Ernest Haycox story "Trouble Shooters" becomes excellent spectacle from director and co-producer Cecil B. DeMille, here working with all his action-packed attributes yet saved in the end by a wonderful and personable trio of stars. In the days following the Civil War's climax, General Grant is asked to help financially back the railroad, which hopes to expand its tracks East from California and across America; Joel McCrea is the superintendent in charge of production, Robert Preston is his former war buddy and railroad traitor, and Barbara Stanwyck is the woman happily caught between them both. After a sluggish opening of about twenty minutes, this adventure gets cooking for a rip-roaring good time. There's political treason and treachery, Sioux Indian attacks, and majestic locomotives galore! We never quite learn the motives behind Stanwyck's romantic-minded actions (and her Irish accent is a little wobbly), but we have no trouble believing her adoration for clever, two-fisted McCrea, who emerges as the picture's hero. Supporting cast is full of colorful personalities, and the upbeat spirit of the movie is broad but unquestionably rousing. **1/2 from ****
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kevinolzak24 June 20171939's "Union Pacific" was the final black and white feature for the legendary director Cecil B. De Mille, coming on the heels of John Ford's "Stagecoach," spearheading the revival of Hollywood Westerns from hour long quickies to major productions. Owing a debt to Ford's own 1924 silent "The Iron Horse," De Mille proved again a master showman, a fine cast and epic scenes of destruction and Indian battles, though top billed Barbara Stanwyck's oirish accent calls attention to one of her least rewarding performances. Fortunately, Joel McCrea is everything the script calls for, a towering troubleshooter for the Union Pacific railroad, quick to put an end to problems arising in their goal to combine east and west coasts. Banker Henry Kolker is buttressed by reliable villain Brian Donlevy (already well versed in railroad chicanery in Fox's "Jesse James"), confederates played by Fuzzy Knight, Anthony Quinn, Robert Barrat, and Lon Chaney Jr. Robert Preston is the literal wild card in this stacked deck, Donlevy's partner in crime but soft for pretty Stanwyck. For Chaney fans, coming off a small role as 'One of James Gang' in the aforementioned "Jesse James," his role is nothing more than a bearded extra with no dialogue, less than a minute on screen in just two short scenes, in at 26 minutes (aboard the train when a henchman takes a potshot at a defenseless Indian), out at 36 (seated in the saloon when Donlevy offers up free drinks). Lon would fare better in De Mille's "North West Mounted Police" (in the wake of his triumphant "Of Mice and Men"), but would never work for the illustrious director after that. Another trivia note finds unbilled Richard Denning playing a reporter, only three years before wedding Chaney co-star Evelyn Ankers in a lasting union.
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Amidst the glamour of "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz", this b&w Cecil B. DeMille Historical Fiction Classic received its share of eager 1939 movie theatre audiences. Starring a wholesome Irish immigrant Barbara Stanwyck, a noble law man Joel McCrae and a dashing dare devil Robert Preston, "Union Pacific" delivers a love-triangle centered around the historic 1869 joining of rail road tracks to connect the Western and Eastern borders of the United States. The love story is "formula", but delivers several "moments" where many viewers will fumble for their Kleenex. The climactic final scene showing the pay-off for all of the material and human sacrifices is priceless!
The very last of DeMille's b&w ventures, Union Pacific is one of those gems that endured the test of time, endearing the "glorious black and white" to generations of viewers. I first saw this classic as a child; I loved it then, as I still do today. Of all of the Hollywood movies ever produced, no single year of film-making has ever stood out from the rest like 1939. "Union Pacific" helped solidify this status. A true Hollywood Classic! -
Union Pacific is directed by Cecil B. DeMille (aided by others due to illness) and based upon the novel Trouble Shooter, written by Ernest Haycox. It stars Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Robert Preston, Brian Donlevy, Akim Tamiroff and Lynne Overman. Story is a fictionalised account of the building of the railroad across the American West, encompassing the trials, tribulations and rivalries that formed as history was being made.
"The legend of Union Pacific is the drama of a nation, young, tough, prodigal and invincible, conquering with an iron highroad the endless reaches of the West. For the West is America's Empire, and only yesterday Union Pacific was the West".
A big production that went down a storm at the box office upon release, Union Pacific, in spite of its overt patriotic bluster, is an entertaining and important part of the Western movie story. Alongside John Ford's Stagecoach, which was released a couple of months previously, DeMille's movie helped take the Western to a new and more adult level. It wouldn't be until the 50's that the Western truly found its mojo, but the influence of both Stagecoach and Union Pacific was firmly felt through each passing decade.
