Union Pacific **** (1939, Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Akim Tamiroff, Robert Preston, Lynne Overman, Brian Donlevy, Henry Kolker, Robert Barrat, Anthony Quinn, Regis Toomey, Evelyn Keyes) – Classic Movie Review 5204

Producer-director Cecil B DeMille’s huge 1939 epic Western stars Barbara Stanwyck, who, though best known for melodramas and comedies, also excelled in Westerns, and this was one of her first. It is set in 1862, when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads are competing to get to California.

It also casts Henry Kolker as greedy senator Asa Barrows, who tries to get rich by throwing spanners into the works of the building of the new Union Pacific railway westward across the United States wilderness into California.

Stanwyck and Joel McCrea play colleen Mollie Monahan and   railroad man Captain Jeff Butler, who are the film’s good guys fighting off Indians and the bad guys.

Brian Donlevy and Robert Preston play the bad guys, gambler Sid Campeau and Dick Allen, Jeff Butler’s buddy but rival for the love of Mollie Monahan.

It also stars Akim Tamiroff, Lynne Overman, Robert Barrat, Anthony Quinn, Regis Toomey and Evelyn Keyes.

With plenty of big production values, splashy action (including a then famous train crash) and rousing acting, this is over the top a lot of the time, as would be expected of the showman producer DeMille, and very easy to enjoy.

Also in the cast are Stanley Ridges, Frances McDonald, Willard Robertson, Harold Goodwin, Richard Lane, William Haade, J M Kerrigan, Fuzzy Knight, Harry Woods, Lon Chaney Jr, Joseph Crehan, Joe Sawyer, Byron Foulger, Jack Pennnick, Charles Stevens, Syd Saylor, Dick Rush, Hal Price, Guy Usher, Chief Thundercloud, Sam McDaniel, Jim Kelso, Si Jenks, Will Geer, Russell Hicks, Davison Clark, Ward Bond, Dick Botelier, Stanley Andrews and Sam Ash.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5204

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