The Covered Wagon

James Cruze, Paramount, 1923, from Emerson Hough’s novel. Two wagon trains join for the Oregon Trail; J. Warren Kerrigan and Lois Wilson supply the courtship; the river and the buffalo are the picture. Shot in Nevada and Utah with hired wagons and a herd the publicity department counted in the hundreds. The AFI notes it as the Western that taught the studios a landscape could outgross a drawing room. Native raiders are written as 1923 wrote them. Karl Brown photographed the crossings. It made the epic wagon picture a repeatable product.