Westward the Women (1951)

Director: William A. Wellman

Cast: Robert Taylor, Denise Darcel, John McIntire
Runtime: 118 minutes
The most virile of genres, the Western generally struggles
and strains to cast out everything feminine, as if it were a
threat to its very essence. But Westward the Women is a
different kind of Western. It was one of the earliest films to
portray the strong element of the female gender with some
sense of balance. It was exceedingly well done for its time.
When this movie came out in 1951 it showed a side to
women that most men did not know and would not believe
existed, hard determination to endure and achieve things
generally believed to be in the domain of men. During World
War II, when men went to fight, women had to take over the
jobs and tasks that had always fallen to men. A movie like
Westward the Women wouldnt have been possible before the
war.
An expertly assembled and reasonably realistic saga, this movie has everything, comedy, drama,
love. It shows women in a true light with the spirit and stamina that helped settle America. It is
also the most honest portrayal of a wagon train ever filmed. Several wagon-train Westerns were
made in the early fifties, including Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950) and Bend of the River
(Anthony Mann, 1952).
Now let us refer to the story. In 1851, Roy Whitman (John McIntire), has established a growing
ranching community in his California valley. The one thing missing is women for the men to
marry, which would enable them to set down roots in the valley. The visionary Whitman decides
to solve this problem and hires scout Buck Wyatt (Robert Taylor) to travel with him to Chicago,
where he hopes to recruit enough women to provide wives for one hundred men. Buck
thoroughly disapproves of the idea, believing that the journey across the country is too hard for
women, but when Whitman offers him double his usual salary, he reluctantly agrees.

Roy Whitman: My valley! Rich land! The finest

wheat on earth. Wheat, cattle, orchards, men,
ranches The best! They call it Whitmans Valley.
Ive made it real. But you see, I forgot one thing. The
roots, to keep it alive and growing. Women! Good
women, with kids and diapers, and the smell of
cooking coming out of the windows.
----------------Mr. Whitman: I dont guarantee their looks. One
mans eye for beauty is another mans eye sore. But
one thing I can and will promise these are good
women. Make sure you are good enough for them
and for the children theyll bear you.

Man #1: A bony lass for me.

Man #2: Me I dont care what, as long as
its woman.
-----------------

Buck Wyatt: Do you really think youll find

150 women who will come across hell to
marry a bunch like that?
Mr. Whitman: You saw them, you saw the
look on their faces.
Buck: They are crazy!
Mr. Whitman: Yes, crazy enough to carve a
home out of the wilderness. That kind of
crazy I like!

Despite Bucks misgivings, a large number

of women are interested in going to
California to start a new life. Mr. Whitman
and Buck go to Chicago and interview many
single women. Mr. Whitman picks and signs
up 140 women (the extras are for the
predicted losses on the trail west).

The recruits are a varied group, including Patience Hawley, the aging widow of a New England
sea captain, Mrs. Maroni, an Italian widow traveling with her nine-year-old son Tony, Frenchborn Fifi Danon and Laurie Smith, two former saloon girls looking for a new life, Rose Meyers,
who is pregnant with an illegitimate child; and farm girl Maggie O'Malley, an expert with a gun.
These are not the typical glamorous women that usually starred in films of the period. The
women are true to life, some wear glasses, some are fat, some are small. There are all kinds of
women, a cavalcade of virgins, whores, tomboys, matrons, good/bad and bad/good girls
abandoning city comforts for the wilderness. It seems like there is a character for every type of
personality.
Mr. Whitman: Patience Hawley!
Patience Hawley: Ay, ay, captain!
Mr. Whitman: Youre from New Bedford,
Massachusetts.
Patience: Thats my home port!
Mr. Whitman: Why do you want to go to
California?
Patience: I figured it was time to scrape my
hull and weigh anchor.
Mr. Whitman: You state your age But you
dont look it!
Patience: Okey dokey, you cant expect a
woman to stay the right age. But I can carry
my tonnage and a little extra to boot.

