Story of movie The Covered Wagon : The Covered Wagon is a 1923 American silent Western film released by Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by James Cruze based on a novel by Emerson Hough about a group of pioneers traveling through the old West from Kansas to Oregon. J. Warren Kerrigan starred as Will Banion and Lois Wilson as Molly Wingate. On their quest they experience desert heat, mountain snow, hunger, and Indian attack.
| The Covered Wagon | |
|---|---|
Theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | James Cruze |
| Produced by | Jesse L. Lasky |
| Written by | Jack Cunningham (adaptation) |
| Based on | The Covered Wagon by Emerson Hough |
| Starring | J. Warren Kerrigan Lois Wilson |
| Music by | Josiah Zuro Hugo Riesenfeld |
| Cinematography | Karl Brown |
| Edited by | Dorothy Arzner |
Production company | Famous Players-Lasky Corporation |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 98 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent (English intertitles) |
| Budget | $782,000 |
| Box office | $3.5 million |
Screenplay
- J. Warren Kerrigan as Will Banion (hero)
- Lois Wilson as Molly Wingate (heroine)
- Alan Hale as Sam Woodhull (villain)
- Ernest Torrence as William Jackson
- Tully Marshall as Jim Bridger
- Ethel Wales as Mrs. Wingate
- Charles Ogle as Jesse Wingate
- Guy Oliver as Kit Carson
- Johnny Fox as Jed Wingate
- James Cruze as Indian (scenes deleted)
- Frank Albertson as Minor Role (uncredited)
- John Bose as Pioneer (uncredited)
- Barbara Brower as Pioneer Child (uncredited)
- Chief Thunderbird as Indian (uncredited)
- Constance Wilson as Minor Role (uncredited)
Cast notes
- Tim McCoy, as Technical Advisor, recruited the Indians who appeared in this movie.
The film was a major production for its time, with an estimate budget of $782,000.
In his 1983 book Classics of the Silent Cinema, radio and TV host Joe Franklin claimed this film was "the first American epic not directed by Griffith".
In the 1980 documentary Hollywood: A Celebration of American Silent Cinema, Jesse L. Laskey Jr. maintained that the goal of director James Cruze was " ... to elevate the Western, which had always been sort of a potboiler kind of film, to the status of an epic".
The film required a large cast and film crew and many extras, and was filmed in various locations, including Palm Springs, California:168–71 and several places in Nevada and Utah. The dramatic buffalo hunt and buffalo stampede scenes were filmed on Antelope Island, Great Salt Lake, Utah. During filming for the movie, seven bison from the Antelope Island Bison Herd were shot and killed .
The covered wagons gathered by Paramount from all over the Southwest were not replicas, but the real wagons that had brought the pioneers west. They were cherished heirlooms of the families who owned them. The producers offered the owners $2 a day and feed for their stock if they would bring the wagons for the movie. Most of the extras seen on film are the families who owned the covered wagons and were perfectly at home driving them and living out of them during the production.
The film premiered in New York City on 16 March 1923 and ran 98 minutes. A musical soundtrack was recorded in the short-lived DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, but sources vary on whether this record soundtrack was of the entire score or about two reels worth of the film. The Phonofilm version of the film was only shown this way at the premiere at the Rivoli Theater in New York City. Paramount reportedly also released Bella Donna on 1 April 1923 with a Phonofilm soundtrack, also only at the premiere at the Rivoli.
The film was the most popular movie of 1923 in the US and Canada. This was also Warren Harding's favorite film as he showed it at a special screening at the White House during the summer of 1923.
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
- 2001: AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – Nominated
- The House That Shadows Built (1931) promotional film released by Paramount with excerpt of The Covered Wagon
