How the West Was Won (Continued)

In brief, the story of How the West Was Won traces the movement of settlers down the Erie Canal and into the Ohio River Valleys. Next on the story list is the Gold Rush days, with a covered wagon attacked by Indians in the biggest such battle ever staged for a motion picture. The Civil War, with the Battle of Shiloh, is the third or middle portion of the film. Then comes the trans-continental railroad sequence, followed by the bringing of law and order to the Southwest, the last stronghold of the Western outlaws. A number of spectacular scenes include a family fighting for their lives aboard a raft caught in mile-a-minute rapids and a runaway train that breaks loose during a baggage-car robbery.

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The story of How the West Was Won is right from the history books, a visual presentation of the men and women whose courage and daring made America great. To tell this story in visual form, the camera traveled the length and breadth of the nation, filming the events exactly where they happened. From the Erie Canal and Ohio River across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, to the Plains and Black Hills of South Dakota, these locations added to the scope of the production that was nearly a year in the making. These were the lands of Daniel Boone, the furtrappers and the buckskin clad explorers. The Ohio, the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence and their tributaries had been the highways of the French Voyagers and the intrepid Catholic missionaries. The Louisiana Purchase and the war with Mexico, however, expanded America still farther West, and by horse, mule and wagon-train pioneers moved across snow-capped mountains towards the Pacific. Some were lured by gold strike in California, others by tale of the fertile soil of Oregon. Lewis and Clark had blazed the trail and thousands would follow. The nation's eyes were turned Westward, and Westward the people moved, braving desert and mountain, heat and cold, Apache and Sioux. Then came the days of the buffalo hunters, names like Buffalo Bill Cody, then the Pony Express, and finally the first trans-continental railroad. There was to be still more bloodshed with names like Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid and Bat Masterson. All of this history was woven into times during which How the West Was Won takes place.

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Casting for the film took place at the MGM studios. It was said to take months to cast all of the roles and hire many of the Hollywood elite. It would be an additional hard series of months shooting on location for some of the stars of this film. James Stewart, who started his career as an accordionist, taught fellow-star Debbie Reynolds how to play the squeeze box for a scene. Although she was an expert on the French Horn since her high school days, Debbie had never before tackled an accordion. Stewart was a master and made his first professional appearance with the University Players (at Falmouth, Mass.) as an accordionist. When Reynolds walked into the MGM commissary wearing the 60-year old make-up which transforms her from an 18-year old to an old lady in the final scenes of the film, she was reported to have received a standing ovation from everyone present, including many stars working on other films. Her reaction was to rush to the telephone to invite her husband, Harry Karl, to join her for lunch. She admitted to Caroll Baker that she wasn't concerned about his appetite. She told Carol she just wanted him to know what to expect in the years to come. Reynolds was said to very much enjoy playing a music-hall star. Caroll Baker, admittedly "apron-minded" even before starring in the film, felt that aprons were a definite badge of femininity and should be worn with proudness, so she insisted on wearing one and had it specially made (with the director's approval, of course) by the MGM costume department. Baker solved her problem of which type by taking several that suited her fancy to the MGM dressmakers, who copied them in colors to match the scene and Baker's taste. Because of the detail that was to be presented on the screen, all of the costumes had to be sewn by hand, rather than machine.

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MGM photographed these publicity stills for promoting the picture.

A spectacular Indian battle, considered among the largest ever filmed at the time, was staged on the very soil where the Uncompahgre Utes had raged relentless war against the white men heading West by wagon train. This was the region around Montrose, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains, where the Metro-color Cinerama cameras moved about in a radius of 1,000 square miles to take advantage of some of the world's most spectacular and colorful scenery. Some 350 Indians, mostly Utes from the Montrose area, augmented by Navajos from New Mexico and Arizona, re-created the roles of their ancestors as they waged a bloody attack on a half-mile long wagon train of men, women and children heading for the gold fields of California. Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, Robert Preston and Thelma Ritter headed the group of 200 players who made up the members of the wagon train. Thirty wagons, historically accurate in every detail due to several years of research, made up the wagon train. Director Henry Hathaway filmed the covered wagon and Indian battle scenes over a period of three weeks in the Montrose area, and then spent an additional four weeks in the High Sierras of California. He accomplished this ambitious assignment with such painstaking care that only a few minor injuries were suffered by riders from intentional horse falls or accidental spills. None of the animals were injured. For one spectacular shot, a wagon train was rolled around and around down a hillside with two men inside. A specially placed camera in the interior of the wagon recorded every second on their bouncing, tumbling ride, while the scenery spins about like a clothes dryer. This was quite an accomplishment with the Cinerama cameras. In one foray during the wagon train sequence, one of the front-running horses stumbled in a gopher hole and threw its rider. Because of the blinding dust, the riders behind failed to see the fallen member of the party. Some 50 horses rode over the fallen rider, but so surefooted and quick stepping were the ponies that only one hoof actually struck him, inflicting a deep bruise on the man's right shoulder. Three hundred rifles and revolvers were used in the battle, along with more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition. Weapons also included 150 sets of bows and arrows and 100 lances. Among the 350 Indians used in Metro's film was Ben Black Elk, the son of a medicine man and probably the most photographed Indian in America at the time. Black Elk was a Sioux who posed for snapshots at Mount Rushmore Memorial at the time. He averaged $80 a day during the tourist season. Another noted Indian in the cast is Chief Oglalla Hanska, who at 81 was the eldest chief of the Oglalla tribe. One of the survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre, he later spent eight years on tour with Buffalo Bill Cody's show.

