The Omaha Trail

How did they get the engine to Promontory Summit to celebrate the transcontinental railroad? I always assumed they drove it from the east over the tracks. This movie says different: they had to freight it a good part of the way, up the Missouri by boat, and then by ox cart. Apparently there was a sizable business in such freighting, and when Edward Ellis hires James Craig to do the job, fellow freighter Dean Jagger realizes it means the end of his business, and so sets out to sabotage it. Also Craig has been shining up to Jagger's girl, Pamela Blake.

All right. It's a story, and I'll accept it for the sake of a story without doing any research. It all ends with. An Indian attack and then a gun duel. But that's not the only peculiar thing about this movie. As an MGM movie it has some fancy sets, as you might expect, and a long cast list that runs from Metro contract players down to regular cast members of B movies, people like Tom London and Kermit Maynard. But it runs only 62 minutes. Was it cut down before release? If so, what subplots were lost? Or was Mayer figuring to get back into the B western business, a field MGM had abandoned with the coming of sound?