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How The West Was Won (1962)

The fifty years of American westward expansion between the 1830s and 1880s are viewedthrough the experiences of the Prescott and Rawlings families, as they migrate by the Erie Canal,continue over the prairies from St. Louis during the California gold rush, suffer through the CivilWar, and finally help build the railroads on the plains and bring law and justice to the frontier.

Along the way they meet mountain men, journey by wagon train, deal with Native Americans, andface outlaws in the southwest.

Carroll Baker ... Eve Prescott RawlingsLee J. Cobb ... Marshal Lou RamseyHenry Fonda ... Jethro StuartCarolyn Jones ... Julie RawlingsKarl Malden ... Zebulon PrescottGregory Peck ... Cleve Van ValenGeorge Peppard ... Zeb RawlingsRobert Preston ... Roger MorganDebbie Reynolds ... Lilith 'Lily' Prescott

James Stewart ... Linus RawlingsEli Wallach ... Charlie GantJohn Wayne ... Gen. William Tecumseh ShermanRichard Widmark ... Mike KingBrigid Bazlen ... Dora HawkinsWalter Brennan ... Col. Jeb Hawkins

Directed: John Ford / Henry Hathaway / George Marshal

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056085/

DivX 5 / MP3 : Dual Audio

Audio 1: EnglishAudio 2: Spanish

I still remember seeing How the West Was Won in Cinerama when it made it into general releaseback in 1962. A motion picture theater equipped for Cinerama is the only way this one should beseen.

James R. Webb's original screenplay for the screen won an Oscar in 1962 and it involves anepisodic account of the Presscott family and their contribution to settling the American west in the19th century. We first meet the Presscotts, Karl Malden and Agnes Moorehead going west on theErie Canal and later by flatboat on the Ohio River. They have two daughters, dreamy romanticCarroll Baker and feisty Debbie Reynolds. The girls meet and marry mountain man JamesStewart and gambler Gregory Peck eventually and their adventures and those of their childrenare what make up the plot of How the West Was Won.

Three of Hollywood's top directors did parts of this film although the lion's share by all accountswas done by Henry Hathaway. John Ford did the Civil War sequence and George Marshall thesequence about the railroad.

The Civil War piece featured John Wayne and Harry Morgan in a moment of reflection at thebattlefield of Shiloh. Morgan did a first rate job as Grant in his brief cameo and Wayne wasplaying Sherman for the second time in his career. He'd previously played Sherman in an unbilled

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cameo on his friend Ward Bond's Wagon Train series. I'm surprised Wayne never did Sherman ina biographical film, he would have been good casting.

If any of the stars could be said to be THE star of the film it would have to be Debbie Reynolds.She's in the film almost through out and in the last sequence where as a widow she goes to livewith her nephew George Peppard and his family she's made up as a gray haired old woman and

does very well with the aging. Debbie also gets to do a couple of musical numbers, A Home in theMeadow and Raise A Ruckus both blend in well in the story. Debbie's performance in How theWest Was Won must have been the reason she was cast in The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

Cinerama was rarely as effectively employed as in How the West Was Won. I well rememberfeeling like you were right on the flatboat that the Presscott family was on as they got caught inthe Ohio River rapids. The Indian attack and the buffalo stampede were also well done. But theclimax involving that running gun battle between peace officers George Peppard and Lee J. Cobbwith outlaw Eli Wallach and his gang on a moving train even on a formatted VHS is beyondthrilling.

There is a sequence that was removed and it had to do with Peppard going to live with buffalohunter Henry Fonda and marrying Hope Lange who was Fonda's daughter. She dies and

Peppard leaves the mountains and then marries Carolyn Jones. Lange's part was completely lefton the cutting room floor. Hopefully there will be a restored version of How the West Was Won,we'll see Hope Lange and more of Henry Fonda.

All those Hollywood legends in one exciting film. They really don't make them like this any more.

* Some stock footage from other (non-Cinerama) epics were used. The Mexican armymarching past the Alamo came from The Alamo (1960) and a civil war battle was taken fromRaintree County (1957). The final scenes of the modern U.S. were from This Is Cinerama (1952).

