He'd previously played Sherman in an unbilled cameo on his friend Ward Bond's Wagon Train series. Morgan did a first rate job as Grant in his brief cameo and Wayne was playing Sherman for the second time in his career. The Civil War piece featured John Wayne and Harry Morgan in a moment of reflection at the battlefield of Shiloh. John Ford did the Civil War sequence and George Marshall the sequence about the railroad. Three of Hollywood's top directors did parts of this film although the lion's share by all accounts was done by Henry Hathaway. The girls meet and marry mountain man James Stewart and gambler Gregory Peck eventually and their adventures and those of their children are what make up the plot of How the West Was Won. They have two daughters, dreamy romantic Carroll Baker and feisty Debbie Reynolds. We first meet the Presscotts, Karl Malden and Agnes Moorehead going west on the Erie Canal and later by flatboat on the Ohio River. Webb's original screenplay for the screen won an Oscar in 1962 and it involves an episodic account of the Presscott family and their contribution to settling the American west in the 19th century. The formatted VHS copy I watched tonight can't come close to doing it justice. A motion picture theater equipped for Cinerama is the only way this one should be seen. I still remember seeing How the West Was Won in Cinerama when it made it into general release back in 1962. It's a magnificent example of the kind of old-fashioned blockbuster just don't make anymore. Rating : Extraordinary film, essential and indispensable watching. The picture won Oscar 63 to Film editing, Sound, Story and Screenplay. Some uncredited work was done by Richard Thorpe. Of the five segments, Henry Hathaway directed "The Rivers", "The Plains" and "The Outlaws", John Ford directed "The Civil War" and George Marshall did "The Railroad". The motion picture was spectacularly directed by three veteran filmmakers, they were enlisted by producer Bernard Smith to handle the multi-part frontier stories relating exciting exploits of an ordinary family. Rousing musical score by the classical Alfred Newman, including an immortal leitmotif. Krasner, Milton Krasner, Charles Lang Jr and Joseph LaShelle. All four cinematographers were Oscar-winners such as William H. Not many of the players have a chance to register as a bearded Henry Fonda as a scout, Walter Brennan, Lee Van Cleef, Agnes Moorehead, Ken Curtis, Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Mickey Shaughnessy, Russ Tamblyn and an interminable list, Impressive cinematography filmed in Cinerama, and photographed in splendorous Metrocolor, though it loses much of its breathtaking visual impact on TV but otherwise holds up pretty well. Particularly supreme for its all-star cast list with some actors epitomising the spirit of the early West, at least as Hollywood saw it, including a Mountain man as James Stewart, a rogue card player, Gregory Peck, and Debbie Reynolds is notable here as a gorgeous dancer seeking fame and fortune. The Civil War is the shortest part and the weakest including a brief acting by John Wayne as General Sheridan and Harry Morgan as General Ulysses S Grant. Awesome as well as spectacular scenes such as an exciting white-water rafting sequence, a train robbery, a thundering buffalo stampede and Indian attacks. It's a big budget film with good actors, technicians, production values and pleasing results. It efficiently describes an attractive panoramic view of the American Western focusing on the tribulations, trials and travels of three generations of a family. The picture gets great action, expansive Western settings, shootouts, love stories, it is quite entertaining and there some some scenes still rate with the best of the West, including marvelous moments along the way. As a family of Western settlers from the 1830s to the 1880s, beginning with their voyage on The Eerie Canal and going on to encompass a Civil War battle and other happenings. And of course, the building of the railroads and career between Union Pacific and Central Pacific to arrive in Promontory Point among other epic events. Turbulent and mighty story about a family saga set against the background of wars and historical deeds covering several decades of Westward expansion in the nineteenth century-including the Gold Rush, the Civil War,, Pony Express, Telegraph, confrontation between cattlemen and homesteaders.
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