Mr. Whitman: Are you sure you want to come

to California?
Mrs. Moroni (eyes shining): California? Si, si!
Donna, venite a California! Serra una grande
opportunita per matrimonio. Una nuova vita
neluest! Si!
Mr. Whitman: They look good to me. Sign
here!

Fifi Danon: I come from a very famous, very

old French family. See, my grandfather came
over, and he settled down in New Orleans. But
my father, he could not settle down, he had it in
his blood, you see? So he helped to discover
the Mississippi, and the Missouri, and the
Great Lakes, and some of the little lakes.
Mr. Whitman (unconvinced): Miss Danon, so
why do you want to go to California?
Fifi Danon: We want a change.
Mr. Whitman (with innuendo): Would it be a
permanent change?
Laurie Smith: Yes, Mr. Whitman, permanent.
Mr. Whitman: (to Buck) Theyll do.
Though Buck spares the brides nothing in describing the
hardships they are about to face, most of the ladies agree to
undertake the journey.
Buck: We face a heart-breaking journey: Rain, hail as big
as eggs, break-downs, prairie fires, sandstorms, dust
storms, alkaline water, no water. Cholera, Indians, stupid
accidents. Youll pass graves everywhere, milestones
along the way. One out of every three of you will be dead
before you get to this California valley. So if youre smart
enough youll leave by that door.

There is a display of photographs of every man

in Whitmans ranch. Every wife-to-be selects
one picture.
Buck hires fifteen men to help him get the
women to California, warning both the men and
the women against fraternization.
Buck: The first thing I say is Stay away from
the women!

From now on Buck Wyatt takes full command of the

operation. In an atypical role for him, Robert Taylor is
the tough, seasoned Westerner, familiar with the trails
West, and a confirmed bachelor. Unbending behavior
and physical prowess are the hallmark of his identity.
The hard-driving, rough-hewn veteran cowboy is at first
highly suspicious of the women's chance of success, but
eventually he is impressed, even overwhelmed, by their
courage and fortitude amidst tremendous hardships
encountered along the trail. This is one of Taylors most
hard-bitten performances.
After a quick lesson in mule driving, the journey begins. Patience Hawley (Hope Emerson), a
giant salty New Englander, is the widow of a sailor who perished at sea. Big, strong and
outspoken, she is the typical pioneer woman. Her nautical language, composed of words like
starboard, portside, land-lubber and running aground, gives her a distinguishing colorful
individuality and has a comic effect.

Patience: Oh, Im fouled! The port mule is on the

starboard side and the starboard mules on the port side!
-------------------Patience: My mans dead, he and my three boys with him. They all went down together at Cape
Horn. It took the biggest storm in half a century to sink my men.
------------------Patience (looking at the photograph of the bridegroom of her choice): He has the face of a
mackerel!
The journey is hard but there are moments of relief, like when the women stop and take their first
bath on the trail. The camera voyeuristically catches their hitched-up skirts revealing bare thighs
in medium shot. Women are presented as the object of the male look; more so, they internalize
this attitude.
Mr. Whitman: You have overlooked one thing in your appreciation of these women.
Buck Wyatt: What is that?
Mr. Whitman: The will of a woman when there is a wedding ring in sight.
-------------------

Buck Wyatt: We are here in the middle of nowhere. Why do they try so hard to keep looking their
best?
Mr. Whitman: You dont know women, boy. Wait till you have as many mud baths as I have. Youll
learn.

