Western Union **** (1941, Randolph Scott, Robert Young, Dean Jagger, Virginia Gilmore, Slim Summerville, John Carradine, Chill Wills) – Movie Review 2808

The ideally cast Randolph Scott stars in a cheering performance as cowboy hero Vance Shaw in director Fritz Lang’s top-notch 1941 Western film Western Union, loosely based on the Zane Grey novel, with a grade-A 20th Century-Fox Studios production, glorious Technicolor images, and ample fighting and gunplay.

The stirring story follows the heroic laying of the first trans-American telegraph cable line in 1861, which is of course hindered by outlaws, Indians and politicians.

Scott plays ex-outlaw Vance who goes to work for the telegraph company, while Barton MacLane plays his brother Jack Slade, who leads outlaws trying to prevent the company connecting the line between Omaha and Salt Lake City. Dean Jagger also stars as Edward Creighton, who, in leading the building of the Western Union to unite East and West, hires Vance and tenderfoot Eastern surveyor Richard Blake (Robert Young).

The cowboy movie clichés are admirably presented and developed in Robert Carson’s involving screenplay, and there are lots of fine directorial touches by the masterly film-maker Lang, working at near his peak.

Lang, proud of the painstaking film’s authenticity and meticulousness, said: ‘I later found out that the laying of the line didn’t take half as long as the shooting.’

Also in the cast are Virginia Gilmore, Slim Summerville, John Carradine, Chill Wills, Russell Hicks, Victor Kilian, Minor Watson, George Chandler, Charles Middleton, Addison Richards, Irving Bacon, James Flavin, Chief John Big Tree, Iron Eyes Cody and Jay Silverheels.

Western Union runs 95 minutes, is written by Robert Carson from the novel by Zane Grey, is shot in Technicolor by Edward Cronjager and Allen M Davey, is produced by Darryl F Zanuck and Harry Joe Brown (associate) and is scored by David Buttolph.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2808

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Fritz Lang directs the 1941 Western film Western Union.