Come see THE COVERED WAGON presented by the BYU Motion Picture Archive.
Silent Movie Remix
The film will be presented with a most astonishing and Unique musical accompaniment.
Ogden-born James Cruze directed this epic silent Western. Cruze was first an actor in silent films and then took to directing. He had pioneer ancestry, so we can propose that his imagination regarding wagon trains crossing the plains was fired by possibly first-hand (or near-first-hand) accounts from his family or the community in which he was raised.
Produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures, The Covered Wagon was a huge hit in its day, and was influential on epic Westerns for generations. To add realism and authenticity to the film, much of it was shot on locations in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. This also pushed the budget the budget passed $750,000, which was one of the most expensive film productions to date. While subsequent epic Westerns, built upon the influence of The Covered Wagon, have superseded the film in its influence, its shadows ring familiar to audiences since 1923 due to its position near the source of Western genre filmmaking.