Yet generally speaking, the journey is every bit as difficult as Buck predicted. Indians circle the
wagon train and, although they do not attack, they announce their intention to return later. Buck
has to send one of the men away when he behaves familiarly with one of the women; he promises
that he will kill the next man who breaks the rules. When another man rapes a woman, Buck
shoots him out of hand. This is the unsettled frontier and as wagonmaster Buck is the law on the
train, like a captain on a ship at sea.
Many of the men leave, taking some of the women with them. Jim Stacey, who has fallen in
love with Rose, the pregnant woman, asks her to leave with him, but when she refuses to abandon
the train, he stays with her. When Buck discovers the defections, rather than turn back, he
announces that he will make the women into men:
Mr. Whitman: We must turn back. It cant be done, not with women alone.
Buck: Then Ill make men out of your women. When you bring cattle in that valley of yours you
kill off the weak ones. By the time we get to that valley youll know the women who are left are fit
stock. Ill work them to their bones and skin and muscle. Once you get there you can fatten them
up.
------------------Buck (to the women): Get that dumb cow look off your faces and get going!
Bucks language repeatedly compares the women to cattle. In a self-conscious reference to Red
River, in which John Wayne urges Montgomery Clift to take his cattle to the destination Take
em to Missouri, John McIntire instructs Robert Taylor to Take em to my valley. Indeed the
hardships and decimation that the women suffer is like that of cattle on a hard trail.
Yet the women are far from bovinely passive. Some of them playfully satirize the Westerner
while registering their own suspicion of difference. One of these brides-to-be is a sharpshooter,
another one, before every utterance she makes spits tobacco juice like a saloon familiar, and yet
another, a manlike virago, seems more manly than the wagon-train scout.

One of the men who stick with the wagon train to the destination is Ito Kentaro (Henry
Nakamura). He is a Japanese cowboy, and not a typical stereotype of the Asian either. This film
has a lot of aspects that are quite refreshing and remarkable considering when it was made.
The Japanese cook becomes a sort of confidant and alter-ego, the ethnic cowboy sidekick, a
half-man (his size is regularly scoffed at by the Caucasian tough guys on the wagon train), an
allowed fool ironizing Buck, exposing as far as possible the shortcomings of the Westerner, yet
acting towards him as father, buddy, brother, all wrapped in one.
While the Westerner is contemptuous of Danons Frenchness, he remains grudgingly tolerant of
Itos regular preference for expressing his most private, usually critical, thoughts in Japanese
rather than English. Though linguistically, Ito is an irritation to Buck, he serves the function of
bridging the difficulty of difference. He also humanizes Buck, the typical macho hero who is
otherwise a rather unpalatable character.
Ito has an irreverential attitude towards supremacist masculinity and a lot of sympathy for the
women.
Ito Kentaro: Not much of me, but I fight
everybody here. I fight you too, big boss! I get
licked, but I fight!
Buck Wyatt (laughing): Can you cook? Just keep
the coffee hot and handy, I hate womens
cooking.
------------------Ito : Japanese gibberish.
Buck: What say?
Ito: Theyre going to hate your guts.
Buck: I hope they do.
------------------Ito : Japanese gibberish.
Buck: What say?
Ito: I say you wrong, big boss! You drive too hard. No man ever do what these ladies do.
Buck: Dont you tell me Im wrong, even if I am!
Ito supplies clever comic relief, partly based on Taylors injunction, find the grave of Jim
Quackenbush!, which is indeed found as a stash of whiskey.
Ito: Pardon me, may I ask, big boss, why you look for Jim
Quakenbush?
Buck: Cause weve been pals for years, inseparable pals. I
couldnt live without him.
--------------------------------------------Ito Japanese gibberish.
Buck: What say?
Ito: I say no Jim Quakenbush.
Buck: Keep looking!
(Henry Nakamura appeared only in eight movies. Roles for
Oriental actors were hard to come by at that time.)

Throughout, the film abruptly (and effectively) switches moods, veering precipitously from
raucous comedy to profound tragedy (some of the deaths occur so suddenly that they can still
elicit gasps from the audience).
The first step of making women into men is to teach them how to use a gun. During the
practice however, little Tony Moroni is accidentally shot and killed by his own mother. Mrs.
Moroni becomes temporarily insane, and Buck must drag her off her son's grave and put her in
Patience's care.
Maggie: You wont be shooting unless
youre being shot at. And if you dont kill
them, they will kill you. See that?
(pointing to rock). Kill him!
---------------------------Buck (trying to teach Danon how to
shoot): Its taking you a long time!
Danon (defiantly): I am not very bright!

