THE BIG TRAIL (1930). A colorized and wide-screen version.

THE BIG TRAIL is a 1930 American epic pre-Code Western early widescreen film shot on location across the American West starring 23-year-old John Wayne in his first leading role and directed by Raoul Walsh. It is the final completed film to feature Tyrone Power Sr. before his death in 1931, as well as his only sound role.

In 2006, the United States Library of Congress deemed this film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry, saying "the plot of a trek along the Oregon Trail is aided immensely by the majestic sweep provided by the experimental 70mm Grandeur wide-screen process used in filming".

PLOT:
A large caravan of settlers attempt to cross the Western United States on the Oregon Trail. Breck Coleman is a young trapper who just got back to Missouri from his travels near Santa Fe, seeking to avenge the death of an old trapper friend who was killed the winter before along the Santa Fe Trail for his furs, by Red Flack and his minion Lopez. At a large trading post owned by a man named Wellmore, Coleman sees Flack and suspects him right away as being one of the killers. Flack likewise suspects Coleman as being somebody who knows too much about the killing. Coleman is asked by a large group of settlers to scout their caravan west, and declines, until he learns that Flack and Lopez were just hired by Wellmore to boss a bull train along the as-yet-unblazed Oregon Trail to a trading post in northern Oregon Territory (which at the time extended into current British Columbia), owned by another Missouri fur trader. Coleman agrees to scout for the train, so he can keep an eye on the villains and kill them as soon as they reach their destination. The caravan of settlers in their covered wagons follow Wellmore's ox-drawn train of Conestoga wagons, as the first major group of settlers to move west on the Oregon Trail. Along the way the wagon train is attacked by a horde of Indians on horseback, wearing headdresses.

Coleman finds love with young Ruth Cameron, whom he'd kissed accidentally, mistaking her for somebody else. Unwilling to accept her attraction toward him, Ruth gets rather close to a gambler acquaintance of Flack's, who joined the trail after being caught cheating. Coleman and Flack have to lead the settlers west, while Flack does everything he can to have Coleman killed before he finds any proof of what he'd done. The three villains' main reason for going west is to avoid the hangman's noose for previous crimes, and all three receive frontier justice instead. The settlers trail ends in an unnamed valley, where Coleman and Ruth finally settle down together amidst giant redwoods.

CAST:
John Wayne as Breck Coleman
Marguerite Churchill as Ruth Cameron
El Brendel as Gus
Tully Marshall as Zeke
Tyrone Power Sr. as Red Flack (as Tyrone Power)
David Rollins as Dave Cameron
Frederick Burton as Pa Bascom
Ian Keith as Bill Thorpe
Charles Stevens as Lopez
Ward Bond as Sid Bascom
Louise Carver as Gus's mother-in-law
Pre-production
Reputedly (the claim is unconfirmed) the initial script, then called "The Oregon Trail", was first offered to director John Ford who then passed it on to his friend Raoul Walsh.[5]

For the film, Walsh employed 93 actors and used as many as 725 natives from five different Indian tribes. He also obtained 185 wagons, 1,800 cows, 1,400 horses, 500 buffalos and 700 chickens, pigs and dogs for the production of the film.[6]

Production
The shoot lasted from April 20 to August 20, 1930,[5] and was filmed in seven states.[6] The film was shot in an early widescreen process called 70 mm Grandeur film, which was first used in the film Fox Movietone Follies of 1929. Grandeur was used by the Fox Film Corporation for a handful of films released in 1929 and 1930, of which The Big Trail was the last. Grandeur proved financially unviable for an industry still investing in the switch to talking pictures.

The scene of the wagon train drive across the country was pioneering in its use of camera work and the depth and view of the epic landscape.[citation needed] An effort was made to lend authenticity to the movie, with the wagons drawn by oxen instead of horses – they were lowered by ropes down canyons when necessary for certain shots in narrow valleys.[9] Tyrone Power Sr.'s character's clothing looks realistically grimy, and even the food supplies the 'immigrants' carried with them in their wagons were thoroughly researched. Locations in five states, starting from New Mexico to California, were used to film the caravan's 2,000-mile (3,200 km) trek.