One John Wayne Western Is Impossible To Watch Today

The Western genre existed in motion pictures before John Wayne made his first onscreen appearance in 1926, but the movie Western as we know it today owes just about everything to John Ford's "Stagecoach." This 1939 classic not only catapulted Wayne to stardom, it also proved that tales of cowboys and riflemen could play for adults as well as children. Wayne had tread water as a Republic Pictures contract player prior to this, and, at the age of 32, might've been running out of chances to prove he belonged on Hollywood's A-list, so it's not hyperbole to say that "Stagecoach" is one of the most pivotal and influential films ever made.

Nowadays when we talk about Wayne, it's either to marvel at the great Westerns he made with masters like Ford and Howard Hawks, or to lament his abject cowardice in avoiding World War II as well as his unabashedly racist views. Outside of cinephile circles, very little attention is paid to his pre-"Stagecoach" movies, largely because most of them aren't all that great. There are gems, however, most notably Alfred E. Green's pre-code classic "Baby Face," where you can see Barbara Stanwyck devour the Duke's middle-management milquetoast as she skyrockets into the top tier of high Manhattan society. Wayne could handle the most vicious of Western baddies, but he's powerless against Stanwyck.

Of Wayne's pre-"Stagecoach" Westerns, the most interesting is easily Raoul Walsh's "The Big Trail," a 1930 70mm epic that died at the box office due to the exhibition difficulties caused by the Great Depression. Its failure relegated Wayne to Poverty Row pictures, one of which was the Republic Pictures oater "The Oregon Trail." Released in early 1936, this Scott Pembroke-directed programmer did nothing to elevate its star's profile in Hollywood. Was it any good? It's impossible to say, because the film has been lost for over three-quarters of a century. How could a Wayne Western go missing?

There are loads of lost silent films, but once you get past 1934 or so, the number of truly lost movies nosedives. So how could a Republic Western with Wayne up and disappear when it was released a scant five years prior to his breakthrough with "Stagecoach?"

In a 2013 interview with the BBC, Lone Pine museum director Bob Sigman advanced the theory that "The Oregon Trail" was misfiled. In other words, there's a print out there tucked snugly in a film canister, it just has something like "Typhoid Finds Andy Hardy" scrawled in tape across the lid instead of its proper title. Sigman has traveled all over the world in search of the print, but has thus far failed to track it down.

If someone ever happens to rescue "The Oregon Trail" from "lost movie" status, it's best not to get your hopes up. This was a cheaply produced Republic Pictures Western with a runtime of 59 minutes. It stars Wayne as a U.S. Army officer who's out to find and kill the man who murdered his pa. It has some familiar faces in it (most notably Ann Rutherford from "Gone with the Wind" and the pioneering stuntman Yakima Canutt), but this puppy was cranked out to earn a quick profit. Quality was a secondary concern at best.

Miracles can happen, but it's 2025 and these prints aren't always stored in the best of conditions. If every copy wasn't incinerated or consigned to a dumpster, it's likely the last remaining print of "The Oregon Trail" disintegrated a long time ago.