When the women negotiate a difficult pass, clearing the rocks and trees before lowering the
wagons with ropes, one woman is killed in the process. It is hard to believe that such a rugged
terrain has been crossed by people with wagons, but today tourists visit the wagon ruts left on the
rocky hills on the Oregon Trail. The wagons had to be pulled up and down the slope with ropes.
Many accidents happened, and the list of casualties was high.

Buck (after a woman has just died when her wagon crashed down a mountain slope) Whos next?
Come on, its been done before, right here. The only difference is its been done by men.
Patience (indignant): By men, hah? Ill go first.
The women are often shown working supportively together, both in typically female-related
scenes (e.g. when one of them gives birth), or in conventionally male-oriented functions, like the
pulling of wagons down the hill or the defense of the wagon train against Indians. The trail west
brings out the womens dormant strength, courage, endurance and other sterling qualities usually
identified with masculinity. The large cast generally works as an ensemble, with everyone
pitching together for the common good.
In such scenes the women are larger than life and heroic. It is hard to believe that such people
existed in real life. Yet America was built by such people. The film reconsiders the role played by
women in American history.

Fifi Danon (Denise Darcel) is a former saloon girl who is

trying to make a new life. She is a fashionably bosomy figure,
yet she is no dumb blonde. A titillatingly aggressive heroine,
spontaneous, exuberant, fleshly, sincere and passionate, she
brings to the film a different European sexiness, but also a
volatile temper, impatient with many of the assumptions of
the American male. Danons defiant assertiveness, her
constant answering back and persistent use of a foreign
language that Buck does not understand, all help create a
composite image of female resistance and transgression
against male rule. Yet, for all his hostility to Danon, Buck is
also drawn to her. The foreigness and explosive sexuality
attract the repressed, self-loathing man alarmed by his own
susceptibility to Danons charm.
The battle of the sexes is played out between Buck and Danon
on the road to redefinition of gender.
When Danon fires a gun at a rabbit, the mules stampede. The
angry Buck lashes her with his whip. Out of her mind with
revolt, Danon rides away from the train and Buck gives chase
until he catches up with her. The moment is disturbing. Buck
smacks Danons face twice: first, he claims, for riding her
horse to death; second, for me. As a reflection on male
violence, the scene has its own justification when a mans
authority is challenged by a woman, he feels threatened by
impotence and helplessness if he fails to exercise his
dominance.
Yet Dannon finds his violence strangely
attractive (she is also impressed by the fact that
he came after her to prevent her death in the
wilderness). Her joyful surrender to Bucks
sadistic courtship is feminine in the traditional
submissive way.
Buck: Did I knock some sense into you?
Danon: Yes, Ill be all right now.
---------------------------Danon: But you did!
Buck: Did what?
Danon: You came after me.
This is perhaps the films crudest moment, through the example of Danon cruelly submitting all
assertive women to the authority of the patriarchal law. The more the film shows women capable
of energy, independence and assertiveness, the more it feels compelled to punish them. What the
film gives with one hand the spectacle of womens beauty and strength it takes with the other.