Film manages to be literate whilst puncturing the plot with doses of action, the story underpinned by a love triangle between McCrea, Stanwyck and Preston. The former as the stoic troubleshooter brought in to keep order, the latter as the charming villain with a heart. Cast all work well with the material to hand, and if one is not bothered by the historical tampering involved in the story? Then it's an easy film to recommend to Western movie seekers. 7/10 -
UNION PACIFIC is one Cecil B. DeMille film that could have used 1939's Technicolor to tell the sprawling story of the pioneers who built the railroads that united east and west. Nevertheless, DeMille does get across the enormous amount of work involved in building the rails while a lot of skullduggery was going on behind the scenes to prevent a team of workers to reach the midpoint first.
JOEL McCREA is the perfect western hero for DeMille's story and gives his usual easy performance as the enforcer who has to keep the villains from halting progress on the rails. BRIAN DONLEVY makes a perfect heel and ROBERT PRESTON shows genuine charm and gives a double-layered performance as McCrea's longtime pal caught under the influence of the bad guys who want to cause havoc. REGIS TOOMEY is underused in a very brief role as an ill-fated Irish rail worker.
BARBARA STANWYCK gives her Irish accent a good try and, while not always successful, delivers a very likable performance as the post office gal along for the ride. ANTHONY QUINN has a brief supporting role as a badman, but the most colorful support comes from AKIM TAMIROFF as Fiesta, the man with the whip, and LYNNE OVERMAN, both playing McCrea's scruffy bodyguards. And boy, does he need them! EVELYN KEYES has one line and disappears. But DeMille keeps track of all his extras, using them effectively in all the big mob scenes both indoor and out.
Again, Technicolor was still new in 1939 but GONE WITH THE WIND was using seven Technicolor cameras and DeMille probably had no choice but to film in B&W. Let's just say, this is the kind of story that cried for Technicolor which may have made some of the process shots less noticeable for backgrounds shot in a studio.
DeMille's tendency to let his films run over two hours is present here. At least twenty minutes or more could easily have been cut to keep the story in a tighter mode.
For DeMille fans, definitely worth seeing. -
Nazi_Fighter_David23 May 2005DeMille's railroading epic owed a debt or two to Ford He was obviously influenced by "The Iron Horse"(1924) and there are some sequences which seem more than derivativein fact, they are remarkably similar But it was a film that nevertheless deserved the warm reception that it got
Here was Joel McCrea in fine form with something more worthy of his talents McCrea played a trouble-shooter whose task was to keep the transcontinental project moving Barbara Stanwyck played opposite as a railroad fiery Irish post-mistress of the mobile railway town
Robert Preston, gambler, a one time pal of McCrea's, is now in the employ of another gambler, Brian Donlevy, and they have been hired as saboteurs by a railroad politician secretly trying to impede the progress of the building of the Union Pacific
Stanwyck didn't really come amiss in an all-out action mixture that took in disorderly and noisy railroad workers, turbulent frontier types of both sexes, con men, outlaws and a generous helping of Indians
"Union Pacific" was undoubtedly great fun although perhaps embarrassingly patriotic But, in perspective, it is dwarfed by another film which appeared the same year and which had a profound and far-reaching influence on the course of Westerns
John Ford had returned to the form after 13 years abstinence John Wayne, who had been languishing in 'B' Westerns since making "The Big Trail," was back once more in a main feature starring role The film was the immortal "Stagecoach" which was to set all sorts of standards for Westerns to be -
bkoganbing30 May 2004One of the previous reviewers recommended reading Stephen Ambrose's book instead of watching this film. I would recommend reading the book and then supplementing it with Union Pacific.
The whole point of Ambrose's book is that while the financing of the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was mired in corruption, what must not be overlooked is the remarkable engineering achievement that it was. In that sense Union Pacific is a great tribute to everyone responsible for that achievement including some corrupt politicians.
DeMille in his autobiography says he originally was going to do a film on the Hudson Bay Company and in fact had started preliminary work on same. He changed his mind when he heard that 20th Century Fox was doing one on that same subject. He turned his attention to the Transcontinental Railroad and the President of Union Pacific at that time was one William Jeffers who freely gave DeMille anything he needed to help him with the project. Jeffers and DeMille had the same right wing political views so they got along famously.
