Am fernen Horizont (1955)

Am fernen Horizont: Directed by Rudolph Maté. With Fred MacMurray, Charlton Heston, Donna Reed, Barbara Hale. After purchasing Louisiana from France, the USA sends surveyors Lewis and Clark, assisted by a Shoshone guide, to chart the new territory.

“The Far Horizons marked Fred MacMurrayu0026#39;s return to the Paramount lot where he started his career to co-star with up and coming Charlton Heston in a story of the Lewisu0026amp;Clark expedition. A landmark event in American history, the story itself strangely has been ignored by Hollywood except for this version. And it doesnu0026#39;t do the journey justice.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut we have to remember that the film is based on a fictional historical novel Sacajawea of the Shoshonis. So the romance between Donna Reed as Sacajawea and Heston as Clark just never happened. In real life she was the wife of Charbonneau the French trapper played by Alan Reed who did not behave as despicably as portrayed here.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eMerieweather Lewis was in fact Thomas Jeffersonu0026#39;s secretary and Jefferson sending him west to head the expedition was no less than having Tomu0026#39;s eyes and ears right there on the trail. Lewis was a most intense fellow and he would be a suicide in 1809, Clark outlived him by many years. But one thing he did not have was any romantic rivalry with William Clark over the character that Barbara Hale plays, a Virginia planteru0026#39;s daughter and neighbor of Jefferson at Monticello.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAs this film would have it, Lewis was mad because Clark had two girls and he had none. The two faced a lot of problems on the trip, but jealousy over romance wasnu0026#39;t one of them.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe film was produced by William Pine and William Thomas who co-produced a whole bunch of B films for Paramount. Bill Pine learned his trade being an associate producer with Cecil B. DeMille. The film was shot on location and bears no small resemblance to some DeMille productions and even more so to King Vidoru0026#39;s classic Northwest Passage.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eStill though I wish we just had a straight account of the trip without the phony romance.”