The Trail of 98 (1928)

The Trail of 98(1928). The cast; Dolores Del Rio, Ralph Forbes, Harry Carey, Karl Dane, Emily Fitzroy, Roscoe Karns, Tully Marshall & Doris Lloyd.

The western epic begins, in 1896 when gold was discovered in a creek in the Yukon's. Despite the trouble in getting there, over 30,000 people would travel to the boom town of Dawson City, looking to get rich. It would not take long before someone discovered $100,000,000 in gold.

The film story is about the lives of many prospectors, but there is one story that stands out, is that of a gold miner who strikes it rich and is heartbroken when he returns to his true love and discovers that she is dance-hall girl working for a known murderer.

The last of the great silent epics, M-G-M's The Trail of '98 has a wonderful music score, sound effects and a theme song, "I Found Gold When I Found You", by Hazel Mooney, Evelyn Lyn and William Axt. Based on Robert William Service's 1911 novel. The famous scene of the long climb to the Chilkoot Pass is one you will never forget. It is most remembered the harrowing journey down the Whitehorse Rapids. The scene cost the lives of four stunt players, including Ray Thompson, who played the ranch foreman in Buster Keaton's Go West (1925).

Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

Cheyenne Autumn (1964) Epic/Western. Cast: Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson. The film was the last western to be directed by John Ford, who proclaimed it an elegy. Much of the film was shot in Monument Valley Tribal Park on the Arizona-Utah border, where Ford had filmed scenes for many of his films, Stagecoach and The Searchers. The tribal leaders were played by Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland , Dolores del Río and Sal Mineo , Ford hired members of the Navajo tribe for extras in this film.

This beautiful film begins with the Cheyenne Indians in 1970 being moved from their Wyoming home to a Oklahoma reservation. After waiting for a year for Federal aid , the tribe is losing the battle to survive and are dying off from disease and starvation. Wanting to save what is left of their tribe they decide to make a 1,500-mile journey to their Yellowstone hunting grounds. Traveling with them is their friend Deborah Wright, a Quaker schoolteacher. Hot on their trail is a cavalry troop headed by Captain Thomas Archer, Deborah's fiancee, who hopes to end what they believe is an uprising without bloodshed. Cheyenne brave Red Shirt, starts trouble in which several U. S. soldiers are killed. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are pressured into organizing a war party. Sympathetic Earp, purposely leads his posse in the wrong direction. With winter coming on, the Cheyennes split into two groups. Half continue on their long journey and half surrender to the heartless Captain Wessels, at Fort Robinson. Will the Indians survive this historic ordeal.

Films similar to Cheyenne Autumn, try to show that Geronimo, Sitting Bull and others were not criminals, they were only defending the land where they were born and raised.

FUN FACTS:

Ford added the segment with Stewart in place of an intermission. Ford didn't want people leaving the auditorium to go the bathroom or concessions counter, even though the film was long, and so he came up with the Wyatt Earp segment.

John Ford was urged to cast Richard Boone and Anthony Quinn as the Little Wolf and Dull Knife characters, as both had Native American blood. Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland, who were of Mexican descent, were cast instead.

Spencer Tracy was first cast as the secretary of interior Karl Shultz, but had a heart attack and was replaced by Edward G. Robinson.