How The Covered Wagon Was Made

How- and where- was The Covered Wagon made?

Everyone who sees this sweeping photoplay of a pioneer wagon train of the roaring '40s crossing America from that jumping off place of civilization, Westport Landing, afterwards Kansas City, to the coast, will want to know exactly how James Cruze, the director behind it, achieved his effects.

First, we will let Cruze speak for himself: " The Covered Wagon had a curious history before it came to my hands. The original Emerson Hough novel had been turned down by a number of stars when Mary Miles Minter saw it- and was attracted to it. As I understand it, she had a clause in her contract giving her a certain choice of story. So the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation bought "The Covered Wagon" for her. Then the first difficulties presented themselves, with the final result that three directors declined the script and Miss Minter finally did another story instead. In brief, it was not possible to spend a large amount of money on any production where the star received a salary of the Minter magnitude- and still release the photoplay at a profit.

Director James Cruze borrowed 750 real redskins for The Covered Wagon. One of the chiefs, from a Nevada reservation, is shown at the top. The buffalo hunt (above), utilizing a herd of 350 buffalo, was staged on Antelope Island in Great Salt Lake.

 

"Then The Covered Wagon came to me. I saw it as just another Western with a few wagons and so on- or a big special. I talked with Mr. Jesse Lasky and he agreed with me. And he gave me orders to go ahead."

So Cruze and his technical staff put out from Los Angeles for the selected location, a 200,000 acre ranch in the Snake Valley of Nevada, near Baker and not far from the Utah line. The exact locale was 85 miles from the nearest railroad, at Milford. Here many of the scenes of The Covered Wagon were shot, including the highly effective river fording scenes and the glimpses of old Fort Bridger.

The turbulent river as seen on the screen isn't a river at all, but a lake on the huge Nevada ranch. But the lake had its dangers, being 600 feet deep at almost any spot. And a number of the wagons were actually lost, horses were drowned and some of the human participants had close calls.

Cruze took a company of 127, not numbering his staff of carpenters. This included most of the principal players. He had a corps of motor trucks, but the covered wagons were constructed on the spot. Some 350 to 500 wagons were used at different times. While most of them were built for the picture, many were supplied by people of the neighborhood. Indeed from 800 to 1,100 people were recruited from the surrounding zone of 300 miles during the eight weeks of work in this district. These local people, ranging from cowboys to settlers and including many actual '49ers, came riding in, on ponies or with their families, wagons and baggage, to become movie players for the time being. This small army was, of course, paid by the day, at a rate of about ten dollars a head.

To this number must be added the 750 borrowed redskins. "Real Indians every one," explains Cruze, "and not an imitation in the bunch.

Many unusual difficulties confronted Cruze and his technical chief, Walter Reed. One was the need of lumber. While the rest of America was having its coal shortage, Cruze faced a wood problem. Upon arrival in the Snake Valley, they found all available lumber under contract. Reed succeeded in purchasing all this, together with several unfinished houses in Milford. Reed picked up a barn or two in other towns. These were knocked apart and transported by truck to location.

The job of handling this vast army of extras- far from civilization- was no small one. The commissary department alone had a terrific problem. Some 500 sleeping tents were used by the players and workers, along with the covered wagons. All costumes of the period were shipped from the Los Angeles studios.

"There wasn't a false whisker in the whole crowd," relates Cruze. "But the prize of the lot was the hirsute adornment raised by Tully Marshall as the old trader of the plains. They were whiskers!"

	The lake where the "river" scenes were taken was located on a huge Nevada ranch and presented many real dangers, being 600 feet deep in spots.

After eight weeks in the Great Snake Valley camp, Cruze took his principals, staff and cowboys to Antelope Island in Great Salt Lake, where the buffalo hunt scenes were shot. Here is the last big herd of 350 buffalo. Seven of them were sacrificed to art- and The Covered Wagon.

"Don't grow sentimental over the seven," says Cruze. "The folks out there would like to get rid of the whole herd and they would, but for the sentimental hubbub that is always raised when they talk of rounding out the buffalo. The animals are worthless- there isn't worse meat on earth to eat- and they ruin the whole territory for cattle grazing purposes. So the buffalo remain- sentimental reminders of the America of the past."

After the buffalo hunt, Cruze and his company returned to the coast studios. "At that time The Covered Wagon ended on the plains. There was nothing of the present California and Oregon sequences. We had thought that the continuous scenes of the pioneer caravan winding its way across the country would grow monotonous. So we ended the tale out there near Fort Bridger.

"But, when we returned to California and put the print together, we revised our estimate. The wagon trail curiously became the star, with a personality all its own. Then we decided to show the actual consummation of the long migration across the plains and the Sierras.

"So, three months later, we went to Sonora, Cal., for the snow scenes and there rebuilt the wagon train, for the old wagons had been discarded, broken up or sold back in Nevada. This added a big item of expense, but it gave The Covered Wagon its logical culmination. Don't forget that Mr. Lasky deserves his praise for adding this huge item to the final cost- and adding it purely with the thought of bettering a picture which could have been sold as it was."

The "snow stuff" took two weeks in the shooting and the final cost of The Covered Wagon amounted to exactly $782,000. This, of course, includes all the actual production expenses but not advertising and exploitation. And these are the figures as named by Cruze himself.

Altogether the actual shooting required slightly less than twelve weeks, not counting the time spent in traveling.

Motion picture audiences will wonder just why Warren Kerrigan chose The Covered Wagon to return to the screen. In reality, he returned rather under protest. He long ago laid aside enough to enjoy life with his mother. His house was close to that of Director Cruze, who, being an intimate friend, immediately thought of him for the role of the heroic adventurer when the script was first considered." It required two weeks of persuasion to get him to come to the studio," says Cruze, "but when he donned grease paint on location, he was as wild to work as a novice." There was tragic note to Kerrigan's return, however. His mother- loved and idolized by Kerrigan and for whom he had planned everything- died while he was at work in the Great Snake Valley, far from telegraph and railroad.

Director James Cruze debating whether or not Lois Wilson's lips are on straight. Miss Wilson is the heroine of The Covered Wagon.

The Covered Wagon will go a long way towards establishing Cruze at the forefront of our directors. Yet, when Cruze first went to California, he sought work for a whole year in vain. Finally George Melford gave him something at five dollars a day. That was the turning point in his career.

This career, however, dates back to the very beginning of pictures. Cruze was born in Ogden, Utah. Indeed, it was his early life amid the very scenes of The Covered Wagon that gave him the idea of going to this location for the making of the production. Cruze ran away from home to become a medicine show "barker," selling bitters and snake bite "cures." Gradually he stepped to traveling theatrical companies and then to the motion pictures at the very start. Cruze was a popular leading man in the early days. One of his biggest successes was the lead of the famous Thanhouser serial, The Million Dollar Mystery. Here he played opposite Flo La Badie. In 1912, Cruze married Marguerite Snow, a famous cinema idol of those "palmy days."

Frederick James Smith, "How The Covered Wagon Was Made," Photoplay, June 1923, pages 38, 39, 106, 107.

© 1999, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)

Return to the Silent Film Bookshelf Home Page