The music conducts the film, everything seems to follow its rhythm. An encounter with the Navajo leads to an invitation to their camp but after one of the Clegg boys gets a whipping for attacking one of the Navajo women, Uncle Shiloh plans his revenge. Add the first question. 1 9 5 7 – 1 9 6 5 (USA) 442 x 60/90 minute episodes. It's left to Sandy and Travis to protect the travelers and get them to their destination. And yet Wagon Master is one of the most poetic narrative films ever made. Two young drifters guide a Mormon wagon train to the San Juan Valley and encounter cutthroats, Indians, geography, and moral challenges on the journey. Patrick Ford, a screenwriter and Ford's son, learned the history of the Mormon Hole in the Rock expedition (1879–1880) from some local Mormon horsemen. A cavalry officer posted on the Rio Grande is confronted with murderous raiding Apaches, a son who's a risk-taking recruit and his wife from whom he has been separated for many years. Anti-Catholic and anti-cleric policies in the Mexican state of Tabasco lead the revolutionary government to persecute the state's last remaining priest. All goes well enough until the Cleggs, fleeing a posse from Crystal City, force themselves into the wagon train. Romance, Certificate: Passed Ward Bond is the Mormon leader and Joanne Dru is a flirting actress. Wagon Train aired on NBC between 1957 and 1962, and switched to ABC for the seasons between 1962 and 1965.The series was also syndicated under the title Major Adams, Trailmaster. It was a personal project, with no stars, little story, deflated drama, almost nothing to attract box office or trendy critics. The poem is something else again. Details about Robert Horton Wagon Train Movie Film TV 1950s Swedish Card #D11. As Mormon settlers head to the promised land at the San Juan river in Utah, they hire horse traders Travis Blue and Sandy as wagon masters. It's a subtler, deeper variation on the closing, transfiguring memory images of How Green Was My Valley (1941). The film's story is inspired by the 1879–1880 Mormon Hole in the Rock expedition, and Ford has been quoted as saying of the Mormons that "These are the people I want." His summary is, "That Wagon Master (1950), one of Ford's major masterpieces, grossed about a third of any of the cavalry pictures surely came as no surprise. [39] Ford chose to film Wagon Master in black and white; in 2009, Glenn Kenny wrote that the film "... reveals Bert Glennon's cinematography for the miracle that it was/is. Drama, Certificate: Passed [15] Critic Glenn Kenny wrote of this release, "the main attraction is the film itself, buffed to a lustrous (but still grain-rich) sheen that reveals Bert Glennon's cinematography for the miracle that it was/is. As Mormon settlers head to the promised land at the San Juan river in Utah, they hire horse traders Travis Blue and Sandy as wagon masters. now playing Wagon Master (1950) -- (Movie Clip) They Was Invited Out. Following a discussion of somewhat earlier films (Brigham Young (1940) and Bad Bascomb (1946)) that also depict Mormons sympathetically, Randy Astle and Gideon Burton write, "It is less surprising, then, to find Mormons featuring prominently in one of the most humanistic films ever made, John Ford's Wagon Master (1950). Wagon Master (Blu-ray) - Blu-ray BD-R (1950) for $20.25 from OLDIES.com Westerns Warner Archive Collection Series Two young drifters guide a Mormon wagon train to the San Juan Valley and encounter cutthroats, Indians, geography, and moral challenges on the journey. Some of those behind-the-credits images of the Mormon train crossing river and plain actually anticipate crossings the community has yet to make; we see them again later. Film critic Tag Gallagher wrote at length about Wagon Master in his 1986 book, John Ford: the man and his films. ‎Wagon Master (1950) directed by John Ford • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd Written by Bernard McConville with a screenplay by Morton Grant it’s also the only one I can remember in which crooner Ray Whitley is shot and killed. Wagon Master, splendidly directed by John Ford, is a superlative western. A region 2 DVD was released in Europe in 2002; it has a French language soundtrack as well as the English one. [4] The film was a personal favorite of Ford himself, who told Peter Bogdanovich in 1967 that "Along with The Fugitive and The Sun Shines Bright, Wagon Master came closest to being what I wanted to achieve. Sign in to check out Check out as guest . Written by Their wagon train is being expelled from Crystal City by the townspeople there, and at the last minute horse traders Travis Blue (Ben Johnson) and Sandy Owens (Harry Carey, Jr.) take the wagon master job. Critic Dennis Lim has written, "Practically a musical, Wagon Master is filled with frequent song and dance interludes and accompanied by a steady stream of hymns and ballads, performed by the popular country group the Sons of the Pioneers. [2][3] The film inspired the US television series Wagon Train (1957–1965), which starred Ward Bond until his death in 1960. Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr. are the young men guiding the caravan. It ran for eight seasons with the first episode airing in the United States on September 18, 1957 () and the final episode on May 2, 1965 (). [citation needed], The allusion to Tennyson's poem was noted by Dennis Grunes, who was an erudite freelance film critic. The whole cast is excellent. Along the way however, they are also joined by Shiloh Clegg and his murderous clan of robbers and thieves. see all. His role on Wagon Train was taken by Robert Fuller as the scout Cooper Smith. Menu. An encounter with the Navajo leads to an invitation to their camp but after one of the Clegg boys gets a whipping for attacking one of the Navajo women, Uncle Shiloh plans his revenge. Robert Horton Wagon Train Vintage Movie Film Pop Music 1950s Swedish Card #D92. Wagon Master portrays the evolution of a Mormon community in passage towards a promised Eden. They have to forge a trail across unknown territory and face many hardships along the way. The train surmounts an encounter with the posse, a washed out trail blocking the way west, and ultimately a violent confrontation with the homicidal Cleggs. Certificate: Passed Instead of Wayne or Henry Fonda, Wagon Master is filled with lesser-known but familiar faces from the Ford stock company."[8]. See (, "Back to Yellow Brick Road and That Long Dusty Trail", "My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)", American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadowns, September 1857, "A History of Mormon Cinema: Second Wave", "Wagon Master (1950 Movie) - 10 Memorable Depictions of Mormons in Popular Culture", "Film and Video - the Robert Mitchell Boys Choir", "Wagon Master (1950): Mormons on the Move", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wagon_Master&oldid=998283925, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 4 January 2021, at 17:39. Wagon Master has been called a "film poem" or its equivalent by several critics and scholars, which connotes that the film's storyline is less important than its visual portrait of the community of the wagon train. Condition:--not specified. They have to forge a trail across unknown territory and face many hardships along the way. Its first five seasons were broadcast on the NBC network and the remaining three on ABC. Without Travis they would have maintained their pacifism, Wiggs would have died, the grain would have been lost and the colony destroyed. Wagon Train (1957 TV series) Filter Applied. A region 1 DVD was released by Warner Home Video in 2009. The reel is stored in an individual secure vault at the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia in order to preserve the film for future generations. This FAQ is empty. "[7], There have been a number of reviews of Wagon Master since its 2009 DVD release. http://www.westernsontheweb.com releases another classic western film from our archives. Wagon Train was inspired by the 1950 movie Wagon Master, in which Bond also appeared, and was influenced by The Big Trail. "[34] The film ends with a chorus of perhaps the best-known Mormon hymn, "Come, Come, Ye Saints". In his 1984 book about Ford, Lindsay Anderson discussed the "pacific (not pacifist) theme" of Wagon Master and also of Ford's cavalry trilogy of films (Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950)) that were made at about the same time. Wagon Master AZ Movies. Desert wastes, prairie fires, the attacks of road agents and Indians took their toll. [7] Ford commissioned Patrick Ford and Frank S. Nugent to write the screenplay. In George N. Fenin and William K. Everson's 1973 overview, The Western: from silents to the seventies, they wrote that "Wagon Master is as close to a genuine Western film-poem as we have ever come, but attempts by Ford's admirers to enlarge it beyond that do both it and Ford a disservice. Of course, there's a confrontation with Native Americans, rather late, not far from their destination. The said film was directed by John Ford and it starred Harry Carrey Jr, Ben Johnson, and also Wagon Train’s lead star, Ward Bond. The film's score was composed by Richard Hageman, a noted conductor and composer of art songs and other musical works. In the film, the Mormons are pacifists and unarmed; this was Ford's story choice, as 19th century Mormons often took up arms. [9], Filmed about four years after the end of World War II (1939–1945), Wagon Master's treatment of violence was unusual, especially for a Western. Watching the disc this evening I wondered if it was not, in fact, frame-by-frame one of the most gorgeous motion pictures ever shot."[32]. "[28] Shigehiko Hasumi notes that Ford's films often show the throwing of objects at significant moments.