20 years after The Great Train Robbery, this film smashed across the screens of the nation, setting a new standard of film making, establishing the outdoor epic as an exciting film entertainment, and foreshadowing the school of documentary film which bad been introduced the year before by Flaherty's Nanook of the North. The first of the big western epics, it was followed a year later by Ford’s The Iron Horse and by many others. The novel had been acquired as a vehicle for one of the studio’s feminine stars; when previous commitments prevented her acceptance, it found its way into the hands of Cruze who cast it with relatively unknown players willing to go on location miles from communication and comfort. After the film’s release, the leads were able to command their own salaries and choose their own roles. (Locations for the film: Snake Valley, Nevada; the buffalo hurt shot at Antelope Island in Great Salt Lake; the snow scenes at Sonora, California).
Cruze, born Jens Cruz Bosen, barnstormed across the U.S. as a stock company actor, and eventually found his way into films, appearing as the star of one of the moat famous serials ever made, The Million Dollar Mystery (1914). He wrote scripts for many actors (one of Will Rogers’ first films, One Glorious Day, was written by Cruze) as well as directing, and had directed literally hundreds of films before THE COVERED WAGON. He teamed with Fatty Arbuckle on Arbuckle’s most famous feature comedies until the unfortunate scandal. Two of their films, Via Fast Freight and Skirt Shy were never released. Catapulted to fame by THE COVERED WAGON, Cruze was selected as one of the best American directors in 1926; was the highest paid director in the world in 1927 ($7000 a week); directed the worst major film epic (Old Ironsides in 1926); The Fighting Coward (1924), a hilarious comedy of Southern aristocracy (which we hope to screen for members in the near future), the superb satire Hollywood (1923) in which he used a brief appearance of Fatty Arbuckle for poignant dramatic effect. He also directed his friend Von Stroheim and Betty Compson (Cruze’s wife at the time) in their first talkie, The Great Gabbo. After the advent of sound and the dissolve of his marriage, Cruze slowly lost his great reputation for epic and comedy.
During this period his best film was I Cover the Waterfront (1933), although he also made a tentative but worthwhile return to the epic with Sutter’s Gold (1936) at Universal, which was certainly the biggest of all his talkie subjects. His last films were made for Republic in 1938 – good, routine action melodramas (The Wrong Road, Come on Leathernecks). He died in 1942 and now, despite his pioneer work, is rarely mentioned among the important American directors.
Karl Brown, the cameraman, had been an assistant cameraman with D.W. Griffith from 1914 until 1920. Subsequently he graduated to writing and directing, some of his more recent subjects being pot-boilers of the calibre of The Chicago Kid and The Man They Couldn't Hang. Paramount, incidentally, are currently preparing a wide-screen technicolor remake of The Covered Wagon, to be directed by Michael Curtiz. Almost completely forgotten today is the fact that a year after the release of The Covered Wagon, Paramount produced a sequel - North of '36, in which Lois Wilson end Ernest Torrence repeated their original roles, and Jack Holt assumed the Kerrigan role. (It was directed by Irving Williat, not by Cruze).
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