DeMille also got Joel McCrea who was one of his discoveries to play the lead. McCrea was the two-gunned railroad troubleshooter who sees the job through. Barbara Stanwyck plays an Irish immigrant's daughter who is the railroad postmistress. McCrea and Robert Preston both have the hots for her, but it's fairly obvious from the first minute who she ends up with. This was Robert Preston's first major part after having done a couple of B films for Paramount. Lynne Overman and Akim Tamiroff are McCrea's sidekicks and supply some comedy relief.
Brian Donlevy is the villain and he's at the height of his career. Later that year he got an Academy Award nomination for another Paramount feature, Beau Geste in the Supporting Actor category. One of his henchmen is Anthony Quinn, who after one reviewer remarked how lucky he was to have the DeMille family connection to get good roles, then swore he would never work for his father-in-law again. Quinn never did.
Two smaller parts are worth remembering. Regis Toomey plays a track layer who has a tragic death early on in the film. And J.M. Kerrigan as Stanwyck's father also dies tragically during a snowstorm.
Good slam-bang special effects. DeMille loved to wreck trains. He did it so well here, he later topped this one with one in The Greatest Show On Earth.
One of DeMille's best pictures. Too bad Cinerama hadn't been invented yet. -
Terrell-422 February 2009What was it that Cecil B. DeMille gave to his movies? Well, how about sentimentality as thick as mashed potatoes, florid exposition, corny humor, American patriotism on a platter, shameless death scenes, ethnic stereotypes, casual and condescending racism, hypocritical bible thumping, leering sex, truly hairy beards and mustaches, ponderous oratory and the kind of obviously manipulative situations that can turn even the best actors into mannequins. Did I leave anything out?
But DeMille knew how to serve up spectacle and action, paced to keep the story moving faster and faster. His movies are awful, even if a few still at times stand up to current tastes. In an unfair world, they nearly all are still watchable, with their flaws often as enjoyable as their merits. That brings us to Union Pacific, DeMille's telling of the great effort to build the first rail line across the American continent.
Or as the movie tells us, "The legend of Union Pacific is the drama of a nation, young, tough, prodigal and invincible, conquering with an iron highroad the endless reaches of the West. For the West is America's Empire and only yesterday Union Pacific was the West."
The Central Pacific would build east and the Union Pacific, from Omaha, would build west. The idea was to meet in Ogden, Utah. The company that gets there first will establish a major rail terminal and make lots and lots of money. If unscrupulous financial opportunist Asa Burrows has his way, it won't be the Union Pacific. If Captain Jeff Butler (Joel McCrea) does his job, it will be. Butler is the smart, brave, handsome, fast-with-a-gun, true and honest chief troubleshooter for the Union Pacific. Opposing him is Burrows' unscrupulous agent, the gambler Sid Campeau (Brian Donlevy). The plan is simple. Campeau will bring in gambling, easy women, bullyboys and liquor to put all those Irish tracklayers working for the Union Pacific out of commission. Helping him is his partner, Dick Allen (Robert Preston), a smooth gambler with loose ethics...who happens to be a close war buddy of Jeff's. What could be missing...oh, yes...Molly Monahan, an Irish colleen whose father is an engineer and who is the postmistress for end-of-track, the moving base camp that services the construction. She's pert, feisty and as Irish as a shamrock. Jeff and Dick both fall for her. She's also Barbara Stanwyck. The Union Pacific's struggle to bridge the continent with steel track, not to mention Jeff's struggle to make it happen and win Molly, will not be easy.
Or as the movie tells us: "For three valiant years Indians redden the rails with the blood of tracklayers. But the ROAD pushes on! Spawning, in its wake, roaring, lawless towns - and fighting the hidden hand that tries to fight its progress."
DeMille's Union Pacific is a sprawl of massive train wrecks (two), heroic track laying, Indian attacks, mistaken sacrifice, back shooting, brawling Irishmen smoking little clay pipes and speaking with terrible Hollywood Irish accents, and some smart gunplay by Jeff. The comic relief is corny and overplayed (no fault of Akim Tamiroff and Lynn Overman who play Jeff's sidekicks), with awful Indian stereotypes. Joel McCrea is first rate when he can be brave and clever at the same time. When he's just brave, DeMille makes him into something with a noble chin. Preston is just fine, but he's doing nothing much different from what he did in any number of his second lead movie roles.
On the bright side is Brian Donlevy as a snake. It's all Hollywood hokum but Donlevy was good at being bad. And there's Barbara Stanwyck. What a strong presence she was in all her movies. She survives this one with energy and lovability to spare...but her Irish accent would make any real Irishman go pale. "Me heart's still shaking' on me back teeth," she chirps at one point.
