How the West Was Won

"How the West Was Won" won the 1964 Western Heritage Award for Best Western Film!

“How the West Was Won” is an epic Western starring some of the biggest names in Hollywood at the time – Henry Fonda, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, Jimmie Stewart, John Wayne and more.  A massive production, this movie needed three film directors in order to film it.

Spencer Tracy narrates the film which chronicles the multi-generational movement of a family from the East all the way to California.  Covering a fifty year period from 1839 – 1889, “How the West Was Won” is as much about American history and the development of the West as it is about the family featured in the film.

Zebulon Prescott (Karl Malden) and his wife Rebecca (Agnes Moorehead) decide (like many other people during that time) that greater opportunity for his family lay West.  They take everything they have, including their two daughters Eve (Carroll Baker) and Lily (Debbie Reynolds) and head west.

Their story (and the stories of so many Americans) is told in this multi-generational drama about the development of the American West.

•  “How the West Was Won” was too big for one director to shoot the entire film.  So, three directors were used for different segments.  The directors and their segments are:
Director John Ford – The Civil War
Director Henry Hathaway – The Rivers, The Plains, The Outlaws
Director George Marshall – The Railroad

• “How the West Was Won” was such a huge production that there were over 12,000 extras used in the  movie.

• While watching this movie on DVD or TV, you may see lines showing three separate areas of the film.  This is because “How the West Was Won” was shot using three different cameras for a special format called Cinerama.  The idea was to shoot the picture in a widescreen format in order to also offer sweeping panoramic views. Cinerama worked for theatres who could afford the equipment to properly show it, but it never caught on because of its many technical problems. Thus, the technology was abandoned.

• “How the West Was Won” won the 1964 Western Heritage Bronze Wrangler Award for Theatrical Motion Picture.  This award is given to only one film per year.

• “How the West Was Won” won three 1964 Academy Awards: Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (James R. Webb), Best Film Editing (Harold F. Kress) and Best Sound (Franklin Milton)

• Nominated for five additional 1964 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Music Score, Best Costume Design, Best Color Cinematography and  Best Art/Set Decoration

• Selected in 1997 to the U.S. Library of Congress, National Film Registry which is an honor bestowed only 25 movies per year.