The Big Trail (1930)

Film: The Big Trail (1930)

Stars: John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, El Brendel, Tully Marshall, Tyrone Power, Sr.

Director: Raoul Walsh

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on John Wayne: click here to learn more about Mr. Wayne (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

John Wayne, as I mentioned in our kickoff, is one of the most storied actors in Classical Hollywood.  His career literally spans the gamut, starting in the early 1930's with our movie today, going through the end of the studio system into New Hollywood (lest we forget, he'd win his Oscar the same night that Midnight Cowboy was beating more classical fare like Hello, Dolly! and Anne of the Thousand Days in a moment that heralded a new era at the most traditional of Tinseltown bastions, the Academy Awards) and into the 1970's.  There are too many chapters in Wayne's career, and so we're going to focus on five key aspects of his stardom throughout July.  Today, we'll talk about how Wayne almost wasn't a movie star, and that was because of a film that in 1930, would've been considered something of a swear word in Hollywood.  The Big Trail was an extremely expensive movie shot for William Fox (eventually the namesake of 20th Century Fox), made in widescreen, and testing the limits of the early Sound Era, and what audiences were looking for.  Shot in 70 mm, the film was ahead-of-its-time, and nearly ruined Wayne's career when it failed to connect with audiences.  It would've been easy to assume at the time that Wayne was destined to be a big name in pictures, but he'd spend nine years following this working in supporting roles in studio films and making ends meet between those parts in Poverty Row westerns.  It wasn't until John Ford basically put his career on the line in 1939 to put Wayne in Stagecoach (his producing partner wanted the more bankable Gary Cooper) that Wayne would become an established presence in Hollywood films, but before we get into the full-phase of Wayne's career, I want to look at what might've been.

(Spoilers Ahead) Plot is kind of incidental to The Big Trail, but it essentially follows Breck Coleman (Wayne) a young fur trapper who is also bent on revenge, as his trapping partner was killed for his furs on the Santa Fe Trail.  Coleman suspects that a man named Red Flack (Power, and yes, he's the father of the more famous Tyrone Power) did it, but before he can confirm Flack and his men are hired to go on the Oregon Trail, and so Coleman agrees to join the same camp, trying to figure out if Flack is guilty or not.  Along the way, he falls in love with a woman named Ruth Cameron (Churchill), who is clearly smitten with him, but is flighty and when she thinks he isn't good enough for her, continues to flirt with one of Flack's men.  In the end, Ruth & Breck end up in each other's arms, and Flack & his cronies end up getting killed in a variety of showdowns.

On its surface, this isn't a particularly good movie.  Wayne has a natural charisma (and has never looked handsomer-perhaps the first & only movie I've ever found myself attracted to John Wayne, one of the more sexless figures in Classical Hollywood), but the rest of the cast is filled with duds, particularly Churchill, who plays Ruth as a whiny brat.  The plot itself is boring, and I understand why audiences didn't get behind this movie initially as it's not well-constructed and the revenge storyline isn't sharp enough.

But if you go just for the "film is a visual medium" angle, you'll find that the movie is marvelous.  As I said above, this was a massively expensive movie, and it shows in every angle.  The art direction is grand, with the background cast of hundreds aiding in making these pop-up villages feel like actual cities, and the cinematography in 70mm is beautiful, wide shots and making sure we get every bit of nature on display.  Even the effects, particularly the scene where they ford the river, are really impressive.  As a result, I'd recommend this one solely on a curiosity basis (and to understand why Wayne was once a heavily-courted romantic lead) because it looks that good.