Somehow, Union Pacific manages to be a watchable movie. DeMille knew how to keep us hooked in spite of ourselves. If it's not nefarious plotting it's our hero's standard response to being asked to take brave action. When Jeff drawls, "Mebbe," we know something worth watching is about to happen. And those two train wrecks are wowzers.
DeMille knew what the movie goers wanted and exploited this with skill. He was no artist and barely a craftsman. He made up for it by being an utterly confident showman. DeMille, with all his ego, knew how to tell a story, even if it was as phony as a drugstore Indian. His pompous, dynamic, melodramatic and self-important spoken narratives and introductions give a perfect picture of the man. He died at 77 in 1959, just in time, perhaps, to realize that his movies would most likely go down as being quaint. In 1957, David Lean had come up with The Bridge on the River Kwai. In 1959 it was William Wyler with Ben Hur. DeMille's era of old fashioned, corny spectacle was on life support, and the ticket buyers knew it. -
Ron Oliver20 December 2000Moving across the American wilderness, east to west, the mighty UNION PACIFIC Railroad stretches to meet its rival - the Central Pacific - taming a continent with steel rails. Overcoming Nature's disasters, hostile natives & corrupt politicians, the engines bring with them the people whose hopes are inextricably tied into the railroad's success or failure.
In 1939, Hollywood's Golden Year, kingpin director Cecil B. DeMille presented his biggest, flashiest film yet. It was to be nothing less than the story of how the American West was conquered by the great railroads & her indomitable builders. To realize DeMille's vision on the screen, Paramount allocated hundreds of extras & large coffers of money to the project. Authentic rolling stock was acquired. The president of the contemporary Union Pacific enthusiastically sent his finest track layers to work in the film. The movie would boost train wrecks (two of em), Indian attacks, assorted villainies & a compelling love triangle.
DeMille demanded scrupulous attention to detail and his crowd scenes are very well conceived & produced. His early reels tend to be a bit preachy in touting the virtues of the railroad, but action scenes quickly follow which amply compensate for this. DeMille's subject matter & obvious patriotism help him to avoid the lapses of taste & vulgarities in which he tended to stray in many of his other film forays.
Even with a fake Irish brogue, Barbara Stanwyck charms in her role as a railroad postmistress & engineer's daughter. Feisty & volatile, always great fun to watch, it's easy to see why she's loved by both Joel McCrea (the hero) & Robert Preston (the antihero). Both gentlemen give good rousing performances in roles that might have strayed into the stereotypical, but never do.
Brian Donlevy, as the villain, gives another vivid portrait in what is rather a small role, but very much like the one he would play that same year in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN.
Akim Tamiroff & Lynne Overman are especially enjoyable as McCrea's scruffy, rather repulsive security enforcers; with whip & guns, these are two hombres you wouldn't want to tangle with. Robert Barrat as a murdering bully & Regis Toomey as a sweet-natured Irish worker, give impressive cameos. Anthony Quinn appears for a couple of scenes as a gambler who unwisely pulls a gun on McCrea, and lovely Evelyn Keyes has a scant few screen moments as a telegrapher's wife.
Sharp-eyed movie mavens may (or may not) be able to spot among the uncredited players Monte Blue, Ward Bond, Iron Eyes Cody, Will Geer, Noble Johnson, Elmo Lincoln & Mala playing various Indians, gamblers or railwaymen.
It would be most intriguing to run UNION PACIFIC in a double bill with John Ford's 1924 epic THE IRON HORSE, which tells the same historical story, but with a different artistic tack & fictional characters. -
rmax30482323 May 2012It has plenty of action, a love story, an exciting race between two railroads, skulduggery, good production values, marauding Indians, thoroughly stereotyped characters, and an absence of anything that might suggest unpredictability or ambiguity -- what's not to like?
It's the post Civil War West and the Union Pacific Railroad is being built chiefly by Irish labor across the plains to Utah, where it will meet the Central Pacific being built from San Francisco. The race is on. A banker bets on the Central Pacific covering more ground and hires a gang of thugs including boss Brian Donlevy and Robert Preston to sabotage the Union Pacific's efforts. In turn, the Central Pacific's bankers hire a troubleshooter, McCrea. This pits McCrea and the Central Pacific against Donlevy, Preston, and a scrubby cabal of miscreants. In historical fact -- which is completely irrelevant to this movie -- the whole affair was mired in corruption. It led to the age of the Robber Barons. One of them held a monopoly on railroad ties and accumulated a sufficient fortune to establish the university which I was privileged to attend.
