Wagon Tracks is a 1919 American

Cinema of the United States

The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

 Western film

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

 written by C. Gardner Sullivan

C. Gardner Sullivan

C. Gardner Sullivan was an American screenwriter and motion picture producer. He was a prolific writer with more than 350 films among his credits. In 1924, the magazine Story World selected him on a list of the ten individuals who had contributed the most to the advancement of the motion picture...

, produced by Thomas H. Ince

Thomas H. Ince

Thomas Harper Ince was an American silent film actor, director, screenwriter and producer of more than 100 films and pioneering studio mogul. Known as the "Father of the Western", he invented many mechanisms of professional movie production, introducing early Hollywood to the "assembly line"...

 and William S. Hart

William S. Hart

William Surrey Hart was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is remembered for having "imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity."-Biography:...

, and directed by Lambert Hillyer

Lambert Hillyer

Lambert Hillyer was an American film director and screenwriter. He directed over 160 films between 1917 and 1949. He also wrote for 54 films between 1917 and 1948....

. Upon its release, the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

described it as Hollywood's greatest desert epic.

Plot

The film's plot centers on Buckskin Hamilton (played by William S. Hart), a desert guide in the mold of Kit Carson

Kit Carson

Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a Mountain man and trapper in the West. Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married...

. The film is set in the Gold Rush year of 1850.

Buckskin rides to Westport Landing to meet a steamer from St. Louis. The steamer is carrying a group that Buckskin has been hired to lead west on the old Santa Fe Trail

Santa Fe Trail

The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1822 by William Becknell, it served as a vital commercial and military highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880...

 from Kansas to New Mexico. The group aboard the steamship includes Buckskin's younger brother, Billy Hamilton, who has recently graduated from medical school through Buckskin's sacrifices.

While on the steamboat, Billy Hamilton catches David Washburn, a crooked gambler played by screen villain Robert McKim

Robert McKim (actor)

Robert McKim was an American actor of the silent era. He appeared in 99 films between 1915 and 1927. He is best remembered for playing the arch villain opposite Douglas Fairbanks's Zorro in The Mark of Zorro in 1920. McKim also starred with Lon Chaney in the 1923 silent version of All The Brothers...

, cheating at cards. A fight ensues, and Washburn's sister, Jane Washburn (played by Jane Novak

Jane Novak

-Background:Jane Novak was born in St. Louis, Missouri was born Johana B. Novak, daughter of Joseph, an immigrant from Bohemia, and Barbara Novak. Her father died when she was a child and her mother was left to raise 5 children. Novak attended convent school but ran away with a friend with whom...

) walks in and becomes involved in a struggle over the gun. The gun is fired, and Billy Hamilton is killed. David Washburn convinces his sister that she pulled the trigger, and she takes the blame for her brother's actions.

Buckskin arrives to find his brother dead. Though initially vowing revenge, he is persuaded that the beautiful Jane Washburn did not intend to kill his brother. Buckskin then leads the group, including Jane and David Washburn, and Washburn's henchman, Merton (played by Lloyd Bacon

Lloyd Bacon

Lloyd Francis Bacon was a screen, stage, and vaudeville actor and film director.-Life:Bacon was born in San Jose California, the son of actor Frank Bacon, later the co-author and star of the long running Broadway show 'Lightnin' , and Jennie Bacon. He was not related to actor Irving Bacon whom he...

), west along the Santa Fe Trail. Various adventures ensue, including two of the wagons falling over a precipice. A romance develops between Buckskin and Jane Washburn, and she confesses that Buckskin's brother had not been annoying her - the cover story developed by her brother. Buckskin becomes convinced that either David Washburn or his henchman, Merton, is responsible for the death of his brother and marches the two men into the desert at gunpoint. To save himself, Merton confesses that David Washburn killed Buckskin's brother.

