Santa Fe Trail 1940

     This film is the story of Jeb Stuart.  It’s about his romance with Lady Kit Carson Holliday, his friendship with George Custer and his battles against John Brown.  The time setting is the days leading up to the outbreak of the American Civil War.  The beginning is at West Point.  This United States Military Academy was established in New York in 1802.  There were 445 Civil War generals that graduated from West Point, 294 for the Union and 151 for the Confederacy.  

      When I saw the boxes that John Brown and his group came to pick up, I knew they did not contain Bibles like they claimed!!  This film was not filmed in Santa Fe but in Kansas.  John Brown advocated the use of armed insurrection overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States.  He led small groups of volunteers in Kansas.  He was dissatisfied with the pacifism of the organized abolitionist movement.  In May of 1856, Brown and his supporters killed five supporters of slavery during the Pottawatomie massacre.  In 1959, he led a raid of the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia and many people were killed.  Afterwards, Brown was tried for treason, found guilty and hanged.  This escalated tensions and the South succeeded the union a year later and the American Civil War began. 3 1/2* (I liked this movie)

110 min, Adventure directed by Michael Curtiz with Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Raymond Massey, Ronald Reagan. Alan Hale, William Lundigan, Van Heflin, Gene Reynolds, Henry O’Neill, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, Alan Baxter, John Litel, Moroni Olsen, David Bruce, Hobart Cavanaugh.

Note:  Imdb 6.3 out of 10, Rotten Tomatoes 83% critic 52% audience, Amazon 4.2* out of 5* with 224 reviews, Letterboxd average 2.8* out of 5*,

Special Note:  This is the seventh of nine movies made by Warner Brothers’ with Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn as a romantic couple.  Olivia said that Errol Flynn was a former flame and he behaved badly towards her onset because she was dating James Stewart.  Ronald Reagan got the part of George Custer on the strength of his success playing George Gipp in Knute Rockne All American 1940.  The world premiere of this film was in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Raymond Massey also starred as John Brown in Seven Angry Men 1955 and he was Abraham Lincoln in four movies or plays.  This story is also the trial and hanging of the abolitionist John Brown.  A year after this film was released, Errol Flynn played George Armstrong Custer in They Died with Their Boots on 1941.