McCrea is his usual all-American self. He wears his sixguns with their carved keratic handles in a cross draw. Preston, a mustachioed companero from the Union Army, is light-hearted and playfully criminal. Preston is deeply in love with Barbara Stanwyck, a railroad brat with an Irish accent. The true-blue McCrea falls in love with her too. Both men survive the savage Indian attack on a wrecked train, and only one of them lives through the final confrontation. Guess who survives and who dies with a few last words of remorse on his lips.
Here's an example of the movie's values. McCrea has just been hired to straighten things out. He's aboard a train chugging West. He's wearing a neatly pressed cowboy shirt with a string tie. Also, though McCrea doesn't know it, some of his fellow passengers are members of Donlevy's gang. They wear SUITS. A Sioux Indian is happily racing his pony alongside the train, whooping and waving in a friendly way. One of the suits bets that the Indian can be picked off with one rifle shot. The suit wins. The Indian tumbles from his horse, dead. McCrea, seeing this, is inflamed. He dashes over and deals out punishment. The punishment consists of a fist fight that the suit loses. The suit falls from the train and is left behind, brushing off the dust and scowling. That's the punishment for murdering an Indian. And what's the logic behind the punishment? "That man didn't just kill an Indian -- he killed half a dozen white men working on the railroad."
A similar story was told in John Ford's 1924 production, "The Iron Horse," but this is equally enjoyable. Ford's movie was a silent, and George Bancroft was full of muscles but not as likable as Joel McCrea. Stanwyck should stay away from roles calling for an Irish accent. But I liked this quite a lot. I don't want my thoughts provoked too often anyway. Sometimes, the simpler the better, even to the point of simple mindedness. -
ragtimeacres14 October 2003They don't make 'em like this anymore. Everything you could want in a film: romance, wit, drama, action. Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea make an incredible on-screen duo. The train wreck scene at the end is especially impressive. Kudos to Cecil B. Demille for this work of art. I wish I could give this movie more than 10 stars! :)
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eddax7 September 2010This is my first Cecil B. DeMille movie and it's enough to demonstrate his reputation for epic productions (that are more visual than substantial).
Union Pacific is about the titular railroad that runs from oh, somewhere to the West. It's based on US history at a time when the Americans were expanding from East to West (and ridding the country of those pesky Native Americans). The movie, at 135 minutes, takes quite a lot of time to explain the situation. It's kinda interesting so it's not a bad thing. What does make his production feel bloated though, is that the climax of the movie happens about a half hour before it actually ends, after which it just drags on as it attempts to tie up loose ends, much like The Return of the King.
Barbara Stanwyck is great as always, even if hearing her speak with an Irish accent the whole time is a bit distracting. Joel McCrea is forgettable again. I don't know how he does it but he alternates between captivating and forgettable on screen. I thought that maybe he stands out more in comedies but no, I remembered I first really paid attention to him in Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent. I guess it just takes the right vehicle or director. -
doug-balch9 August 2010This is a big budget extravaganza about the building of the transcontinental railroad. It was probably a superior product for its time, but is badly dated in a number of ways by today's standards.
Here are some positives:- I like the basic theme. It 's a mostly unapologetic, upbeat Manifest Destiny movie. The energy and optimism are refreshing after growing up on revisionist Westerns.
- Good Civil War themes
- Classic "frenemy" relationship between Joel McCrea and Robert Preston is well executed.
- Joel McCrea is a very likable leading man.
- However, Robert Preston steals the movie, nailing the "lovable bounder" role.
- Solid supporting performances by Brian Donlevy and a very young Anthony Quinn.
Now for the negatives:- The plot and characterizations are overly melodramatic. Both protagonists and antagonists are strictly one-dimensional "Dudley Dooright" and "Snidely Whiplash" caricatures.
- The romantic subplot is excruciatingly corny and takes up too much of the movie.
- Barbara Stanwyk has just about the worst fake Irish accent I've ever heard.
- For all the money they spent, there are way to many cheap looking scenes of actors in the studio with an obvious outdoor film running behind them.
- Although typical for its time, the way Indian and Mexican characters are used as comic relief is offensive.
- It's way too long.
- There are numerous plot holes not worth detailing.
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SnoopyStyle23 August 2019After four years of the Civil War, President Lincoln approves the construction of a transcontinental railroad. It becomes a competition between Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. Chicago money man Asa M. Barrows schemes to undermine Union Pacific and short sell their stock. He hires Sid Campeau and Dick Allen (Robert Preston) to set up gambling houses and saloons to get the Union workers drunk and delay their work. Dick is taken with train engineer's daughter Mollie Monahan (Barbara Stanwyck). War veteran and Union Pacific trouble shooter Jeff Butler (Joel McCrea) is tasked with cleaning up the disruption from Dick's gambling houses. The railroad rivals become rivals for Mollie.
