Across the Wide Missouri

A film from another era...

Across the Wide Missouri is a 1951 American Technicolor western film based on historian Bernard DeVoto's eponymous 1947 book. The film dramatizes an account of several fur traders and their interaction with the Native Americans.

Directed by William A. Wellman, the film stars Clark Gable as cunning trapper Flint Mitchell, Ricardo Montalbán as Blackfoot Iron Shirt, John Hodiak as Brecan, María Elena Marqués as Kamiah, a Blackfoot chief's daughter Mitchell marries and later falls in love with, J. Carrol Naish as Nez Perce Looking Glass, and Adolphe Menjou as Pierre. Howard Keel, as Mitchell's son "Chip Mitchell", narrates.

The film was shot largely in the Rocky Mountains, mostly at altitudes between 9,000 and 14,000 feet, north of Durango, Colorado near Purgatory and Molas Pass, the main location sites.