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.

Production

Filming began in April 1930. During production, John Wayne, a completely unknown actor recently promoted from prop man (and renamed) by director Raoul Walsh, fell sick from dysentery and was nearly replaced as the lead.

Legend has it that the director Raoul Walsh had co-star Tyrone Power, Sr. almost beaten to death for forcing himself on the leading lady, Marguerite Churchill. Power would die just a year later from a heart attack.

Although the 23-year-old Wayne delivered an intriguing and charismatic performance as wagon train scout Breck Coleman, the expensive shot-on-location movie was financially unsuccessful as a result of being the first widescreen release during a time when theatres would not change over due to the encroachments of the Great Depression. After making The Big Trail, Wayne found stardom only in low-budget serials and features (mostly B-westerns). It would take another nine years—and the film Stagecoach—to return Wayne to mainstream movies.

The Big Trail was shot in an early widescreen process using 70mm film called Fox Grandeur which was first used in The William Fox Movietone Follies of 1929. Widescreen, along with Technicolor, were picked up by movie studios as the next big technological advancement for films in 1929. In 1930, a large number of films were produced which featured either widescreen or color. Color fared a lot better than widescreen because no special equipment was needed to view color films whereas theatres needed to buy special projectors and screens in order to project widescreen films.

Late in 1930, however, when the effects of the Depression were finally beginning to be felt by the public, studios abandoned the use of widescreen and color in an attempt to decrease costs. Because only a small number of theatres could play widescreen films, two versions of the widescreen films were always simultaneously filmed, one in 35 mm and one in the 70 mm Grandeur process. By doing this, the film would be able to be played throughout the country in 35mm at the same time it was being played in deluxe theatres capable of screening widescreen films.

The wagon train drive across the country was pioneering in its use of camera work and the stunning scenery from the epic landscape. An extraordinary effort was made to lend authenticity to the movie, with the wagons drawn by oxen and lowered by ropes down canyons when necessary. Tyrone Power’s character’s clothing looks grimy in a more realistic way than has been seen in movies since, and even the food supplies the immigrants carried with them were researched. Locations in five states were used in the film caravan’s 2,000 mile trek.

In the early 1980s, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which housed the 65mm nitrate camera negative for “The Big Trail”, wanted to preserve the film, but found that the negative was way too shrunken and fragile to be copied and that no film lab would touch it. They went to Karl Malkames, an accomplished cinematographer, and at that time a leading specialist and pioneer in actual film reproduction, restoration and preservation. Malkames was known to be a “problem solver” when it came to early odd gauge format films in desperate need of attention and tender loving care. He immediately set about designing and building a special printer to handle the careful frame by frame reproduction of the negative to a 35mm anamorphic (CinemaScope) fine grain master (the printer itself copied at a speed of one frame a second!) This was a painstaking undertaking which Malkames oversaw himself from start to finish. The entire project took him a year to complete. It is solely because of him that this film survives in this version.

Amazingly enough, the 70mm version was seen on cable television at a time when only the 35mm version had been released to VHS and DVD. A 2-disc DVD was released in the US on May 13, 2008, containing both versions.

Another widescreen western was also produced the same year, Billy the Kid, starring Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett and Johnny Mack Brown as Billy the Kid. No widescreen prints of Billy the Kid survive, however, only a standard-width version shot simultaneously remains.

Cast

• John Wayne as Breck Coleman
• Marguerite Churchill as Ruth Cameron
• El Brendel as Gus, a comical Swede
• Tully Marshall as Zeke, Coleman’s sidekick
• Tyrone Power as Red Flack, wagon boss
• David Rollins as Dave “Davey” Cameron
• Frederick Burton as Pa Bascom
• Ian Keith as Bill Thorpe, Louisiana gambler
• Charles Stevens as Lopez, Flack’s henchman
• Louise Carver as Gus’s mother-in-law
• John Big Tree as Indian Chief
• Ward Bond as Sid Bascom
• Nino Cochise as Indian
• Iron Eyes Cody as Indian