But if we regard Danons surrender as a

defeat, how should we regard Bucks
capitulation to feminine charm? The
reluctant Westerner finally caves in when
confronted with Danons formidable
attraction.
Danon: I fell in love with you from the first
time I saw your beautiful face.
Buck (unconvinced): What?
Danon: Its a nice, rugged face. I love it. Do
you like to hear that?
Buck: Yes.
Danon: Id like to hear it too.
Buck: Youve got a nice rugged face, beard
and all.
Taylors ruggedness is designed to appeal to the more conservative drives of female as well as
male desire.
Robert Taylor spent many years trying to overcome the "pretty boy" image of his early years in
Hollywood. He yearned for the meatier tough guy roles and loved the Western genre. Ever since
the mid-1930s he was considered as the handsomest male actor in American films. In a sense, his
looks, while making him a heartthrob, often distracted from his solid acting abilities. During and
after World War II, his repertory, which in a first period was of romantic movies, expanded into
several genres and dimensions, from military roles and battle films to Westerns, epics, hardboiled parts, noir movies, even gangster items. In general his acting was very good.
Taylors masculinity is asserted through a variety of strategies in Westward the Women: his
name (Buck), speech (autocratic), action (peremptory and decisive) and physical appearance. His
shadowy profile gives the once clean-shaven profile of the early Taylor a rougher edge, earning
Danons disapproval early on in the film: Dont you ever shave? You look so dirty. The film
provides a woman with the opportunity of making ironic the Westerners characteristically rugged
looks. Whereas, say, John Wayne needed no such protection, Taylors facial hair is his safeguard
against the threat of feminization.
Danons two references to Taylors good looks at first objecting to and then admiring his
rugged face and unkept beard make several points simultaneously. It reaffirms the status of
women as civilizers and tamers of male wildness and independence, while also acknowledging
feminine pleasure in the spectacle of male objects of desire.
When Buck and Danon return to the wagon train, they find it under attack from Indians. After
the attack, Roy Whitman (John McIntire) dies of an arrow wound. Supporting actor John
McIntire was distinctive for his ever-likable parts in many films. He mostly attracted sympathy
through sober, minimalist performances. No exception here, down to his moment of death when
he (Hollywoodianly) tells Buck: "Take them to my valley!" A roll call of the casualties reveals the
deaths of Jim and several of the women.
Buck (discouraged by the Indian attack that killed Mr. Whitman): Ladies, Im sorry, I cant take
you through. You fought, you died Theres just too much against you. Ladies, we start back in
the morning.
Patience: Not me! not mememe(canyon echo)
Maggie: Not me! not mememe(canyon echo)
All women: Not me! not mememe(canyon echo)
Buck looks at the women with admiration and pride.

The women have been told repeatedly that they can't cope, can't shoot, can't rope, can't ride,
can't fight, and can't endure, and they have proved this to be wrong. These masculine things are
now absorbed into them. Through the ordeals of their migration, the women eventually break free
of imprisoning stereotypes, and the Westerner is eventually forced to investigate the roots of his
own prejudice. It is funny that they become intelligible to Buck only when they learn to be more
like men.
The last big obstacle facing the women is the
desert. The story was filmed on location in the
Mohave Desert in Utah, which made it more
realistic. To stress the audience's feeling of the
harshness and heat of the terrain, Wellman had
his cinematographer, William Mellor, use filters
as sparingly as possible. This gives the film an
intentionally stark, sun-baked look. The result
some of the densest black-and-white contrasts in
daylight ever achieved on film. Westward the
Women is one story that needs to be told in
stark black-and-white photography; the currently
available colorized version should be avoided.

A stark, no-nonsense outdoor drama lacking any musical score except a title melody at the outset
and some incidental music near the end, the film virtually plays like a documentary, utilizing
unglamorous and extensive location shooting. It feels like real history in a documentary. The
crosses marking graves along the trail, the deserted pieces of furniture in the desert (to make the
wagons lighter), the sweat, dirt and shiny noses The women wear the standard dress for pioneer
women, only a couple wore pants and a gun belt.
All the female characters are shot utilizing
mostly flat, natural light sources, a daring choice
during the glamour-intensive fifties. Wellman
often shoots the women from below, framing
them prominently against the sky. His
admiration for these characters and their bravery
could not be clearer. Dramatic images of
individual women against an open and stark
landscape are rare in American films, and they
are memorable.

