The 1862 Pacific Railroad Act signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad westward across the wilderness toward California, but financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows's agent, gambler Sid Campeau. Campeau's partner Dick Allen is Jeff's war buddy and rival suitor for engineer's daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?
Cast
Production
According to a news item in The Hollywood Reporter, DeMille directed much of the film from a stretcher, because of an operation he had months earlier. However, studio records indicate DeMille collapsed from the strain of directing three units simultaneously, and used a stretcher for about two weeks. Parts of the film were shot in Iron Springs, Utah. The golden spike used at the ceremony to mark the end of the construction was the same spike actually used in the May 10, 1869, event, on loan from Stanford University. For the Indian attack on the train, Paramount hired 100 Navajo Indian extras. The company had rented many local Pinto horses for the filming of the Indian attack on the train. During filming, however, local cowboys had to be hired to round up the horses, as they would scatter and sometimes stampede because of the noise and confusion of these scenes—all the shooting, yelling, and yards of unfamiliar cloth on the horses, along with kettles and other implements tied to their manes and tails, made them extremely nervous and uncomfortable, and it didn't require much to make them bolt. In order to operate the number of trains required by the production, Paramount had to get a regulation railroad operating license from the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Awards
The film is the official winner of the first-ever Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, although this was awarded in retrospect at the 2002 festival. The festival was to debut in 1939 but was cancelled owing to World War II. The organizers of the 2002 festival presented part of the original 1939 selection to a professional jury of six members. The films were: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, La piste du nord, Lenin in 1918, The Four Feathers, The Wizard of Oz, Union Pacific, and Boefje. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Special Effects at the 12th Academy Awards.
Historical context
Union Pacific was released in 1939 two months after John Ford's Stagecoach, which film historians consider responsible for transforming the Hollywood Western from "a mostly low budget, B film affair." Wheeler M. Dixon, for example, notes that after the appearance of these two films, the western was “something worthy of adult attention and serious criticism, and therefore a yardstick against which all westerns have been subsequently measured”. DeMille's film indeed took the genre to a new level, considering issues of national unity in an engaging and entertaining manner at a time when nationalism was an increasing public concern. Michael Coyne accordingly characterizes Union Pacific as a "technological nation-linking endeavor" in his book The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity In the Hollywood Western. The spirit of unification in the film parallels the industrial boom that brought the United States out of the Great Depression at the onset of World War II, and, although the U.S. would not become involved in the war until 1941, the film’s emphasis on national unity typifies the nationalistic sentiment that would become much stronger once the country was at war.
World premiere
The world premiere of the motion picture took place simultaneously at three different theaters in Omaha, Nebraska, on April 28, 1939, just three weeks shy of the 70th anniversary of the driving of the real Golden Spike which joined the rails of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads at Promontory Summit, UT, on May 10, 1869. The premiere was the center piece of a four-day combined event called the and Golden Spike Historical Exposition that drew 250,000 people to the city, thereby temporarily doubling its population and requiring the National Guard to help keep order. A special train transported DeMille, Stanwyck, and McCrea from Hollywood to Omaha. The trip took three days and made stops along the way, drawing large crowds. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt inaugurated the overall celebration by pressing a telegraph key at the White House in Washington, DC, which opened the civic auditorium. An ad stated that the premiere, which involved parades, radio broadcasts and a banquet, was the biggest in motion picture history. An antique train continued on a 15-day coast-to-coast promotional tour, stopping at 30 cities around the country.
Home video
This film, along with The Sign of the Cross, Four Frightened People, Cleopatra, and The Crusades, was released on US DVD in 2006 by Universal Studios as part of The Cecil B. DeMille Collection. Later it was released separately, as well as on DVD in France and Germany. In 2017 it was released on Blu-ray in Germany by Koch Media, with its main extra being an HD transfer of the 107-minute dubbed and edited 1939 German theatrical version.
