1947 | NR | 1h 37m | Western
Virtually every great actor from Hollywood’s Golden Age starred in at least one or two Westerns that included the American Gold Rush (also known as “gold fever”) of the 19th century as their backdrops.
Journey West
Milland plays Jonathan Trumbo, a man with a mysterious past, who has been hired to guide a wagon train to California. The wagons are so numerous that they form a line as far as the eye can see. “California or Bust” is scrawled across the side of one covered wagon, which accurately sums up the do-or-die mentality of these fortune seekers.Trumbo leads the wagon train into a town for supplies and wagon repairs, plus a little bit of frolicking for the travelers. Just as they’re about to hit the trail again, Trumbo and God-fearing farmer Michael Fabian (Barry Fitzgerald) see a gaudily dressed woman named Lily Bishop (Barbara Stanwyck) being tossed out of a saloon after being accused of cheating at a poker game.
Lily asks Trumbo if she can join his traveling band of wagons on its trek west, but Trumbo flatly turns her down. Fabian, on the other hand, pleads with Trumbo to let her accompany them. However, the “upstanding” women of the immediate group object, saying that it would be inviting “wickedness and mortal sin” to let Lily join them. Eventually, Fabian convinces the others to let Lily come along since he believes it’s the right thing to do.
During the trip, Lily attempts to fit in with the more conservative people, ditching her saloon clothes for a more modest look. However, all of her efforts are for naught, and she becomes the local pariah when it comes to social events during the wagon train’s downtime. So Lily goes back to doing what she knows best: gambling.
A slick poker player, Lily soon finds herself the only female at games, surrounded by some of the more scurrilous men. Trumbo comes across one such game, and after Lily beats everyone at the makeshift table, she challenges him to a game.
Gold!
News soon reaches the wagon train that gold has been discovered in Sutter’s Mill, near Sacramento, California. This revelation creates stir among the travelers, and in an effort to be among the first to arrive at the new gold strike, they lighten their loads by leaving most of their worldly belongings behind. Trumbo discovers that Lily plans to leave as well.However, she’s accompanying a rival for her affections, Booth Pennock (Gavin Muir). Although Trumbo tries to stop her from leaving, Pennock’s wagon driver whips him off his horse and causes a serious shoulder injury.
Fabian stays behind to nurse Trumbo back to health, and the two men travel further west and come across the town of Pharaoh City. Trumbo runs into Lily and Pennock in a local saloon and learns that they are working with the businessman who recently built the entire town: a former slave ship captain named Capt. Pharaoh Coffin (George Coulouris).
Trumbo discovers that Capt. Coffin is a ruthless tyrant, who has been treating the other recent arrivals from the wagon train unfairly, squeezing every cent he can out of them for ever-diminishing returns. Lily is romantically attached to Capt. Coffin, much to Trumbo’s dismay.
A Bit of History
One of the more interesting facets of this Western is that, amid all of the chaos and drama transpiring between the characters, we also get to learn about how the state of California formed. While Trumbo and his allies emerge as formidable proponents for Californian statehood, other, sinister forces want the region to be set up like a dictatorship.This film is billed as an “epic” and it does indeed include incredibly grand scenes, accompanied by a rousing score. In one impressive sequence in which folks learn about the discovery of gold, we see them abandon their possessions in a frenzied scramble to rush out west. The music swells with boundless optimism that conveys the excitement at the news, spread far and wide, of untapped precious metals.
Both Stanwyck and Milland do a splendid job as two icy souls who begin to thaw each other out. The actor who really surprised me was George Coulouris, who plays the dastardly would-be dictator of California. Most of the time, Coulouris emits a cold and calculating persona, yet he occasionally slips into a waking nightmare and murmurs to himself, because of all the evil deeds he committed in the past aboard the slave ships.
These characters (and a few others) are so big, and the film covers so much historical ground, that I could easily imagine this project being of a multi-part series, rather than a single film.
“California” is an excellent entry into the fortune-seeking Gold Rush genre, with a memorable score, fine acting performances, and lots of tense drama; I just wish it could have been a little longer, or part of a series.
