Westward the Women (MGM) is the showmanlike saga of an 1851 trek halfway across the U.S. by 140 women, recruited to marry the lovelorn settlers of a California valley. Rancher John McIntire signs up the prospective wives for his men, lets them pick their mates from a bulletin board full of daguerreotypes. Then hard-bitten Scout Robert Taylor rides herd on the ladies on the dangerous wagon-trail to the West.
Before the trip's survivors finally become mail-order brides in a scene of titillating comic hokum, they endure an exhaustive series of acts of God,...