It's director Cecil B. DeMille. It's a big old western. It's weird to hear Stanwyck doing a semi-Irish accent. It's a grand production. It may be big and sprawling but I'm not sure that it's a terribly good movie. Despite the boy scout mentality and pretty boy face, I don't find the Jeff Butler character that appealing. The story is a bit messy. The rivalry holds a lot of promise but it needs more head to head confrontations. This may have elevated the western back in its day but it is mostly forgotten now. -
hbs8 August 2002This is a fairly routine oat-opera of the "manifest destiny" subgenre. It has a stellar cast that is underused, and even the supporting cast is first-rate (the excellent Akim Tamiroff and Lynne Overman play the wisecracking bodyguards, and Brian Donlevy has one of his crafty kingpin roles -- by way of comparison, recall Donlevy and Tamiroff in "The Great McGinty"). The special effects are surprisingly hokey and it appears that fairly little of the movie was actually shot outside. And the sensibilities of the time show through, when one of the bad guys casually and cold-bloodedly murders an Indian, and the good guy does nothing more than punch the murderer a few times. While this might be historically more accurate than modern portrayals, it's still appalling to watch.
All that said, the movie is still entertaining. The dialogue is often more sophisticated than you'd expect, and this cast makes the most of anything they've been given. And you do get to see a couple of scenes of people laying rails and some shots of cool old steam trains. However, if you don't like old movies, don't bother with this one (if you know anything about old movies you can guess the details of the plot within 10 minutes of the beginning of the movie, and you'll get almost everything right). -
ArtVandelayImporterExporter27 August 2019You know how TCM for years has trotted out some aggrieved minority-studies professor to talk about how Hollywood has treated this group or another? I want to see them tackle how the Irish are portrayed in films. They're either romantic dreamers or half-goofy leprechauns. Rarely are they the fully formed adults in the room. In this movie, which is actually reasonably chock full of action, we have Barbara Stanwyck playing ''a young, impressionable Oirish lassie." Barf. Stanwyk is one of the strongest and s3xiest women in Hollywood history. What she wasn't was some sort of starry-eyed potato farmer. Joel McCrea plays the good guy, as usual. Robert Donlevy the bad guy, as usual. And Robert Preston, by gawd, that man had charm. I could see where this would have been a rollicking good time in 1939. Enough fist-fighin', shootin' and chasin' beautiful Barbara Stanwyck to fit the bill on a Saturday afternoon.
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It doesn't suffer from any of his usual flaws. The pacing is perfect, the acting is not at all stilted, and the technical aspects don't dominate the story or the characters. The story centers around the building of the titular railroad. A banker hires a motley group of gamblers and whoremongers (led by Brian Donlevy) to slow down production and then invests in the Central Pacific. Joel McCrea plays a railroad cop, basically, who sees that Donlevy is trouble. He can't outright kick him out, because his army buddy and best friend (Robert Preston) is Donlevy's partner. To further complicate the relationship between McCrea and Preston, there is a girl caught between them (Barbara Stanwyck). It's a great story supported by fine performances all around. While the film runs for 2 hours and 19 minutes, it never seemed boring at all. There are several exciting setpieces, most notably an Indian attack. There are also a couple of great suspense sequences. I loved the scene where McCrea corners Preston and Stanwyck after the payroll has been stolen. It goes on for a long time but the suspense never breaks. Generally I don't think DeMille has skill enough to pull something like that off. My only real problem is that sometimes the good guys are as bad as the villains. McCrea has two sidekicks, played by Akim Tamiroff and Lynne Overman, who can't help but be referred to as henchmen. I mean, even the characters' names are sinister, Fiesta and Leach. Donlevy has a couple of henchmen as well (Anthony Quinn in an early role and Robert Barrat), and they aren't any scarier.
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JoeytheBrit23 April 2020The building of the railroad takes a back seat to an uncommonly polite love triangle between feisty Irish lass Barbara Stanwyck, morally questionable charmer Robert Preston and noble hero Joel McCrea. Wayne and O'Hara might have been a better fit for two of those parts but Stanwyck and McCrea will do. It's full of neat little touches: slimy bad guy Brian Donlevy's habit of dipping his cigar in his liquor, for example, and Preston tapping smoke rings from a box. Good fun, but it peaks 15 minutes too early.
