The only times I could recall that many Native Americans gathering at one spot in the history of the American West was at the council for the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie and the Battle of Little Bighorn. I am sorry, but I found this scenario improbable. Initially, the wagon emigrants refused to comply until they discovered that a very large party of warriors had accompanied the Sioux leader. This led the Sioux to later track down the wagon party and demand the killer face justice. The emigrant killed the boy and failed to inform the others of the incident. During a social gathering between the emigrants and a group of Sioux warriors, one of the emigrants mistook the Sioux leader's son for a wolf. The biggest historical head scratcher occurred midway into the film. If the McBees were able to afford the journey to Oregon, they could afford to wear better quality clothing than what they wore. And it is a miracle that the McBees did not finish their journey nearly naked. Their clothes looked threadbare in compare to their fellow emigrants. I got the feeling she was trying to convey the family's background as Georgia dirt farmers barely able to afford the journey to Oregon. And Koch's costume designs for the McBee family proved to be a real head scratcher. None of the women wore any layers of petticoats or corsets. The costumes looked as if they came straight from a warehouse. I realize that "THE WAY WEST" is basically a Western about overland travel, but I found the costumes designed by Norma Koch very disappointing. The stock used to convey the "Liberty Wagon Train" from Missouri to Oregon proved to be a hodge podge of horses, mules and oxen. Wagon trains were usually pulled by either oxen or mules. And like many other historical or period dramas, "THE WAY WEST" suffered from a few historical inaccuracies. I was also not that impressed by some of the performances found in the film - especially from some of the supporting cast and one of the major leads. I found it bombastic, awkward and unmemorable. One of those aspects proved to be Bronislau Kaper's score for the film. There are aspects of "THE WAY WEST" that I found unappealing. *Amanda Mack - Johnnie's sexually frigid bride *John "Johnnie" Mack - recently married emigrant and object of Mercy's desire *Mercy McBee - flirtatious only child of the McBees and the object of Brownie's desire McBee - Georgia-born farmer hoping to start a peach farm *Dick Summers - widowed mountain man and guide for the wagon train *Brownie Evans - Lije and Rebecca's shy son *Lije Evans - restless Missouri farmer who decides to move his family to the Oregon Territory at the last moment senator and captain of the "Liberty Wagon Train" Guthrie's novel, along with Ben Maddow and Mitch Lindemann's screenplay focused on a group of people: "THE WAY WEST" told the story of the members of one Oregon-bound wagon train in the year 1843.īefore one starts speculating over how a film with a 122 minutes running time could tell the story about all members of a wagon train. Out of the film's five segments - two had focused on members of the family emigrating to the West. The 1962 film was about the history of one family during most of the 19th century West. Many film critics have dismissed "THE WAY WEST" over the years, comparing it unfavorably to the 1962 movie, "HOW THE WEST WAS WON". Throughout the journey, the wagon train emigrants endure weather, accidents, encounters with Native Americans and the usual personal dramas that beset a group of people forced to live with one another over a long period of time. McLaglen, "THE WAY WEST" told the story about an Oregon-bound wagon train being led west by a former U.S. Twenty-eight years after the 1949 novel's release, Harold Hecht produced an film adaptation of it. One of them was the 1949 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "The Way West". I eventually learned that Guthrie had used some of the characters featured in "THE BIG SKY" and created a series of novels set between 1830 and the 1880s. The movie was an adaptation of a novel written by A.B. Years ago, I had watched a 1952 movie called "THE BIG SKY".
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