Westward the Women

Westward the Women (1951) is an overlooked gem. William Wellman applies the same unsentimental grittiness to the Old West as he did to war films like Battleground, resulting in a stark, memorably unique oater.

Roy Whitman (John McIntire) runs a small, thriving boom town in California, but it's missing something: women. Whitman travels east, commissioning hard-bitten trail boss Buck Wyatt (Robert Taylor) to help him gather single females and transport them West. Plenty of women volunteer for the journey, but it proves extremely arduous. The cowhands can't keep their hands off the girls, the elements are harsh and hostile Indians are waiting around the bend. When Buck's men abandon the team, Wyatt, Whitman, Japanese sidekick Ito (Henry Nakamura) are forced to rely on their charges to complete the trip.

Westward the Women is a harsh film. It seems a subversion of John Ford's classics Stagecoach and Wagon Master, where Western settlement is a glorious, redemptive adventure. Here, Buck bluntly lays things on the line: at least a third of the women coming along will perish. It's a brutal attritional struggle, the women forced to survive accidents, stampedes, Indian attacks, rattlesnakes and inter-party strife. It's such a brutal experience that the few bits of sentimentality (the Italian family and their dog) don't really register.

Females fare poorly in the Western genre, usually relegated to token love interests, whores or weirdos with Freudian baggage (The Furies anyone?). Westward the Women's protagonists are refreshingly down-to-earth, lacking Hollywood glamor or twisted psychology. A few attachments form but Wyatt sternly forbids romance, realizing it will derail the train's chances. The women adapt readily to trail life, learning to ride, shoot and corral animals, though their eagerness doesn't always match their skill. This portrait of tough, self-sufficient frontierswomen is Westward's most interesting feature.

Wellman's previous looks at the Old West were similarly bleak: The Ox-Bow Incident, Yellow Sky. There isn't a dull moment here, each incident the building an atmosphere of dispair and tension. William C. Mellor's stark Utah photography manages to be beautiful and forbidding. The big selling point is the wonderfully gritty look and feel: the protagonists seem like pioneers, not movie-stars playing dress-up. Wellman's understatement continues even through the very Fordian finale, which plays as anti-climax rather than glorious celebration.

Robert Taylor (Devil's Doorway) is an unremitting hardass who thinks nothing of summarily executing a rapacious cowhand, and refuses to soften even after falling for one of his charges. John McIntire (The Far Country) is good playing an unusually sympathetic character. Henry Nakamura's Japanese (!) cowboy hedges around stereotype: largely used for comic relief, he later proves himself as Buck's dependable right-hand man.

The female ensemble cast, however, steals the show. Denise Darcel's (Vera Cruz) fallen woman goes through a lot, including an attempted rape, but remains endearing and tough to the end. Julie Bishop (Sands of Iwo Jima) and Lenore Lonergan also make impressions, though Renata Vanni's Italian widow is a bit irritating. The most interesting character, though, is Hope Emerson's Patience, a salty matron with a nautical vocabulary.

Westward the Women is an underrated Western. It's hard film to find, but definitely worth seeking out.