positions and emotions synchronize, such as normal eye contact.
- The novelization was written in 1962 by Western author Louis L'Amour, who according to his son Beau had frequent clashes with the studio over inauthenticity and inaccuracy in the film and over the studio's indecisiveness about which segments would be made.
- The film marked then 66-year-old Raymond Massey's last appearance as Abraham Lincoln, a role he had previously played on stage in Abe Lincoln in Illinois and the stage adaptation of John Brown's Body, on screen, and on television.
- For "The Civil War" segment, footage of the Battle of Chickamauga from MGM's 1957 film Raintree County was used for combat scenes during the day, as the scenes with Peppard, Tamblyn, Wayne and Morgan were all at night.
- Dimitri Tiomkin, known for his Western film scores, was the first composer approached for the film, but he became unavailable following eye surgery and Alfred Newman was hired as a replacement to compose and conduct the music.
