Stylish but barely mediocre overall

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I got a little confused during the plot of Union Pacific. It's about the rise of the railroad West to California, and the different characters either try to stop it or try to keep it going. Some people have ulterior motives, and through the twists and turns, I got a bit lost. Plus, I kept getting the two leading men, Joel McCrea and Robert Preston, confused. Barbara Stanwyck plays a plucky Irish lass in this movie, who steals the hearts of both Joel and Robert, and it's a pretty intense love triangle that will keep you guessing until the very end. There's love, action, secret plots, murder, and a historical background to carry you through this forgotten old movie. And, if afterwards, you forget about it, well, no one will really blame you.

"Union Pacific" is a very good Western movie with a top Hollywood cast of the day. It has action, adventure and romance. It combines fiction with fact in telling the story of building the Union Pacific Railroad. Congress had authorized the Transcontinental Railroad in 1862 to connect the existing eastern U.S. rail network with the Pacific Coast. The project was 1,912 miles long and was built between 1863 and 1869 by three private railroad companies. At 1,085 miles, the UP was the longest and most difficult part of the "Overland Route," as it soon would become known. It ran from Omaha, Nebraska, to West of Ogden, Utah. It crossed the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. The Western Pacific Railroad built 132 miles of track from Oakland to Sacramento, and the Central Pacific Railroad built 690 miles of track from Sacramento to Promontory Point, Utah. It was in a race with the UP to get to Ogden. As the movie shows, the UP got there first and the two lines met at Promontory Summit, 66 miles northwest of Salt Lake City. A number of movies - especially Westerns, have scenes with trains or building rail lines in their plot. But, "Union Pacific" is the only film in which the plot centers on the building of a railroad. It shows men laying ties and rails, putting up and tearing down makeshift towns, and dealing with struggles. Those included terrain, weather, train followers, and plots to delay or undermine the rail lines. This movie is based on a 1936 novel, "Trouble Shooter," by Western fiction author Ernest Haycox. Movie fans will be familiar with his work from the 1939 blockbuster and Oscar winner, "Stagecoach." It was based on another 1936 Haycox novel, "Stage to Lordsburg." This film mixes fictional characters with real people. Chief among the latter is General Grenville Dodge, played by Francis McDonald. Dodge had earned an engineering degree in 1850 and settled in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He served as a Major General in the Union Army during the Civil War. Among his many achievements was his pioneering use of military intelligence. Pres. Abraham Lincoln asked Dodge to help build the Transcontinental Railroad. He resigned from the Army to be chief engineer for the Union Pacific. Dodge also served in congress and later helped build a number of other railroads. Other real people portrayed are Oakes Ames (played by Willard Robertson), Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (Joseph Crehan), Thomas Durant (John Marston, uncredited), and California Gov. Leland Stanford (Gus Glassmire). The rest of the cast are fictional. The film has some big name stars and top supporting actors of the day. These all give top performances. Barbara Stanwyck is very believable with her Irish accent as Mollie Monahan. Joel McCrea is Jeff Butler, Robert Preston is Dick Allen and Brian Donlevy is Sid Campeau. Anthony Quinn has a small part as Cordray, and a top supporting cast includes Akim Tamiroff as Fiesta, Lynne Overman as Leach Overmile, Henry Kolker as Asa Barrows, Regis Toomey as Paddy O'Rourke, Lon Chaney Jr. as Dollarhide, and Ward Bond as a track-layer. The film has a cast of hundreds with many more regular supporting actors in bit roles. Most of them are as gandy dancers - the men who worked on the crews that laid the rails. As the movie shows, the Union Pacific was built mostly by Irish immigrants. The Central Pacific railroad that met the UP in Utah was built mostly with Chinese labor. In other parts of the country, men of other ethnic groups formed the main work forces that built the railroads. The film doesn't show it, but a special crew from both railroads was chosen to complete the link up at Promontory Point. That team of Irish and Chinese gandy dancers took just 12 hours to lay the final 10 miles of track. Today, the Union Pacific is the largest railroad in the U.S. It operates 14 hump yards where trains are assembled for routing to all corners of the U.S. and Canada. The Bailey Yard at North Platte, Nebraska, is the world's largest hump yard. It has 200 tracks and marshals a daily average of 139 trains and 14,000 cars. Tourists can watch the operation from the Golden Spike Tower at the visitors center. The Union Pacific Museum is located in Council Bluffs, Iowa, across the Missouri River from Omaha. In 1936, the Union Pacific built the Sun Valley ski resort in Idaho. It sold Sun Valley in 1964.The site of the joining of the UP and CP railroads at Promontory Point, Utah, is now the Golden Spike National Historic Site. The park has a museum with actual size replicas of the 1865 trains that met there -- the UP No. 119 and Central Pacific No. 60, "Jupiter." The park re-enacts the Golden Spike ceremony weekly on Saturdays from spring to fall. The main operating railroad line long ago was relocated south of the Great Salt Lake. It cut the length of the route by 43 miles and took out some curves and hills. Although the driving of the Golden Spike was attributed to California Gov. Leland Stanford at the time, he and the next person both missed the spike as the movie shows. The character of Ames in the movie is fictional, but may be based on one or more real characters. Apparently, the real pounder of the Golden Spike will never be known. Maybe it was a gandy dancer. In "Union Pacific," Cecil B. DeMille gives us first-rate entertainment. It's a good Western, adventure and romantic film with a look at history that people young and old should enjoy. P.S. - I climbed poles and dug bootlegs for the UP one year after Army service before heading off to college.

