Union Pacific is a 1939 film about the building of the railroad across the American West. The story is based upon the novel Trouble Shooter, written by the prolific Western fiction author, Ernest Haycox.
Plot summary
One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California, but financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows' 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.
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
This 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 due 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.
World premiere
The world premiere of the motion picture took place simultaneously at three different theaters (the Omaha, Orpheum, and Paramount) 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 19, 1869. The premiere was the center piece of a four-day (April 26-29) combined event called the Golden Spike Days Celebration 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.
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