The Big Trail

“The Big Trail” stars John Wayne in his first leading role.

While searching for the killers of his trapper friend, Breck Coleman (John Wayne) decides to help lead a wagon train on a 2000 mile journey from Missouri to Oregon.

He decides to help because he suspects that the wagon train leader, Red Flack (Tyrone Power Sr.) and his friends are the ones responsible for his trapper friend’s death.

Encountering all kinds of weather conditions and attacks from Indians, the wagon train continues on.  In the meantime, Red Flack and his associates figure out that Breck suspects them of the trapper friend’s murder, so they continually try to figure out ways to sneakily kill him along the way.

Love enters the picture as Breck falls for Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill). Always trying to win her affection, she doesn’t seem to have the same interest in him. Plus, there is another man in the caravan trying to win her affection, too.

Filmed entirely on location in over five states, this movie takes you on a long, hard wagon train ride to the Pacific Northwest.

• John Wayne had his first leading role in “The Big Trail.”  Unfortunately, the movie didn’t do well at the box office, which made it difficult for John Wayne to get another major leading role. He then starred in a series of lower-budget, B-Westerns for over nine years.  His next break came when he starred in Stagecoach, which returned him to major Western film star.

• This is the first epic style Western to be made during the talkie era.

• At the advent of sound motion pictures, it was common for movie studios to make copies of movies in different languages.  Thus, Fox also made Spanish, French, German and Italian language versions of  “The Big Trail.”

• This was actor Tyrone Power Sr.’s last film.  (He plays the role of Red Flack.) He died of a heart attack just one year after making  “The Big Trail.”

• “The Big Trail” was selected in 2006 to the Library of Congress National Film Registry. This special honor is bestowed to only 25 movies per year.