10

This is almost a casebook of traditional attitudes toward women that are refuted. In other words,
while the female characters may be spoken to or treated derisively, the audience is made to see
them positively, even heroically.
The movie sometimes shows women at their worst (being catty, spiteful and argumentative).
But most sincerely, it shows women at their finest and best. They are brave, smart, loving,
compassionate and enduring. They shoot, ride, lift and pull and do all the jobs usually done by
men on this trip without complaint. The women that starred in the movie did all the physical work
themselves.
Rose goes into labor during the
desert crossing, and when a
wheel falls off the wagon in
which Patience is caring for her,
the women hold the wagon up
during the birth of the baby. The
scene symbolizes their united
human aspirations and strength.
The birth of a child under the
blistering sun of the desert; after
the awful death of the little
Italian boy, gives hope to the
women. It is a promise that new
children will soon be born and
carry on their mammoth task.
Women, even in the Wild West, are shown as prim and proper. These are good women.
When the train reaches its destination, the women refuse to meet their future husbands until they
have had time to clean up and make themselves "presentable". What could easily be deemed an
exercise in vanity is actually a demonstration of these women's will to fully finish what they have
started, and a sign of self-respect; their desire to present themselves to the men in their best light
is symbolic of their ultimate survival against overwhelming odds. They are, in essence, saying
"we have won the battle, we are unscathed, and you must show us the respect we deserve".
Buck is now the admiring champion of these plucky women and warns the men to be good to
them:
Buck (to the men in Whitmans Valley): The women wont get into town until they look their best.
If you get within a hundred yards theyll shoot you.
Man (in awe): They must be great!
The women manage to make themselves beautiful and clean and dress up in no time out of
scarves, tablecloths, and what have you, that the men manage to find in their humble abodes.
When they are ready, the women drive into town to meet the waiting men. In spite of its realism,
the style is on the sentimental side. This is a genuine feel good movie, even though it is riddled
with many sad and turbulent scenes. In a bow to his colleague Ford, Wellman does have a
courtship dance at the settlement. John Ford couldn't have staged it better. If the finale is a bit
fabricated, it touches the romantic heart deeply. It is tremendously satisfying, because the reward
has been so hard won.
The film ends with restored order and matrimonial euphoria. We cheer as each woman picks her
man, not the other way around.
Man meeting bride: A red one! Youre much prettier than I expected!
----------------------------------Woman: You look taller in your picture.
Man: Dont worry, Im tall enough.

11

The ending reminds the

audience that men are not the
sole bearers of the look.
Patience,
the
character
constantly posing the greatest
challenge
to
patriarchy,
informs the men: You can
look us over, but dont you
think youre going to do the
choosing. While the women
accept a traditional role as
objects of the male gaze, they
also insist on reversing the
process (in this movie we
have picture bridegrooms,
not picture brides.
The movie deals frankly with the unbridled
attraction many of the men and women exhibit toward
each other formality is purely an afterthought when
individuals are alone in a land so untamed. Many of
the men stare at the women like gold coins in a
treasure chest; but the women are equally enthralled,
each wondering if this is the match they've worked and
waited for.
Patience: You can look us over, but dont you think
youll do the choosing. All the way from Independence
Ive been looking at two things: one was this picture
and the other one was the rump of a mule. Dont ask
me which one was prettier. This picture got me across,
Ive got this picture across. Nobody chooses him but
me.
The womens mission is to marry into a community of eager, female-starved pioneers and
thereby convert the wilderness into a garden, reflecting a dominant pattern in a genre in which
civilization is often identified with the female. The very essence of a woman gives meaning and
purpose to the civilizing process to which men in the wilderness are committed.
As the women choose their husbands, Danon stops Buck before he can leave, and they join the
line of couples waiting to be married. The film is by no means alone in the Western genre in
preferring the garden to the wilderness, in the process associating women, again
characteristically, with entrapment. While the films early moments show Buck resisting female
designs on his traditional masculinity, the ending of the movie shows him clean-shaven,
capitulating to the female, preparing to join the queue of fellow Westerners obediently sacrificing
independence for domesticity.
Ultimately, the film is contradictory, defining women in terms of conventional notions of
marriage and domesticity while also finding space for alternative definitions of femininity,
affirming as well as undermining gender difference.

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