'How the West Was Won' DVD in big upgrade

"How the West Was Won" looks to finally strike gold in September with a major DVD and Blu-ray release.

Warner Home Video plans two-disc "ultimate," "special" and high-definition editions of the restored epic, which has suffered so far in the DVD format. (Update 6/28: The release has been delayed several weeks, from the original Aug. 26 to Sept. 9.)

Being a child of the '60s, I remember turning out for a screening of "West Was Won" at the trusty Wometco in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. They rolled out two additional (side) screens for the Cinerama presentation, which had everyone buzzing before the film even began, but it all seemed kind of disjointed once the movie started.

Warner has an explanation: "After its initial theatrical engagements in theaters equipped with three synchronized projectors for Cinerama presentation, the film was subsequently presented on traditional theater screens with the three separate Cinerama panels being optically joined to form a standard 35mm 2.35:1 widescreen image, leaving most subsequent viewers puzzled by the annoying 'join lines.' "

The join lines are gone, of course, with the new DVD and Blu-Ray images at 2.89 widescreen.

"How the West Was Won," clocking in at 165 minutes, tells the tale of two families who head west for fortune and adventure in 1839. The saga continues over 50 years. The film won a couple of Oscars but didn't take the best picture nod. The film has its fans but I'm not one of them. It's just OK.

The movie was made about the time that Hollywood figured that if one or two stars could sell a movies, how about a dozen or more. And so we have a cast that includes John Wayne, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Debbie Reynolds, Richard Widmark, Gregory Peck, Lee J. Cobb, Carroll Baker, Robert Preston, Karl Malden, Carolyn Jones, Eli Wallach. ... Some of them just passing through, like the Duke -- and a few, like Reynolds, going the distance.

There were multiple directors as well: Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall. Hathaway did the heavy lifting.

There are three DVD versions already out there, all of them essentially the same and to be avoided for quality reasons. The latest (2007) is tagged as part of Warner's "John Wayne Collection," oddly.

Warner's brand-new Blu-ray version of the film also contains a "SmileBox" presentation "with a unique curvature that virtually recreates the true Cinerama experience in a home theater." (Good luck with that.) The ultimate set adds printed materials such as a press book and postcards.

Warner lists "How the West Was Won" extras as:

• "Film historian commentary"
• The feature-length documentary "Cinerama Adventure."
• An archival making-of featurette
• The original trailer

A quartet of Errol Flynn westerns also are getting the Warner box set treatment, with vintage newsreels, cartoons and a couple of commentaries:

• "Montana" (1950)
• Rocky Mountain (1950)
• "San Antonio" (1945)
• "Virginia City" (1940)

Warner also said it was debuting six other westerns on DVD, two of them apparently home video premieres*:

• "Escape from Fort Bravo" (1954) with William Holden
• "Many Rivers to Cross" (1955) with Robert Taylor*
• "Cimarron" (1960 remake) with Glenn Ford
• "The Law and Jake Wade" (1958) directed by John Sturges
• "Saddle the Wind" (1958) with Robert Taylor written by Rod Serling*
• "The Stalking Moon" (1968) with Gregory Peck and Eva Marie Saint.

Comments

[Mike]

Wow, thats an awesome list they're putting out. My dad is a huge fan of westerns, so I may have to grab some of these titles for him for Christmas. Especially Escape from Fort Bravo. He loves that one.