"Union Pacific" is an epic western released in 1939 the year many consider the movies greatest year. Consequently it never received the acclaim it deserved. It has all of the major elements one would expect to find in a major western: dashing clean-cut hero, feisty heroine, nasty villain, spectacular scenery, amazing special effects and of course those great old trains, miniature or not.As one of his final acts, President Abraham Lincoln authorizes the building of the Union Pacific railroad westward to meet at the California border with the Central Pacific Railroad. With Lincoln's death, ambitious banker Asa Barrows (Henry Kolker) sees an opportunity to cash in by delaying the completion of the Union Pacific. Barrows enlists the aid of gambler Sid Campeau (Brian Donlevy) and his partner Dick Allen (Robert Preston) to delay the construction.Under the leadership of Generals Dodge (Francis McDonald) and Casement (Stanley Ridges), the project begins. They hire ex-soldier Jeff Butler (Joel McCrea) as chief trouble shooter for the project. Two grizzled old trouble shooters, Fiesta (Akim Tamiroff) and Leach (Lynne Overman) are hired to assist him. When Jeff confronts Campeau, he discovers his old pal Dick Allen. Turns out Allen also knows the Irish Mollie Monahan (Barbara Stanwyck) with whom Jeff has also taken an interest.Campeau and Allen do their best to thwart the construction including a daring hold up of the construction crew's payroll. In order to protect Jeff from Allen and his two cronies (Harry Woods, Fuzzy Knight), Mollie agrees to marry Allen much to the dismay of Jeff. Jeff has suspected Allen of the payroll robbery but cannot prove it. When Allen is charged with the robbery, Jeff allows him to escape for old time's sake. But when the Indians attack the train carrying the principals they......................................................DeMille as usual employed a large cast of recognizable actors, many familiar to lovers of westerns. J.M. Kerrigan plays Mollie's father Monahan the engineer, Anthony Quinn a gambler, William Haade a foreman, Lane Chandler a conductor, Robert Barrat as Duke Ring a loud mouthed trouble maker, as well as, Regis Toomey, Lon Chaney Jr. (blink or you'll miss him), Richard Denning, Byron Foulger, Charlie Stevens, Chief Thunder Cloud and Iron Eyes Cody among others.DeMille stages not one but two realistic and spectacular train wrecks. And there is a well staged Indian attack resulting in one of them. ANd don't forget the scene at the end where the golden spike is driven to mark the meeting of the two railroads.An excellent western in every respect.

They don't make 'em like this anymore. Everything you could want in a film: romance, wit, drama, action. Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea make an incredible on-screen duo. The train wreck scene at the end is especially impressive. Kudos to Cecil B. Demille for this work of art. I wish I could give this movie more than 10 stars! :)