* No ordinary "single-camera" version was filmed simultaneously with the Cinerama version,resulting in two noticeable dividing lines on the non-Cinerama theater prints, video, TV and DVDversions (indicating the three synchronized film strips originally used). The same problem

occurred with the other Cinerama film in release at the time, The Wonderful World of the BrothersGrimm (1962), which had not been shot in a "single-camera" version either. Both were MGMfilms.

* Since the three lenses of the Cinerama camera sat at angles to each other on the cameraitself, it was very problematic for actors to film a scene as they would in front of a single-lensedcamera. When their images were projected onto the three panels of the Cinerama screen, itwould appear as though the actors were looking either slightly up-screen or slightly down-screen,and not directly at their fellow actors. This is very evident in a few scenes in the previousCinerama film, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962). However, by the time this filmwent into production, this problem was solved somewhat. In order to compensate for the lensangles, actors would have to look one-third of the way in and toward the camera, and pretendthat they were looking at their fellow actors. Hence, when their images were projected onto the

Cinerama screen, it would appear as though they were looking at each other. It was a verydifficult process for actors, which is one of the reasons that three-panel Cinerama wasabandoned for narrative films after this film was released.

* The first non-documentary Cinerama film, it was also one of the last to use the old three-camera technique, resulting in two very visible, somewhat distracting, dividing lines in the non-Cinerama print and all TV and home video versions.

* Hope Lange was cast as a love interest for George Peppard's character, but her scenes were

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cut from the final print of the film.

* Stuntman Bob Morgan was seriously injured, and almost died, while performing a stunt in thispicture. Toward the end of the film, there is a gunfight on a moving train between the sheriff and agang of train robbers. Morgan was one of the stuntmen playing a robber and was crouched nextto a pile of logs on a flatcar. The chains holding the logs together snapped, and Morgan was

crushed by the falling logs. He was so badly hurt it took him five years to recover to the pointwhere he was able to move by himself and walk unaided.

* Due to the detail that would have been shown via the Cinerama process, the costumes had tobe sewn by hand, rather than with a sewing machine, as they would have been during the timeperiods depicted in the movie.

* Debbie Reynolds and George Peppard are the only cast members who appear in three of thefive sequences in the film.

* One of the few American films to have its world premiere in London, England.

* Because the 2 dividing lines that separate the 3 separate projections could not be totally

edited into a seamless match, the directors skillfully used camouflage techniques to disguise thelines. Some of the objects used for this were trees, lamp posts, window edges, porch rails,building corners, doorways and wooden crates which were positioned at these points.

* This was one of only two films made in true Cinerama which were shown in regular theatresafter their first runs. None of the previous Cinerama films were ever shown in regular theatresbecause they were travelogues and documentaries made only to show off the process, asopposed to telling a story, and it would have been pointless to show these in a "regular" format.

* The train station in the film at "Gold City" was shot at Perkinsville, Arizona, and is stillstanding, although in a state of disrepair. It is now the mid stopping point of the Verde CanyonScenic Railroad. The train station, the town sign and several other smaller buildings still exist.

* A comic book version of this film was published in conjunction with the film's release, as wasthe practice back then with all family and children's films. In the comic book, when Sheriff Ramsay(Lee J. Cobb) tries to prevent Zeb Rawlings (George Peppard) from going after the outlaw Gant(Eli Wallach), Rawlings whacks Ramsay over the head with his rifle and knocks him unconscious,which explains the bandage on Ramsay's forehead in the next scene. No such explanation isoffered in the film; it is as if somebody had edited something out.

* Features more than 12,000 extras, including several Indian tribes.

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La Conquista del Oeste (1962)

Audio 1: InglesAudio 2: Espanol

Sinopsis:

How The West Was Won (1962) es una pelcula que aparece enmarcada en una poca en la queel cine haba declarado la guerra a la televisin, y en un desesperado intento por recuperarespectadores, los Estudios se volcaron a realizar pelculas con todo aquello que la televisin no

