The Big Trail (1930), directed by Raoul Walsh. This is the film that was supposed to make John Wayne a star. It did not! The film flopped despite its wide screen grandeur and exorbitant production costs. And Wayne spent the next nine years working in Poverty Row features. Looking back on the film, I am surprised the film flopped. I think of it as the last of the early cinema's three epics dealing with Manifest Destiny, the myth of the opening of America's west. The other two films are James Cruz's The Covered Wagon (1923) and John Ford's The Iron Horse (1924). These are large scale productions that celebrate the American spirit. The Big Trail is impressive with its huge prairie schooners drawn by oxen through mud and snow and desert. The realism of the trek is quite astonishing, especially, but not only, in the famous scene in which the people, the wagons, the animals are lowered down a steep cliff on ropes. The story is just something to keep the journey going. Most important are the shots of working pioneers, men and women trudging their way west and hacking down trees and forging ahead into a new world. As for a young John Wayne in his first starring role, he is innocently appealing as he deals with the Bluto-voiced Red Flack (Tyrone Power, Sr.) and his sidekicks.

from Wikipedia:
"For the film, Walsh had employed 93 actors and used as many as 725 natives from five different Indian tribes. He also obtained 185 wagons, 1,800 cows, 1,400 horses, 500 buffalos and 700 chickens, pigs and dogs for the production of the film.

Walsh offered the lead to actor Gary Cooper, who couldn't accept it. According to John Ford's later account, Walsh supposedly then asked Ford for casting suggestions, whereupon Ford recommended a then-unknown named John Wayne because he "liked the looks of this new kid with a funny walk, like he owned the world". When Wayne professed inexperience, Walsh told him to just "sit good on a horse and point". Walsh said that he initially saw Wayne, then a prop man, moving heavy furniture as though it were light as a feather, then decided to test him for the part.... Filming on The Big Trail began on-location just outside Santa Fe, New Mexico in April 1930, which was unheard of at the time and quickly became very costly to the studio.

The shoot lasted from April 20 to August 20, 1930 and was filmed in seven states. The film was shot in an early widescreen process called 70 mm Grandeur film, which was first used in the film Fox Movietone Follies of 1929. Grandeur was used by the Fox Film Corporation for a handful of films released in 1929 and 1930, of which The Big Trail was the last. Grandeur proved financially unviable..."