Adapted from Mary Jane Carr’s 1934 novel Children of the Covered Wagon, the film tells the story of a group of settlers headed for Oregon in 1846. While ostensibly led by the wealthy James Stephen (TV’s original Superman George Reeves, in his last big-screen role,) the travelers follow the more practical “on the ground” leadership of physician-in-training John “Doc” Grayson (Parker) and his world-weary compatriot, Hank Breckinridge (familiar western character-actor Jeff York.) The film is neatly bisected into two parts: the first dealing with the group’s attempt to pass through the lands of the “unfriendly” Pawnee Indian nation, the second detailing their stopover outside Fort Laramie (and their tenuous peace with the Sioux encampment there.)
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| You'll shoot your eye out... |
Right off the bat, let’s get the obvious out of the way: Westward Ho the Wagons (I’m going to drop the exclamation point for the body of this review, thank you very much) is what you’d call your typical ‘50s western. Little about the movie speaks to any kind of reality of the harshness of life at the time. Most of the settlers are portrayed by attractive, squeaky-clean Caucasian actors with gleaming white teeth and Brylcreem-encased hair. Heck, when four of Walt’s “Mouseketeers” can be counted amongst the cast (they being Tommy Cole, Doreen Tracey, Cubby O'Brian, and Karen Pendleton,) you know you’re about as far away from Deadwood as you can get. All the tropes familiar to those who grew up watching reruns of such baby-boomer artifacts as Wagon Train, The Rifleman and Rawhide will instantly recognize the well-worn iconography of covered wagons trundling their way across a rugged landscape, valiantly making their escape from marauding “Injuns.” While the portrayal of Native Americans in this film (and it’s ilk) is clearly offensive and dated, one can’t help but shake their head and roll their eyes, so silly is the institutionalized representation of the “savage redman.” Anytime a group of fringe-clothed natives appears on screen (no breechcloths or bare male chests to be seen here,) they’re accompanied by that standard “war drums and harsh brass” music that Hollywood insisted represented genuine Indians. And when the white men talk to the natives it’s always in short, brusque sentences accompanied by inscrutable hand motions - as if the secret to cracking all tribal dialects is to speak loudly and wave your hands around.
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| Do you understand the words comin' out my mouth!?! |
The film was helmed by William Beaudine, a Hollywood workhorse who directed over 370 films(!) in his 44 years-long career. While not a flamboyant filmmaker by any means (clearly favoring bland medium shots for many scenes,) Beaudine ratchets up some credible tension in a chase scene involving a kidnapped youth escaping the Pawnee encampment. Shot at the Janss Conejo Ranch (in Ventura County, California,) the straight-forward filmmaking nevertheless contains some striking vistas of the long line of wagons snaking it’s way across windswept plains. These wide shots of the frontier are aided in no small part by Peter Ellenshaw and Albert Whitlock’s matte paintings, which help transform the nondescript California valley into a western fantasy of Monument Valley-style geology and Wyoming "big sky."
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| That giant dog's after the chuck wagon again! To the cupboard! |
At least I think that’s the case. Annoyingly, my DVD copy of the film (an “exclusive title” from the Disney Movie Club, and the only physical version currently in print) is panned-and-scanned, cropping the sides off the full image. After the opening credits - proudly proclaiming the film to be “Shot in Panavision” - the image zooms in to the outdated 1.33:1 aspect ratio intended to fill the full screen of your old Zenith 19-inch CRT television. Watching the movie, I yearned to be able to enjoy the panoramic shots of cowboys and Indians riding across the wide-open fields, or to watch a dialogue scene where the characters weren’t awkwardly standing at opposite edges of the screen. The film is available for online rental from such sources as Amazon, but after shelling out for my current disc I’m in no hurry to spend the $3 to check if their copy is in the correct ratio or not. Hell, it’s not like this is The Searchers or something.
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| Everyone back to your corners... |
The acting is solid (if not especially noteworthy,) with Fess Parker ably leading the ensemble. The late actor’s natural charm could honestly carry anything, and he lends his “Doc” Grayson character a reluctant, “aww shucks” believability that makes one gloss over the predictability of the character’s burgeoning hero arc. Perhaps the best performance in the film comes from our old friend Sebastian Cabot, playing the extrrremely Frrrench trader and shopkeeper Bissonette, who acts as a kind of ambassador between the settlers and the Sioux at Fort Laramie. As the sole voice of reason between the two parties, the character seems like a miraculously less-dated element, almost detached from the banal storyline occurring around him. “Doc” Grayson’s love interest, Laura Thompson (played by Kathleen Crowley) is unfortunately underwritten, serving as little more than a reason for Parker’s character to croon “I’m Lonely, My Darlin.” She’s also given one of the more cringe-inducing lines in the film, screeching “You’ll talk to me, you pompous savage!!” at the Sioux chief, Wolf’s Brother, after he refuses to speak to a woman.
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| Anyone know anything besides Kumbaya? |
One can’t help but feel bad for the Native American actors in the film, the lead being John War Eagle as Wolf’s Brother - familiar from innumerable appearances in film and TV westerns. How demining it must be to partake in such insensitive imitations of your own culture (or of those that aren’t even practices of your own nation) for the entertainment of predominantly white audiences; and to be accompanied half the time by a number of non-Indian extras “darked up” and instructed to act out crass parodies of your people’s traditions. Conversely, playing the role of Sioux medicine man Many Stars is actor Iron Eyes Cody, who would go on to be forever emblazoned into popular culture as the “Crying Indian” from a famous 1971 “Keep America Beautiful” TV commercial. While Cody enjoyed a long and successful career playing Native Americans from 1927 to 1987 (when he appeared as Chief St. Cloud in Ernest Goes to Camp,) and claimed to be of Cherokee descent, he was actually born Espera Oscar de Corti in Kaplan, Louisiana - both his parents being native Italians. Classy.
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| Hey, Fess! Hadn't you best git along to a better movie? |
Summarizing this movie, I was nearly about to write how the film is "harmless, if dated, family fun," but had to stop myself. While a film like this surely would've been viewed as such in my own youth, I really couldn't recommend Westward Ho the Wagons today. Even discounting it's sadly typical misrepresentation of American Indians, the truth is it's just a pretty mediocre western - itself a genre that had many more misses than hits. In a way, it’s a shame that this is the first Fess Parker-starring film reviewed on this blog, when there are far better movies the actor appeared in for Disney. Chief among his other roles, of course, are his appearances as Davy Crockett (in a pair of features edited together from popular episodes of the Disneyland TV program) and as the father in Disney’s seminal Old Yeller. We’ll hopefully get to those films soon enough. As it is, Westward Ho the Wagons stands as an antiquated curio from another era - a time that seems so long ago, when little Johnny and Suzy would be plonked down in front of the TV and allowed to watch virtuous cowboys shoot it out with yipping savages for hours on end, little concern given to the consequences that such wrong-minded drivel would have on their growing minds.
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| Here's something to play with after you've finished your "trail of tears" Colorforms... |
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