1850s American West. When the all-male settlers in a remote town of California desire wives to start families, trail guide Buck Wyatt is hired to recruit and guide a group of 138 women in Chicago to travel across the rugged American frontier. As they face harrowing challenges, the women band together and demonstrate strength, resilience, and camaraderie.
While the premise appears to hint at a problematic film that uses women as comedic fodder, ‘Westward the Women’ is actually a fairly progressive portrait of the role of women and immigrants on the American frontier, one that distinguishes it from the other classic westerns of the 1940s and 50s. The film’s director, William A. Wellman, is known for directing ‘Wings’ (1927), the winner of the very first Best Picture Academy Award, as well as ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’ (1942), considered one of the great classic westerns.