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"Union Pacific" is a very good Western movie with a top Hollywood cast of the day. It has action, adventure and romance. It combines fiction with fact in telling the story of building the Union Pacific Railroad.
Congress had authorized the Transcontinental Railroad in 1862 to connect the existing eastern U.S. rail network with the Pacific Coast. The project was 1,912 miles long and was built between 1863 and 1869 by three private railroad companies. At 1,085 miles, the UP was the longest and most difficult part of the "Overland Route," as it soon would become known. It ran from Omaha, Nebraska, to West of Ogden, Utah. It crossed the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains.
The Western Pacific Railroad built 132 miles of track from Oakland to Sacramento, and the Central Pacific Railroad built 690 miles of track from Sacramento to Promontory Point, Utah. It was in a race with the UP to get to Ogden. As the movie shows, the UP got there first and the two lines met at Promontory Summit, 66 miles northwest of Salt Lake City.
A number of movies - especially Westerns, have scenes with trains or building rail lines in their plot. But, "Union Pacific" is the only film in which the plot centers on the building of a railroad. It shows men laying ties and rails, putting up and tearing down makeshift towns, and dealing with struggles. Those included terrain, weather, train followers, and plots to delay or undermine the rail lines.
This movie is based on a 1936 novel, "Trouble Shooter," by Western fiction author Ernest Haycox. Movie fans will be familiar with his work from the 1939 blockbuster and Oscar winner, "Stagecoach." It was based on another 1936 Haycox novel, "Stage to Lordsburg."
This film mixes fictional characters with real people. Chief among the latter is General Grenville Dodge, played by Francis McDonald. Dodge had earned an engineering degree in 1850 and settled in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He served as a Major General in the Union Army during the Civil War. Among his many achievements was his pioneering use of military intelligence. Pres. Abraham Lincoln asked Dodge to help build the Transcontinental Railroad. He resigned from the Army to be chief engineer for the Union Pacific. Dodge also served in congress and later helped build a number of other railroads.
Other real people portrayed are Oakes Ames (played by Willard Robertson), Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (Joseph Crehan), Thomas Durant (John Marston, uncredited), and California Gov. Leland Stanford (Gus Glassmire).
The rest of the cast are fictional. The film has some big name stars and top supporting actors of the day. These all give top performances. Barbara Stanwyck is very believable with her Irish accent as Mollie Monahan. Joel McCrea is Jeff Butler, Robert Preston is Dick Allen and Brian Donlevy is Sid Campeau. Anthony Quinn has a small part as Cordray, and a top supporting cast includes Akim Tamiroff as Fiesta, Lynne Overman as Leach Overmile, Henry Kolker as Asa Barrows, Regis Toomey as Paddy O'Rourke, Lon Chaney Jr. as Dollarhide, and Ward Bond as a track-layer.
The film has a cast of hundreds with many more regular supporting actors in bit roles. Most of them are as gandy dancers - the men who worked on the crews that laid the rails. As the movie shows, the Union Pacific was built mostly by Irish immigrants. The Central Pacific railroad that met the UP in Utah was built mostly with Chinese labor. In other parts of the country, men of other ethnic groups formed the main work forces that built the railroads.
The film doesn't show it, but a special crew from both railroads was chosen to complete the link up at Promontory Point. That team of Irish and Chinese gandy dancers took just 12 hours to lay the final 10 miles of track.
Today, the Union Pacific is the largest railroad in the U.S. It operates 14 hump yards where trains are assembled for routing to all corners of the U.S. and Canada. The Bailey Yard at North Platte, Nebraska, is the world's largest hump yard. It has 200 tracks and marshals a daily average of 139 trains and 14,000 cars. Tourists can watch the operation from the Golden Spike Tower at the visitors center. The Union Pacific Museum is located in Council Bluffs, Iowa, across the Missouri River from Omaha. In 1936, the Union Pacific built the Sun Valley ski resort in Idaho. It sold Sun Valley in 1964.
The site of the joining of the UP and CP railroads at Promontory Point, Utah, is now the Golden Spike National Historic Site. The park has a museum with actual size replicas of the 1865 trains that met there -- the UP No. 119 and Central Pacific No. 60, "Jupiter." The park re-enacts the Golden Spike ceremony weekly on Saturdays from spring to fall. The main operating railroad line long ago was relocated south of the Great Salt Lake. It cut the length of the route by 43 miles and took out some curves and hills.
Although the driving of the Golden Spike was attributed to California Gov. Leland Stanford at the time, he and the next person both missed the spike as the movie shows. The character of Ames in the movie is fictional, but may be based on one or more real characters. Apparently, the real pounder of the Golden Spike will never be known. Maybe it was a gandy dancer.