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poda ofrecer, como un reparto multitudinario de estrellas o un formato de pantalla ms grande(Cinemascope, Todd-Ao, Cinerama, Vistavision...), capaz de envolver al espectador en subutaca. Rodada en Cinerama, y con un elenco de estrellas difcil de superar (hasta el narradorera un actor conocido, Spencer Tracy), el msico de la misma deba ser una estrella ms, y asse pens en Dimitri Tiomkin, pues adems de dominar el gnero gozaba de un excelentemomento de popularidad. Sin embargo Tiomkin, an estando muy interesado en el proyecto, nolo pudo hacer al tener que someterse a una intervencin quirrgica ocular que le apartdefinitivamente del filme. Se pens entonces en Alfred Newman, el cual haba abandonado la20th Century Fox tras ms de dos dcadas como jefe del Departamento Musical del Estudio, ycon una experiencia a sus espaldas fuera de toda duda. Como era de esperar acept, y con l suextraordinario colaborador y director coral Ken Darby.

La pelcula era todo un caramelo para cualquier compositor; estructurada en cinco episodios,narra los avatares de la familia Prescott en sus deseos por colonizar el Oeste americano y estoofreca muchas posibilidades musicales, pues en los episodios hay de todo, desde romances yaventuras, hasta tragedias y escenas de accin. El primer gran acierto de Newman fue acoplar,para cada episodio, canciones populares americanas que, por su letra, encajaban perfectamenteen l; baste, por ejemplo, citar Im Bound For The Promise Land, para el primer episodio, dondelos colonos anhelan llegar a una tierra metafricamente prometida; o When Johnny ComesMarching Home, para ilustrar el magnfico episodio de John Ford de la Guerra Civil. La partituratiene dos temas bsicos: Home in the Meadow, que no es original de Newman sino unaadaptacin de la antigua meloda Greenleaves, que no pocos historiadores atribuyen almismsimo Enrique VIII, y que aqu cumple, entre otras funciones, la de servir de nexo de unin atoda la familia Prescott. El otro tema es How The West Was Won (este s compuesto porNewman), que aparece por vez primera en los ttulos de crdito, y est dotado de una poderosapercusin y ritmo casi frentico; uno de los temas ms famosos del compositor, hasta el punto deque es raro ver una recopilacin de msica del Oeste que no lo incluya.

Incomprensiblemente, este tema fue cortado en su edicin discogrfica original y en sucesivasreediciones de la partitura, y hubo que esperar hasta 1991 con el sello Sony, en una reedicincon temas no includos en el disco oficial (en su mayora se trataban de temas con dilogos yefectos de sonido), para que apareciera ntegro por vez primera. La edicin de la casa Rhino hasido muy esperada y es, en cuanto a su presentacin se refiere, algo decepcionante; los CDsvienen en un estuche doble con una absurda fotografa en blanco y negro de la pelcula sobre unmapa de los EEUU, y en el se elude cualquier referencia al Cinerama, cuando lo ms lgicohubiese sido un edicin estilo la de Ben-Hur (formato libro), en la que se hubiese podido lucirms la pelcula. Pero si la presentacin no est a la altura de la msica, no se puede decir lomismo del contenido de los discos -que en realidad es lo que realmente importa-, y este esfrancamente excepcional.

Esta edicin contiene toda la msica de la pelcula; por breve que sea el fragmento musical, steha sido seleccionado. Incluso canciones que prcticamente pasan desapercibidas en la pelcula,por su bajo nivel de grabacin, quedan recogidas en l (por ejemplo, la escena nocturna en laque el personaje que interpreta Gregory Peck intenta conquistar al de Debbie Reynolds, tienecomo fondo la esplndida cancin Poor Wayfarin Stranger). Quienes tenamos el disco original yhabamos visto la pelcula sabamos que el disco era muy bueno, pero que era un plido reflejo

de la partitura a la que le faltaban fragmentos vitales tales como el Prlogo, el apotesico finaldel episodio de la Guerra Civil, el tema del Pony Express, o el tema de la travesa de lascaravanas, entre otros. Ahora no slo estn recogidos todos ellos, sino que aparecen versionesextendidas de numerosos cortes junto a una seleccin de temas grabados para la pelcula perodesechados del montaje final. Entre stos destaca la versin cantada del tema No Goodbye, sinlugar a dudas uno de los mejores temas compuestos por Newman en su extensa carrera.

La banda sonora fue nominada al oscar de 1962, y es, por derecho propio, una de las obrascumbres de la msica cinematogrfica.