HOW THE WEST WAS WON [1962 TRAILER]

Added by AFIoscar 1 year ago on 2 July 2008 03:20

Description

Theatrical trailer for the 1962 Cinerama western "How the West Was Won" starring Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Brigid Bazlen, Walter Brennan, David Brian, Andy Devine, Raymond Massey, Agnes Moorhead, Harry Morgan, Thelma Ritter, Mickey Shaughnessy and Russ Tamblyn. Narrated by Spencer Tracy. Directed by John Ford, Henry Hathaway and George Marshall. Three Academy Awards including one for the film's writer, James Poe. Sprawling epic which follows the Prescotts, an emigrant family through four generations, from the Erie Canal in the 1830's to their settled home in the West a half a century later. On the way they encounter river pirates, and escape with the help of fur trapper Linus Rawlings (James Stewart), who subsequently marries one of their daughters, Eve (Carroll Baker). The parents are drowned on a foundering raft, and the other daughter Lilith (Debbie Reynolds) becomes a riverboat singer and catches the eye of a genteel adventurer Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck). They cross the plains together in a wagon train and make and lose a fortune in California; meanwhile Linus has turned farmer and, comes the Civil War, joins the Union Army and is killed at the Battle of Shiloh. One of his sons Zeb (George Peppard) also joins the army and stays after the war as a cavalry officer and is sent to Colorado to help guard the pioneering railroad against the Indians, whose land they are crossing. By this time Lilith is the elderly lady of the family, having survived long enough to see the dream of settlement realized, but not, mercifully, the aerial shots of the Los Angeles freeway traffic with which the film ends. Film did not open in America until April 1963 when it premiered at the Warner Theater in Hollywood, CA (the Cinerama Dome wouldn't open until November). Written by alfiehitchie.