The West: A Story of Expansion, Conquest, and Empire
Many tales of the movement west from many points of view: religious, cultural, racial, ethnic.
Clashes of cultures and the creation of the great American myths.
The importance of the IDEA of the frontier—the definition of America was so long implicated in
that idea—John F. Kennedy’s expansion of the frontier to space—as they put it in Star Trek:
space, the final frontier—and more recently, Space Cowboys.
We will be examining the significance of the frontier myth in American cultural history.
Some of the important marking moments—
1804-6 Lewis and Clark expedition of western discovery
1821 International boundary of newly independent Mexico places Nevada, Utah, parts of
Colorado, Kansas, and Wyoming plus California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas on Mexican
side of border
1826 James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757.
The French and Indian Wars; Natty Bumppo as a young British Army scout.
1836 Texas rebels against Mexico
1846 U.S. invades New Mexico, Southern Arizona, and California
1848 The Gold Rush
1861-5 The Civil War
1869 Completion of Transcontinental Railroad
1876 Custer’s Last Stand (Seventh Cavalry v. Lakota and Cheyenne Indians at Little Big Horn,
Montana)
1893 Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
(explaining American democracy and character through Westward expansion onto “free land,”
“the meeting place of savagery and civilization”; the “closing” of the American frontier)
1896 Teddy Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West (the idea that Westward expansion was good,
natural and inevitable)
1902 Publication of Owen Wister’s The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains, with its
prototypical Western hero: the soft-spoken, Southern-born Wyoming cowhand who courts and
wins an Eastern schoolmarm
1903 Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery: the first “Western” film in its use of
landscape rather than icons
The Western genre one of most prolific. 2003 is one hundredth anniversary of “The Great Train
Robbery,” a Western that is said to have invented cross-cutting. Influence of melodrama and
pulp or dime novel—hugely popular in early 20th century. We will discuss the rise and fall of the
Western decade by decade in this class and speculate on the social and historical reasons for the
ebb and flow of its popularity.
Hell’s Hinges: the expansion westward from a “religious” point of view—the heathen and semiheathen must be brought back into the fold of Christianity. The Iron Horse: an historical epic
that celebrates the myth of continental unification.
In both films we can make use of structuralism as an analytic tool. Who gets set up as good or
bad? Seems simple at first but becomes complex as early as Hell’s Hinges.
We must look at the Western as it reflected contemporary concerns. What was going on in
1916? Europe involved in WWI—the U.S. deciding whether to open itself to the concerns of
the outside world, to end isolationism, by joining in the war.
February 21 - December 18, 1916 The longest battle of the war, the Battle of Verdun, is fought
to a draw with an estimated one million casualties.
May 31-June 1 The Battle of Jutland, the only major naval engagement of the war is fought with
no clear winner.
July 1-November 18 The Battle of the Somme results in an estimated one million casualties and
no breakthrough for the Allies.
November 7 Woodrow Wilson re-elected President of the United States.
April 6, 1917 The United States declares war on Germany
Continue with notes on Hell’s Hinges
The Iron Horse
After the success of Paramount's The Covered Wagon, Fox studio
was eager to meet the challenge with their own epic-scale
Western. They turned to director John Ford. At this early
point in his career, Ford had already directed dozens of short
Westerns, mostly two and three reelers, many starring Harry
Carey. He wasn't yet acknowledged as one of the master
filmmakers. That wouldn't happen until the '30s.
Many of Ford's early films are now lost. But film historian
William K. Everson reported that Ford's Straight Shooting
(filmed in 1917, when Ford was just 22 years old) gives
evidence of Ford's talent for photographic composition.
Entrusted with the largest budget of his then-young career,
Ford responded by creating an epic-scale Western that
manages to outdo The Covered Wagon in terms of grandeur. The
main story of The Iron Horse (1924) involves the building of a
transcontinental railroad and culminates in a reenactment of
the famous union of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific
railways at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869. However, The Iron
Horse also involves a cattle drive, an Indian attack, a saloon
brawl, and the Pony Express. In addition, Wild Bill Hickcok,
Buffalo Bill, and Abe Lincoln make appearances. The basic
situation is filled with suspense as the railroad workers
hammer spikes into rails and lay down the iron rails,
struggling to be the first to complete their stretch of railroad
tracks.
George O'Brien plays the hero, Davy Brandon. After his father
is killed by a tribe of Indians led by a white man, Brandon strives to realize his father's dream of
building a transcontinental railroad. Meanwhile, Davy attempts to woo
his childhood sweetheart, Miriam (Madge Bellamy), only to
discover that she is already married--and her husband, Peter
Jesson (Cyril Chadwick), is the same man who murdered
Davy's father. So Davy must reveal Peter Jesson's true nature,
win Miriam's heart, and help complete the transcontinental
railroad!
The Iron Horse contains many of the themes that Ford would explore in his sound-era Westerns.
One of the main themes
centers upon the men who sacrificed their lives in order to
help bring civilization to the wilderness. Ford would return to
this theme throughout his career, as in My Darling Clementine,
The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Ford shot most of the film in Arizona, where a good-sized
town was built in order to support the movie's huge cast and crew (over 6,000 people altogether).
A train of 56 coaches was required to transport the production to the site. The resulting movie is
one of the great silent epics. However, the drama isn't overshadowed by the weight of the
movie's historical importance. In The Hollywood Western, William K. Everson wrote, "The Iron
Horse is big and sprawling, but unlike so many historical super Westerns … it doesn't allow
itself to slow down into stiff sprawling tableaux."
Star George O'Brien was virtually unknown when John Ford cast him in The Iron Horse. O'Brien
would become a major star of the silent era, also starring in Ford's Three Bad Men (1926)
O'Brien was strictly a Western star. Ford remembered O'Brien when he made his cavalry trilogy
and gave O'Brien small roles in both Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949).