Burning Libraries: The Oregon Trail June 21, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
The Oregon Trail is one of those endless low budget cowboy flicks that were trundled out in the 1930s: the original action films with moral certainty and moral scenery; oh and it also had John Wayne, one of seven cowboy movies he made in 1936. The IMBD database includes the following description.
U.S. Army Captain John Delmont takes a leave of absence to find out what happened to his missing father. Later he leads a wagon train to California and goes after the bad guys involved in his father’s disappearance.
This is pretty thin gruel for the internet’s premier film site. But then, there is a simple reason for the lack of details. No one has ever seen the film. Well, that’s not quite true. Lot of people saw the film, but very few of them are still living today and no print has been put on a cinema screen since the late 1930s: somehow IMBD’s discerning reviewers manages to give Oregon Trail a 6.3/10; the film gets, meanwhile, a mere 33% on Rotten Tomatoes popcorn score.
We know the story of the film: (i) because it was widely reviewed at the time, (ii) because it was a rehash of an earlier western The Big Trail (a film that had almost destroyed JW’s career); (iii) because just last fall a series of stills for the film turned up; and (iv) because western films in the 1930s have almost the same plot. All this makes things though that much more frustrating… There is the sense that the film is there and yet just beyond reach. The result is a film that no one would ever bother watching had it survived has become the object of desire for thousands of movie buffs.
There have been rumours for years, of course, that the film, like the truth, is ‘out there’: the kind of hysteria you get over missing Dr Who episodes. So in 2012 Olive Films announced it would release the film: apparently a blunder or publicity stunt as nothing emerged. There are claims that Paramount are sitting on a bad copy of the film: but won’t release for legal reasons. Bob Sigman, one time head of Paramount flew to South America to search out a print of the film. There are rumours it was give a limited VHS release in the 1970s. And others have combed through the archives holding onto the vain hope that the film was put into the wrong reel case.
It is one thing for early Andy Warhol home movies to go missing or some crap PBS documentary from the 1970s, but a John Wayne film? The thin cellulose line between memory and oblivion. Until the film is found, with great pride, we induct the Oregon Trail into our burning library collection. Other missing films with a story? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
PS and just before anyone gets overly exicited there is another, Waynless Oregon Trail from 1939.
