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How the West Was Won

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Howthewestwaswon

How the West Was Won.

How the West Was Won is a 1962 Western.

Cast[]

Singing cast[]

Non-singing cast[]

Plot[]

Mountain man Linus Rawlings is making his way by horse and waterway through the mountains. He confers with a group of Indians. The scene then shifts to Zebulon Prescott and his family.

Prescott and his family set out west for the frontier via the Erie Canal, the "West", at this time, being the Ohio River country, at the southern edge of Illinois. Along the journey, they meet Rawlings, who is traveling east, to Pittsburgh, to trade his furs. Rawlings and Zebulon's daughter, Eve, are attracted to each other, but Linus is not ready to settle down.

Linus Rawlings stops at an isolated trading post, run by a murderous clan of river pirates, headed by "Alabama Colonel" Jeb Hawkins. Linus is betrayed when he accompanies seductive Dora Hawkins, 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. He is not seriously wounded, and he rescues the Prescott party from a similar fate. The bushwhacking thieves, including Dora and 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 their raft is caught in rapids, and Zebulon and his wife Rebecca drown. Linus, finding that he cannot live without Eve, reappears and marries her. She insists on homesteading at the spot where her parents died.

Eve's sister Lilith chose to go back East but after some years finds herself touring in St. Louis, where she and her troupe are hired to perform trendy acts at the Music hall. She attracts the attention of professional gambler Cleve Van Valen. After overhearing that she has just inherited a California gold mine, and to avoid paying his debts to another gambler, Cleve joins the wagon train taking her there. Wagonmaster Roger Morgan 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, 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) to propose to her. He tells her of the opportunities waiting in the rapidly growing city of San Francisco. She accepts his proposal.

Linus Rawlings joins the Union army as a captain in the American Civil War. Despite Eve's wishes, their son Zeb eagerly enlists as well, looking for glory and an escape from farming. Corporal Peterson assures them the conflict will not last very long. The bloody Battle of Shiloh shows Zeb that war is nothing like he imagined, and unknown to him, his father dies there. Zeb encounters a similarly disillusioned Confederate, who suggests deserting.

By chance, they overhear a private conversation between Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. The rebel realizes he has the opportunity to rid the South of two of its greatest enemies and tries to shoot them, leaving Zeb no choice but to kill him with the bayonet from his shattered musket. Afterward, Zeb rejoins the army.

When the war finally ends, Zeb returns home as a lieutenant, only to find his mother has died. She had lost the will to live after learning that Linus had been killed. Zeb gives his share of the family farm to his brother, who is content to be a farmer, and leaves in search of a more interesting life.

Following the daring riders from the Pony Express and the construction of the transcontinental telegraph line in the late 1860s, two ferociously competing railroad lines, the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad, one building westward and the other eastward, open up new territory to eager settlers.

Zeb becomes a lieutenant in the U.S. cavalry, trying to maintain peace with the Indians with the help of grizzled buffalo hunter Jethro Stuart, an old friend of Linus'. When ruthless railroad man Mike King violates a treaty by building on Indian territory, the Arapahos retaliate by stampeding buffalo through his camp, killing many, including women and children. Disgusted, Zeb resigns and heads to Arizona.

Zeb (now a marshal), his wife Julie, and their children meet Lilith at Gold City's train station. However, Zeb also runs into an old enemy there, outlaw Charlie Gant. Zeb had killed Gant's brother in a gunfight. When Gant makes veiled threats against Zeb and his family, Zeb turns to his friend and Gold City's marshal, Lou Ramsey, but Gant is not wanted for anything in that territory, so Ramsey can do nothing.

Zeb decides he has to act rather than wait for Gant to make good his threat someday. Suspecting Gant of planning to rob an unusually large gold shipment being transported by train, he prepares an ambush with Ramsey's reluctant help. Gant and his entire gang are killed in the shootout and resulting train wreck. In the end, Lilith and the Rawlings family travel to their new home.

A short epilogue shows modern Los Angeles and San Francisco in the early 1960s, including the four-level downtown freeway interchange and Golden Gate Bridge.

Musical numbers[]

  • "I'm Bound for the Promised Land" - Chorus
  • "Home in the Meadow" - Lilith, Zebulon and Rebecca
  • "Raise a Ruckus" - Lilith and Chorus
  • "Wait For the Hoedown" - Lilith
  • "What Was Your Name in The States?" - Lilith
  • "Rock of Ages" - Parishioners
  • "Nine Hundred Miles from Home" - Chorus
  • "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" - Chorus
  • "Home in the Meadow" (second reprise) - Lillith, Zeb, Julie and Children
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