In "Union Pacific," Cecil B. DeMille gives us first-rate entertainment. It's a good Western, adventure and romantic film with a look at history that people young and old should enjoy. P.S. - I climbed poles and dug bootlegs for the UP one year after Army service before heading off to college. -
angelamjonessustain10 July 2023I'm not sure what movie the other reviewers were watching but this film can be summed up in two words: Robert Preston.
Overlook Bab's problematic accent and hairdos, question why she would have any trouble choosing between RP's curly haired angelfaced rogue and bland Joel McCrae, try not to become infuriated by the rampant racism DeMille was famous for and just worry about one thing...watching a 21 year old Pres out act everyone on the set.
The fact that his modern, natural acting and extreme good looks did not turn him into an immediate star reminds us that indeed it was men running the show! -
steweo8 March 2003A fine example of studio-style film making. The script may not be history, but this is a movie, and not nearly as corny as most films by DeMille. The lead and supporting roles are all well cast and played. The effects are state of the art (for 1939). A film to relax by and get into.
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Prismark1025 May 2021Cecil B DeMille goes for a sprawling would be epic with Union Pacific.
President Lincoln pushed ahead with the westward expansion of the railways after the civil war. After his death the investors of the Union Pacific want this to be Lincoln's legacy. However conniving baddie Asa Barrows hopes to profit by shortening the stock and placing obstructions.
Barrows has placed an inside man on the train to cause chaos if and when required. He is corrupt gambler Sid Campeau (Brian Donlevy) aided by associate Dick Allen (Robert Preston.) They get the workers drunk and hooked on gambling.
Dick has the hots for Molly Monahan (Barbara Stanwyck) who is working on the train.
The Union Pacific send in Jeff Butler (Joel McCrea) as a troubleshooter to make sure that the train is operating efficiently by cleaning up the gambling and the baddies.
Campeau knows that Jeff is trouble. However Dick is an old pal and a fellow war veteran of Jeff and is pleased to see him. Both Dick and Jeff have romantic sparks with Molly.
This is an overlong episodic film but the central premise never quiet gains momentum. Dick is being corrupted by Campeau and it is not long before Dick comes into conflict with Jeff when a wages roll is stolen.
The bromance turned into a rivalry over Molly should had been a stronger part of the story.
Preston is charming as a fledgling villain who ultimately values Molly more than greed. Donlevy is good as the slimy crook.
Stanwyck is the plucky Irish lass that men adore. I thought McCrea was solid but boring. He comes off worse compared to Preston and Stanwyck. -
ccthemovieman-18 September 2006It's not a bad film but it's too long. Man, at 136 minutes this is tough to sit through although if you can make it to the halfway point, you are way ahead of the game because the slowest part is the first half.
Barbara Stanwyck was still young, fresh-looking and spunky and I enjoyed her. Robert Preston seemed to be the most natural of the male leads. Joel McCrea seemed a little stiff in his delivery. Brian Donlevy was good as always.
What detracted me from enjoying this movie was the dated special-effects. Every time somebody was on something that was moving - a horse, wagon carts, trains, etc - it really looked hokey. Obviously, they were in a studio with a screen behind them. It was so phony it made the film lose credibility.
The classic movies that hold up better, generally speaking, are the ones that don't rely too much on realism, action-wise. -
This film starts slowly, but builds to a satisfying climax. The Golden Triangle of Love and Soap, mixed in with lots of action and adventure, will keep the viewer guessing for the whole film (although we have an inkling which way Barbara will eventually go). Good clean fun for the whole family on how the railroad business was in the old days.
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Django692424 January 2008Contrary to what another viewer wrote, this movie is not hard to sit through at all--in fact, I wish it could have been longer and had dealt a little more with the upper level corruption of Barrows and the too-kindly treated Oakes Ames, the politician behind the Credit Mobilier scandal. As it is, it gives a good approximation of what the great adventure of building the Transcontinental Railroad must have been like at the time, and all the actors are excellent in the context of the romanticized depiction of events.
SPOILER WARNING!!! Great train wreck scene, and the scenes between Overmann and Tamiroff are reminders of why today's movies, though faster paced, are not likely to be considered as rich and entertaining 50 years from now--today's movies have no depth when you get away from the main character. Look at the scene when Barrows is able to drive home the Golden Spike, watch the byplay between Barrows, Leach and Fiesta, and see how beautiful the results can be when you let secondary characters have a chance to play a real part in the story, rather than just filling the frame.