Westward the Women is a 1951 Western film directed by William A. Wellman and written by Charles Schnee from a Frank Capra story. It stars Robert Taylor, Denise Darcel, Hope Emerson, and John McIntire. The supporting cast includes Beverly Dennis, Renata Vanni, Julie Bishop, Marilyn Erskine, Lenore Lonergan, Henry Nakamura, and Pat Conway.
In 1851, Roy Whitman (McIntire) wants to bring respectable women from the East to California to marry the lonely men who work for him. He hires Buck Wyatt (Taylor) to lead the wagon train along the California Trail. In Chicago, Roy recruits "good women", ranging from older widows like Patience Hawley (Emerson) and Mrs. Moroni (Vanni), to young women looking for a fresh start like Rose Meyers (Dennis), a secretly pregnant teacher. He also accepts two showgirls, Fifi Danon (Darcel) and Laurie Smith (Bishop), who convince him they wish to reform.
Wagons, horses, and mules await in St. Joseph, Missouri, along with 15 trail hands hired by Buck. Ito (Nakamura), a determined if diminutive Japanese man, persuades Buck to take him on as the cook. Before setting out, Buck warns the men and the women to stay away from each other, as he has seen wagon trains torn apart by romantic shenanigans. After a week's training, the train heads west.
Early in the journey, a man rapes Laurie, and Buck kills him. That night, most of the trail hands desert, along with eight women. This leaves only four men: Buck, Roy, Ito, and Sid Cutler (Conway), who has fallen in love with Rose. Roy decides they must turn back, but as they are half-way to their destination, Buck believes the women can "do a man's job" and finish the difficult journey.
The women persevere through various hardships and dangers, including a stampede, mountains, an Indian attack, a flash flood, and the desert, eventually reaching Whitman's Valley, and the men who are waiting to marry them.
This show provides examples of:
- Busman's Vocabulary: Patience's late husband and sons were sailors, and she uses nautical terms and slang frequently, especially early in the movie.
- Curtain Clothing: When the women finally reach Whitman's Valley, they look like they've been through hell. They stop at a lake a couple miles away and refuse to see the men until they've had a chance to make themselves presentable. Buck goes into the settlement and returns with tablecloths, bandanas, sheets, and whatever else the men could scrounge together. The women use it to fashion new clothing, which they wear when they ride in to meet the men.
- Dance Party Ending: Musicians play while the women meet the men whose pictures they chose in Chicago, and the couples dance.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The women go through hell to get to California, but the ones who make it there appear to find happy matches with men who are eager to marry them.
- Foreign-Language Tirade: Fifi hurls French curses at Buck several times.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: Some of the French curses Fifi hurls at Buck would never have made it past the Hays Office censors if she had said them in English.
- Hidden Supplies: Buck has been looking for (and has had Ito looking for) the grave of Jim Quackenbush along the trail. It turns out that the grave was really a hidden stash of rum.
- Hostile Weather: Especially the storm that washes away Fifi and Laurie's wagon in the night, drowning Laurie.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Initially, only two women know how to use guns. After most of the trail hands desert, the others have to learn. During the gun training, Mrs. Moroni accidentally shoots and kills her son.
- Mail-Order Bride: The whole premise of the story is a wagon train of women seeking marriage and a new life.
- Precious Photo: The women carry the pictures of the men they chose from Chicago to California. Patience in particular mentions that the photo got her through it.
- Reality Has No Subtitles: Fifi speaks French, Mrs. Moroni speaks Italian, Ito speaks Japanese, and none of it is subtitled for English-speaking viewers.
- Rule of Funny: The women choose the pictures of the men they want to marry in Chicago, and then pick out the men from their pictures once they reach California. Patience stands a head taller than her man. A woman whose glasses broke along the trail meets her man, takes his glasses off him, and puts them on herself. The woman who chose the fiddle player kisses him in the middle of a song; after they break the kiss, the quality of his playing suffers significantly.
- Rule of Romantic: Several of the final pairings are this. Mrs. Moroni's man turns out to be Italian, someone whom she can finally understand and who can understand her. Rose sits alone with her baby, until the man who helped her out of the wagon chooses her and her baby. A man who asked for a redhead at the beginning of the film is overjoyed when the woman who chose him is a beautiful redhead.
- The Savage Indian: An Indian attack claims the lives of Roy, Sid, and six women.
- Weddings for Everyone: Given the premise of the story, this is to be expected. During the Dance Party Ending, couples stand in line, waiting for the preacher to marry them.
