How the West Was Won (film) director Henry Hathaway
The Rivers (1839)
Mountain man Linus Rawlings (Stewart) is making his way by horse and waterway through the mountains. He confers with a group of Native Americans. The scene then shifts to Zebulon Prescott and his family.
Prescott (Malden) and his family set out west for the frontier on the Erie Canal, the "West", at this time, being the Ohio River country, at the southern edge of Illinois. Pulled the first section on a barge, they then build rafts to continue on the river free of charge. Along the journey, they meet Rawlings, who is traveling east, to Pittsburgh, to trade his furs. Rawlings and Zebulon's daughter, Eve (Carroll Baker), are attracted to each other, but Linus is not ready to settle down.
Rawlings stops at an isolated trading post, selling "likker" from a cave in the steep river bank. However, it is run by a murderous clan of river pirates, headed by "Alabama Colonel" Jeb Hawkins (Walter Brennan). Linus is betrayed when he accompanies Jeb's seductive daughter Dora Hawkins (Brigid Bazlen) into a cave, modeled after a real outlaw haunt (now a part of Cave-in-Rock State Park) to see a "varmint". Dora Hawkins stabs him in the back and Rawlings falls into a deep hole. They steal his furs and sink his canoe. But he is not mortally wounded, and follows the robbers to a site where they are conning the Prescott party from a similar fate. The bushwhacking thieves (Lee Van Cleef plays one), including Dora Hawkins, are dispatched, being killed in an attack by Rawlings, in a form of rough frontier justice.
After Zebulon prays to God for their lost loved ones and commends to Him the thieves' souls "whether You want 'em or not", the settlers continue down the river, but the lead raft is caught in rapids, and Zebulon and his wife Rebecca (Agnes Moorehead) drown. Linus encounters the survivors and decides that he cannot live without Eve, and asks to marry her and take her to Pittsburgh. However, she insists on homesteading at the spot where her parents died.
In the final scene her younger sister pines at the whistle of a paddle steamer on the wide river.
This section was directed by Henry Hathaway.The Plains (1851)
Eve's sister Lilith (Debbie Reynolds) chose to go back East but after some years finds herself touring in St. Louis, where she and her stage troupe are hired to perform their acts at the Music hall. She attracts the attention of professional gambler Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck). After overhearing that she has just inherited a California gold mine, and to avoid paying his debts to another gambler (John Larch), Cleve joins the wagon train taking her there. Wagonmaster Roger Morgan (Robert Preston) and he court her along the way, but she rejects them both, much to the dismay of her new friend and fellow traveler Agatha Clegg (Thelma Ritter), who is searching for a husband.
Surviving an attack by Cheyennes, Lilith and Cleve arrive at the mine, only to find that it is worthless. Cleve leaves. Lilith returns to work in a dance hall in a camp town, living out of a covered wagon. Morgan finds her and again proposes marriage unromantically. She tells him, "Not now, not ever."
Later, Lilith is singing in the music salon of a riverboat. By chance, Cleve is a passenger. When he hears Lilith's voice, he leaves the poker table (and a winning hand), tells her he fell in love with her at first sight, and proposes to her. He tells her of the opportunities waiting in the rapidly growing city of San Francisco. She accepts his proposal.
This section also was directed by Henry Hathaway.
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