Westward the Women

A movie that's part of the old Turner library that formed the backbone of the TCM programming back in the day, one that I'd seen show up on the schedule a bunch of times but never got around to watching, was Westward the Women. The last time it showed up on TCM, I made a point of putting it on the DVR so that I could finally watch it and do a review on it.

The movie opens with a title card telling us that it's California, 1851. So, it's just after statehood, but much of what's between California and Missouri is terribly undeveloped such that getting across the country is difficult. As such, a lot more men have moved west than women, and in a place like Whitman's Valley, there's a bunch of unmarried men and no unmarried women. Mr. Whitman (John McIntire) meets Buck Wyatt (Robert Taylor), who recently guided another party across the plains and Rockies to San Diego. Whitman discusses the area's problems, and eventually decides that perhaps Buck should go back east for and arrange another crossing party, but this one with unmarried women who can then marry the men in Whitman's Valley.

Three months later, Whitman and Buck have made their way to Chicago, where they set about recruiting women for the trip. Buck expects that fully one-third of the women are likely to die since the trip is so difficult and who knows how experienced these women are. Some of the women seem like they're more than tough enough for the journey, such as Patience Hawley (Hope Emerson). On the other hand, a couple of showgirls, Fifi (Denise Darcel) and Laurie (Julie Bishop) show up in their good clothes. Whitman and Buck both think that's going to be a problem, but the two are so earnest that they find themselves some plain clothes and convince the two men to take them along.

After assembling a large group of women, Buck begins to tell them just how hard the journey is going to be, telling the women they're more than welcome to leave at this point, although of course none of them do. Thankfully a couple of them know how to handle horses, so they'll be able to teach the other women how to lead the horses and mules that are going to be handling the wagons and their packs. One other catch, however, is that Buck doesn't want the women fraternizing with his men, since that's bound to lead to conflicts if either multiple women like the same man or multiple men like the same woman.

Eventually, they set off on the voyage west. At least the first part isn't that difficult, as they head up the Missouri River to Independence, which is about as far west as they can get in Missouri without being too far north of where they need to go in California. That part they can do by boat. Once they get to Independence, they have several days to start training for all the hard work they're going to have to do, before finally setting out overland to California.

Unsurprisingly, the journey is as difficult as you can imagine, with pretty much everything you can think of as fitting into a movie about pioneering west showing up. Will everyone get to California? Will a third of the women die as Buck tells them at the beginning? Well, I won't tell you who lives and who dies; as with any good disaster movie from the 70s part of what makes it interesting is that it's not obvious who will be around in the final reel.

Westward the Women was made at MGM, where Robert Taylor was a contract player, and to be honest, westerns are the sort of genre I wouldn't expect MGM to be all that good at. But thanks to a very good script (conceived some years earlier by Frank Capra of all people) and excellent direction (unsurprising considering it's William Wellman), the movie turns out very well. And for an MGM movie it's surprisingly harsh at times.

The only bad thing is that Westward the Women was released in 1951, and in black and white. I think it would have benefited somewhat from color, but would have looked even better had it been made after the introduction of widescreen. Indeed, I'm thinking of a similar movie from much earlier, The Big Trail, which was actually released in an experimental wide-screen practice and covers many of the same themes. In any case, Westward the Women is definitely worth watching.