[29]. Robert Horton Wagon Train Movie Film TV 1950s Swedish Card #D11. The onward passage of the wagon train is marked by the beginnings of romances between Travis and Denver (Joanne Dru), a female entertainer with the medicine troupe, and between Sandy and a Mormon's daughter, and also by a Mormon square dance celebrating a successful desert passage, and by a pow-wow dance with a band of Navajo. Commencing with Stagecoach (1939), Hageman wrote music for seven films directed by John Ford; Wagon Master was the last. After resuming its journey west, the train finds and adds the wagon of a medicine show troupe, who, en route to California, have become stranded without water. The man on the left is holding a lasso near his waist. Ford developed a story loosely based on the historical expedition. In fact, I actually shot a few pages of it. Filmed in black and white on location, mainly north-east of the town of Moab, Utah in Professor Valley (with additional shooting at Spanish Valley south-west of Moab, and a few stage shots were done at Monument Valley). "[24] Jeremy Arnold wrote, There's not much action forthcoming (especially for a Western), and there is barely a story. Travis and Sandy are armed, but Sandy has apparently never fired a weapon at a person, and Travis claims that he's only shot "snakes". This film preceded the series Wagon Train (1957), which also starred Ward Bond. Rosetta Stone Language Courses DVD Education, Language & Reference Software. It gets more complicated when she... 9.3 Newlyweds Gil and Lana Martin try to establish a farm in the Mohawk Valley but are menaced by Indians and Tories as the Revolutionary War begins. Its budget was $999,370, its highest paid actor got $20,000 (Ward Bond). Details about Robert Horton Wagon Train Vintage Movie Film Pop Music 1950s Swedish Card #D92. Location filming was done in less than a month. There are shots we've seen before—landmarks, vistas, the communal dance—but also shots we haven't. title details and video sharing options. [14][40][41], The film was apparently not widely reviewed upon its 1950 release. "[8] Filmgoers learn of Travis Blue's and Sandy Owens' decision to accept the wagon master job when Travis and Sandy break into song. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Condition:--not specified. The series was inspired by the 1950 film Wagon Master directed by John Ford and starring Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr. and Ward Bond, and harkens back to the early widescreen wagon train epic The Big Trail (1930) starring John Wayne and featuring Bond in his first major screen appearance playing a … [30] Tag Gallagher wrote in 1986 that "... the Mormons are lambs, not willing to protect themselves. It was unusual for Ford to base his films on the stories he wrote, and it had been nearly 20 years since he'd last done so (Men Without Women (1930)). The screenplay includes some common features of wagon train films. The principal roles were played by: Several of the minor roles in the film were also played by notable actors such as James Arness (the future star of the long-running television series Gunsmoke) as one of the Clegg boys, Francis Ford (John Ford's elder brother, and a very successful director and actor of the silent film era) as the mute drummer of the medicine show, and Jim Thorpe (the famed Native American athlete) as a member of the Navajo band in his last film role. Along the way however, they are also joined by Shiloh Clegg and his murderous clan of robbers and thieves. "[43], The picture was distributed by RKO Pictures. Wagon Master was produced by Argosy Pictures, which was the independent production company formed by Ford and Merian C. Cooper mostly to give Ford a control over his films that was impossible for films produced by the major film studios. Wagon Train is a 1940 American film directed by Edward Killy and starring Tim Holt. Title: The Earps battle the Clantons at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. John Ford had insisted that Harry Carey Jr. lead the company of the film, which included many Mormons, in singing the hymn; the version used for the film's soundtrack was apparently recorded by the Robert Mitchell Boys Choir. ... 1950 - 1959. Action, Certificate: Passed Glenn Erickson writes, "Travis says he only draws on snakes, not people, and when he's forced to fight he throws his gun away afterward. He wanted a different look for his next film and drove to Moab, Utah. Although its scale could not equal that of Brigham Young, it deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest of Mormon films. Wagon Train (1940) Academy Award nominated best assistant director Edward Killy led this transition from RKO B Western veteran George O’Brien to Tim Holt in the leading role. "[35], Ford had been shooting the film She Wore a Yellow Ribbon the year before (1948) in Monument Valley, near the town of Mexican Hat, Utah, close to the locations where he had also filmed Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), and Fort Apache (1948). But with joy wend your way. ... 1950 Railroadiana & Trains, Tim Hortons Mug, Tim Hortons Ornament, Their number includes Ito (Henry Nakamura), a wiry Japanese man who signs on as Buck's cook and personal assistant. Price: US $13.85. Heller In Pink Tights is a 1960 Technicolor western film adapted from Louis L'Amour's 1955 novel, Heller with a Gun.It stars Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn and was directed by George Cukor.. The film, with its breathtaking scenery, brilliant performances by a cast of character actors, and an engaging sense of humor, is a superlative example of the American western. 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