Cinema: The New Pictures, Jan. 7, 1952

Westward the Women (MGM) is the showmanlike saga of an 1851 trek halfway across the U.S. by 140 women, recruited to marry the lovelorn settlers of a California valley. Rancher John McIntire signs up the prospective wives for his men, lets them pick their mates from a bulletin board full of daguerreotypes. Then hard-bitten Scout Robert Taylor rides herd on the ladies on the dangerous wagon-trail to the West.

Before the trip's survivors finally become mail-order brides in a scene of titillating comic hokum, they endure an exhaustive series of acts of God,...

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