Can we talk?

How The West Was Won

         I must have seen it as a child, but don't remember anything about it. How The West Was Won is 3 hours on TV with all the commercials. It is star studded. Frankly, I was a little disappointed.

         Released in 1962, it is in color, and the scenery is pretty good. It starts in the East and moves West. The voiceover parts, read by Spencer Tracy, who is heard and never seen, tie it all together, giving it some historical accuracy and making sense of it all. It puts some perspective on history and ties various events together.

         It is a tale of 3 generations of one family in their journey to settle new land. Carl Malden is the father, but dies early on. The 2 sisters are played by Debbie Reynolds and Carroll Baker. Only Debbie is in the movie from beginning to end. The next generation is two brothers, only one that the move follows, played by George Peppard. He's the only one I couldn't recognize without help. Others who appear off and on, and only briefly, include Walter Brennan, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Robert Preston, Eli Wallach, and J Lee Cobb.

         If this was based on a book, I'm sure the book was better. It's too broad a scope for one little movie and attempts to cover too much history. It would be better suited for a mini-series over a 3 or 4 night spread. (Maybe it's time for a remake, but political correctness and the rewriting of history would force the changing of facts and story line.) Another issue that may have caused some disjointedness is that there were so many directors. John Ford did a few scenes, another did certain scenes, etc. A fifth one did the linking of the stories.

         As for the star power, it must have been an unsatisfying experience for them. Their parts were so minor and so brief, there was no character development. Jimmy Stewart did his best with Carroll Baker and in the few moments they had together delivered a powerful and believable romance. Then it was over. His character was killed off. I had the most empathy for Robert Preston whose character just faded away. In the story, there would be years between scenes and people aged dramatically. George Peppard got the opportunity to do more acting than most. Eli Wallach was the bad guy, as usual, and got in a long fight scene with George and Cobb.

         So you never got to see much of any one star. Debbie's character wasn't all that likable, but they did let her do some singing and dancing, which prolonged her exposure. I enjoyed the voiceovers the most. In the part about the Civil War, he read about North being torn from South, but at the same time East was being tied to the West with telegraph lines, the Pony Express, and the railroads. At the end, the views of the desert and the prairies turned into small towns and farmland, then bigger towns, bridges, traffic, then cities and highways. It kept getting more modern and grander in scope, so you realized the West is still evolving, still being "won".