The Prairie

The Prairie (1947)

THUNDERING with ADVENTURE and THRILLS!

The Prairie is set at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. Hoping to find their destiny in the new territory, the Bush Family heads southward in a covered wagon. Sharing the family's numerous dangers and hardships are Ellen Wade (Lenore Aubert), sole survivor of an Indian attack, and army mapmaker Paul Hover (Alan Baxter). Cousins Abiram (Russ Vincent) and Asa (Jack Mitchum) duke it out over Ellen's affections

Date of release
1947-11-27
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (2)
Runtime
1h 5m
Genres
Romance, Adventure, Action, Western
Director
Frank Wisbar

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Prairie

The Prairie is a 1947 American Western film based on the novel The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper.

Production

The film was made by a new company, a co-operative venture between director Frank Wisbar, production manager Edward Finney and writer Arthur St Claire. They financed, cast and made the picture themselves. Reportedly Wisbar raised some finance from his family back in Germany.

It was shot at a new studios, the Motion Picture Center, over 12 days at an estimated $10,000 a day.

"This is an interesting, a desperate, attempt to break the deadlock on independent production", said Wisbar. "The other boys and I made up our minds to finance, cast and film a picture as well as it could be done, without interference from the "front office", distributors, or anyone else. We did this knowing a low budget can be – and usually is – the ruin of a good picture. I know. I've made them; bad ones."

Wisbar said they picked Cooper's novel because it was in the public domain and also "because it keeps the rootin', tootin', and shootin' to a minimum and stresses the human element, the story of a man who was a law unto himself. We wrote our script straight, cutting out every scene that was not absolutely necessary."

Wisbar said the film was made in a style that was "realistic but stylised. Camera treatment is modern in what I would call highly poetic."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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