How the West Was Won

- PLOTThere is no explanation of why Sheriff Ramsey is fine in one scene and wearing a bandage on his forehead in the next, immediately following.

(there was a deleted or unfilmed scene where Zeb knocked Ramsey out when the Sheriff tried to stop him from going after the train robbers).

While she is refusing Morgan's proposal, Lilith's shoulder strap is on/off her shoulder between shots.

Tire tracks in the scene where the Indians attack the wagon train.

Linus Rawlings ('Jimmy Stewart') is depicted as having gray hair.

The body of the man they identify as Linus Rawlings to the Civil War surgeon has red hair.

When Roger Morgan is testing a new whip, he has it in his left hand and then it magically appears in his right hand.

When the wagon train on its way to California is attacked by Indians, it is in a mountainous area, yet the Indians are identified as Cheyenne.

The Cheyenne tribe was a Great Plains tribe, and would not have been that far west.

- PLOTWhen Linus meets the Prescott family he says he is going up stream to sell is beaver pelts.

The Prescott family is going down stream.

The pirates are down stream from the Prescott camp.

Linus should have passed the pirates when he came upstream.

He couldn't happen upon the pirates when he left the Prescott camp.

The scene in which Linus Rawlings (James Stewart) arrives to the Prescott camp it is supposedly at night.

However, the illumination and environment shows as if it was daylight.

(at around 31 mins) The sign for the California wagon train lists Roger Ward as wagonmaster, but the wagonmaster, played by Robert Preston, is actually named Roger Morgan.

During a gun battle on the railroad train, a man is ejected from the train and knocks over a Saguaro cactus.

Saguaros have a very strong framework and would not be knocked over so easily.

A modern water tower appears in the background of a wide shot of troops during Mexican War narration.

During the train robbery sequence at the end of the film, the train consisted of a caboose, two flat cars, and two passenger cars.

During the gun fight, the two flatcars and the caboose are separated from the rest of he train.

However, the other half of the train consists of only the coal car and the engine.

The passenger cars are missing.

They reappear later when the train is derailed.

During the final scene of the movie when the camera is looking down at a modern freeway cloverleaf, the helicopter landing struts can be seen on the extreme left and right sides of the screen.

I've seen this years ago, and happened to catch the last 40' yesterday. There are a few scenes that come to mind..

"How the West Was Won" is an extremely congested film with three different directors and a huge star-studded cast that includes Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Henry Fonda and his "12 Angry Men" co-star Lee J. Cobb, Gregory Peck and John Wayne.

Before I critique the actual film, I think it is important to recount the surrounding events that would occur in seeing a film like this back in the 50's and 60's when giant screens still dominated many American movie theatres. I had the pleasure of seeing this film on a Cinerama screen when it opened many years ago.

I thought about buying this series until I started to watch it. James Arness is great as the old mountain man of the small clan of Macahan's that are the main plot line of this series.

So much was said and written about this movie, that it seems to be impossible to add anything new or fresh. This is a classic Hollywood epic about one family and their struggle for better future in the USA.

Very much like IMAX's grandiose stand against the emergence of internet streaming, Blu-Ray and the 'Golden Age of Television', the 1950's saw studios battling against the arrival of a television in every home, and used the likes of 3D and 'Spook Show Spectaculars' to draw the public in. Another short-lived fad was Cinerama, a process of shooting with three synchronised cameras and creating an ultra widescreen effect in the process.

How The West Was Won is a 1962 Western Epic directed by Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall and starring Carrol Baker, Debbie Reynolds and James Stewart among many others. I honestly found this film a bit underwhelming, it's not a bad film but I guess I was just expecting more of it.

Practically defining the word sprawling this phenomenal drama of the settling of the west is so much more than a conventional western. Directed by three top flight directors all three segments have a slightly different feel but join together into a harmonious whole.

James Arness's Matt Dillon killed plenty on Gunsmoke for twenty long years, and here the leading man's still leading but is more a character-actor in the lead, an Indian loving mountain man who hates his own people, the whites, and thinks every Indian belch is worth more white man's gold than... white man's gold.