The Way West

The Way West is a 1967 American Western film directed by Andrew V. McLaglen and starring Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, and Richard Widmark. The supporting cast features Lola Albright, Jack Elam, Sally Field, Katherine Justice, and Stubby Kaye. Ostensibly based on the 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1901–1991), the film is a drama about a band of settlers traveling by covered wagon train across the American frontier of the West to the Oregon Country on the Oregon Trail in 1843. It includes on-location cinematography by William H. Clothier. Sam Elliott made his feature film debut as an uncredited Missouri townsman.