The Covered Wagon
About The Covered Wagon
In 1848 two wagon trains join in Kansas for a 2,000-mile trip to Oregon under Wingate, while scouts Sam Woodhull and Will Banion compete for Molly and Banion hides an army charge. Hunger, weather, fights, and gold news split the train, and Banion strikes it rich in California. William Jackson kills Woodhull when Woodhull tries to shoot Banion, and Banion returns to Molly in Oregon.
Cast & crew
More about The Covered Wagon
James Cruze directed Jack Cunningham's script from Emerson Hough's 1922 novel, photographed by Karl Brown. The New York premiere was March 16, 1923, at the Rivoli, with a DeForest Phonofilm track. Wikipedia says that showing ran 98 minutes; Wikidata lists 97.
Themes
Making
Jesse L. Lasky Jr., in the 1980 documentary Hollywood, said Cruze wanted to lift the Western out of the potboiler class.
Look
Karl Brown photographed location work in Palm Springs and in Nevada and Utah, including the buffalo hunt on Antelope Island.
Music
Josiah Zuro is the composer on Wikidata. A Phonofilm score was heard only at the Rivoli premiere. Sources disagree on whether that track covered the whole film or two reels.
Preservation
The film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019.
Notes
- Tim McCoy recruited Northern Arapaho people from the Wind River Reservation and became the technical advisor because he was the only person on the crew who could speak with them.
- Paramount paid owners $2 a day plus feed to bring real pioneer wagons from the Southwest.
- Seven bison from the Antelope Island herd were shot during the stampede scenes.
- J. Warren Kerrigan plays Will Banion and Lois Wilson plays Molly Wingate. Alan Hale, Ernest Torrence, Tully Marshall, and Charles Stanton Ogle are also billed.
- Joe Franklin, in Classics of the Silent Cinema (1983), called it the first American epic not directed by Griffith.
Scenes
- Families peel off for California when gold news arrives.
- Jackson shoots Woodhull as Woodhull aims at Banion.
Influenced by
- Emerson Hough's 1922 novel The Covered Wagon
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-the-covered-wagon)
- Wikimedia Commons (The Covered Wagon (1923) by James Cruze.webm)