As Buckskin marches the two men back to camp, he learns that one of the emigrants has shot an Indian brave. The Indian chief demands that a white man be sacrificed - "a life for a life." Buckskin gives David Washburn a choice – he can either sacrifice himself to the Indians and die a noble death or kill himself. Washburn agrees to kill himself, and Buckskin agrees to be the sacrifice to the Indians. However, Washburn fakes his suicide and tries to escape, running into the Indian camp where he is mistaken for, and accepted as, the sacrifice. Buckskin walks into the Indian camp as the Indians execute Washburn. Buckskin returns to the camp, where the movie ends in uncertainty as whether the death of David Washburn will cast a permanent shadow over the budding romance between Buckskin and Jane Washburn. The movie ends with Buckskin riding into the desert. Before he leaves, Jane says, "Maybe you'll come back some day." As he rides into the spreading dawn, Buckskin sadly replies, "Mebbe."

Cast

• William S. Hart
  William S. Hart
  William Surrey Hart was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is remembered for having "imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity."-Biography:...
  
   ..... Buckskin Hamilton
• Jane Novak
  Jane Novak
  -Background:Jane Novak was born in St. Louis, Missouri was born Johana B. Novak, daughter of Joseph, an immigrant from Bohemia, and Barbara Novak. Her father died when she was a child and her mother was left to raise 5 children. Novak attended convent school but ran away with a friend with whom...
  
   ..... Jane Washburn
• Robert McKim
  Robert McKim (actor)
  Robert McKim was an American actor of the silent era. He appeared in 99 films between 1915 and 1927. He is best remembered for playing the arch villain opposite Douglas Fairbanks's Zorro in The Mark of Zorro in 1920. McKim also starred with Lon Chaney in the 1923 silent version of All The Brothers...
  
   ..... David Washburn
• Lloyd Bacon
  Lloyd Bacon
  Lloyd Francis Bacon was a screen, stage, and vaudeville actor and film director.-Life:Bacon was born in San Jose California, the son of actor Frank Bacon, later the co-author and star of the long running Broadway show 'Lightnin' , and Jennie Bacon. He was not related to actor Irving Bacon whom he...
  
   ..... Guy Merton
• Leo Pierson ..... Billy Hamilton
• Bert Sprotte
  Bert Sprotte
  Bert Sprotte was a German actor. He appeared in 77 films between 1918 and 1938.He was born in Chemnitz, Saxony and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:* Conquering the Woman...
  
   ..... Brick Muldoon
• Charles Arling
  Charles Arling
  Charles Arling was a Canadian actor of the silent era. He appeared in 111 films between 1909 and 1922.He was born in Toronto and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:* In Little Italy...
  
   ..... The Captain

Critical reception

Upon its release in 1919, Wagon Tracks was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as the industry's "Greatest Desert Epic." In its praise of the film, the Times continued, "The great desert screen epic is with us at last. It has been done by William S. Hart and C. Gardner Sullivan, with the aid of a fine cast and superlative photography ... Let it also be said that the music adds so vividly to the charm of the production that it might be said to be raised to that level of artistic achievement for which the big ones among the producers and exhibitors are always striving, and which for lack of a better name we call by that rather grandiose one of grand opera of the screen."

Commenting on the screenplay, the Times called it Sullivan's "masterpiece," a "strikingly original story," and wrote that "it breathes that clean-cut, Americanism always striven for by play-wrights, novelists and operatic writers -- it is as ruggedly and wholesomely American as its name." As for Hart, the Times wrote that "it seems as if all his former efforts were mere training for this big epic of the outdoors."

Other reviewers also praised the film. The Atlanta Constitution called it an "unusually worth while offering" with "a story about love and fighting and Indians and thrills galore, a picture in which the popular screen hero literally outdoes himself." The Atlanta paper also wrote that Hart's face was "the synonym for power and manliness" and concluded, "No one who sees this picture will soon forget it. It will be a vivid memory for months afterward." The reviewer for the Lima Times Democrat wrote that "this is the strongest story Mr. Hart has had in a long time."

The film was mentioned in an episode of the HBO series "Boardwalk Empire".