Westward the Women

Roy Whitman, a rancher in a California valley settled almost entirely by men, decides to bring wives from Chicago to his community. He recruits a large group of women willing to make the journey and hires Buck Wyatt, a hardened and cynical guide, to lead them west. The route runs from Independence, Missouri, across the Rocky Mountains and the Utah mountains to the California desert, a distance of thousands of kilometres, and the travellers face hardship and danger along the way. Buck expects the women to falter, but their resilience forces him to reassess them as the journey wears on.

William A. Wellman directed the film, the fourteenth of the sixteen features he made, between Battleground and The High and the Mighty. Charles Schnee wrote the screenplay, Dore Schary produced it for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Robert Taylor plays Buck Wyatt. Denise Darcel, Hope Emerson, John McIntire, Julie Bishop and Lenore Lonergan are among the principal cast, with seventy credited performers in all. Made for a modest two million dollars, it returned three million worldwide, a solid result for a mid-budget western of its period.

On IMDb it holds 7.6 out of 10 from roughly 4,300 votes; on TMDB it stands at 7 out of 10 from about 85 votes. The much larger IMDb sample and the strong average suggest a film that has held up well with viewers over the decades.