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With the passing of the gold-carrying stage coaches and their replacement by railroad trains, the Western outlaws developed a new tactic - the train robbery. These bold holdups, usually staged at the top of a grade where the train was moving at little more than a crawl, became such a serious national problem that even the federal government was called in to try and stop them. The train robberies, and the stagecoach holdups before them, led to the most famous private detective organization of its time, the Pinkerton Agency, forerunner of the "private eyes" of the later television era. In the film, a train robbery was staged with a real steam locomotive in the colorful canyon country of Arizona. George Peppard, in this film, would face one of the last major attempts at train robbery by the last of the Southwest's outlaw gangs. This represents the "winning of the West" both in historical fact and in the motion picture. The first train robbery on record in the United States, and presumably the first in the world, was staged by the infamous Reno Gang, led by John Reno, on October 6th, 1866, a few miles from Seymour, Indiana. Their foray was against the wood-burning Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, and the specific target was the Adams Express Car which yielded $10,000. All members of the Reno gang, including the five Reno brothers, Frank, John, Simeon, Clinton and William, were eventually imprisoned, slain or lynched, but not until they'd completed many more train robberies and bank holdups. The holdup in the film is staged as a sort of composite of the many train robberies which plagued the West. The loot is $100,000 in gold, carried in the baggage car of the train. The robbers place a barricade on the tracks near the top of a grade, expecting the train to grind to a halt. However, the train makes an effort to crash through and almost gets clear, but it is slowed enough for the outlaws to get aboard. The crash of the barricade and the ensuing gun battle between lawmen and outlaws provide for some of the fastest and most expertly filmed action in film to that point. And speaking of motion picture history, a film called The Great Train Robbery, made in 1903, was credited with pioneering the way for feature-length motion pictures to become America's favorite form of entertainment.

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Photos taken by MGM on the set of How the West Was Won.

While on location, many series of events and problems began to unfold. Director George Marshall inspected a group of South Dakotans to select 150 bearded men for roles as extras. The director scorned false beards and wanted the real McCoy. The inspection of bearded men took place in a building in which an annual hay show is held in connection with a county fair. The name of the building, appropriately enough, is the Alfalfa Place. Later, ninety tons of gravel and sand (not originally on the cost sheet for the picture) was needed to rebuild a site during the location filming at Battery Rock, Illinois. A flash cloudburst had washed out the set, a huge amphitheater of rock and tree-shaded sandy beach on the banks of the Ohio River. The tons of gravel and sand were transported to the locale for reconstruction of the setting in which James Stewart, portraying a Mountain Man, steps ashore to be met by Carroll Baker, member of a pioneer family. When the skies had cleared, Hathaway shot around the sequence until MGM crews, laboring around the clock, were able to restore nature's original work.

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It took courage and physical strength for pioneer Americans to win the West, and it also took horses. The latter was true as well for the MGM film, for which 600 horses were needed for such scenes of the great buffalo stampede and the covered-wagon Indian fight. It was no simple task for the people at MGM to round up 600 riding horses of the type needed for a motion picture about the early West. Thousands were available, but most were sleek riding stable horses, racing thoroughbreds or the over-sized Belgians and Percherons used for farm work. The assignment of rounding up the necessary horses of the range type went to a lanky ex-rodeo champion, Richard (Dick) Webb, who was MGM's chief wrangler and a veteran at supervising the handling of livestock in big outdoor motion picture productions. Webb had a running start on the job because he and his partner, Vernon Mounce, owned the largest stable of Western horses in the country on their ranch near Tucson, Arizona. From the nucleus of some 100 mounts from their own ranch, known as Webb and Mounce Motion Picture Livestock, the partners branched into Utah, Texas, South Dakota and California to get the additional 500 horses needed. In addition to the 500 range horses, it was necessary to rent another 20 trick horses from the Fat Jones Stables in Hollywood. These specially trained animals were divided into three classes according to the stunts they could perform on command: falling, jumping or rearing. Ten semi-trailers were used to transport the stock from their home ranches to the filming location in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and later across the Rocky Mountains to another location at Montrose, Colorado. From Montrose, the horses, by motion picture veterans, were trucked to the High Sierras of California for the Indian fight scenes and finally were hauled back to their home pastures. Each semi-trailer held 18 to 20 horses, so eight round trips had to be made to move the entire herd from location to location. This amounted to a total of more than 50,000 miles. In addition, saddles and harness had to be moved about by special MGM vans. 18 smaller trucks followed the trailers with hay and oats for feeding stops along the way. Ten tons of hay were needed daily to feed the horses, plus 1,000 pounds of grain. During filming of the buffalo stampede, fifteen tons of hay and five to ten tons of range cake (grain pellets) were fed daily to the heard of 2,000 bison. Six jeeps were used in herding the buffalo into position for the various runs toward the cameras. Each vehicle was equipped with a special horn which the buffalo had been trained to respond to over a period of years. The herds were manned by supervisors of Custer State Park. To handle and care for the stock, MGM employed 200 wranglers, 50 from Hollywood, with the balance hired locally in South Dakota, Colorado or California. All were highly experienced with horses, being either ranchers or rodeo riders. Preparation of these scenes took MGM eight months, and that does not include actual production.

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