Westward the Women

Westward the Women (1951) is an MGM western you can watch online on iFILM, directed by William Wellman. More than a hundred women board a caravan in Chicago, headed to California to marry settlers they've never met. The journey across the frontier — desert, mountain passes, open sky — is the film's real subject.

Roy Whitman organizes the expedition and hires Buck Wyatt to guide it: Robert Taylor playing a hardened man who doesn't hide his opinion of the women he's been paid to protect. He'll be wrong. Wellman treats this as a survival picture first, western second — and the women carry the weight of it without flinching. Stream Westward the Women online on iFILM.