Wagons ho: Celebrate Pioneer Day by watching a Western

When the late, great Oscar-winning character actor Ben Johnson was doing a round of interviews for a film some years ago, I approached him, introduced myself and said I was from Salt Lake City.

Johnson immediately lit up with a smile, and said, with a chuckle in his voice, "You know, I brought the Mormons to Utah."

He wasn't kidding. Johnson really did lead a wagon train of Mormon pioneers through the wilderness to what would become Utah territory. Well, OK, it was in a movie.

Johnson was making reference to his title role in the John Ford classic "Wagon Master" (1950). And today being the 24th of July, it seems an appropriate anecdote.

But there's good news and bad news.

The bad news: "Wagon Master" is not on DVD!

The good news: It's coming to DVD on Sept. 15 — with the film's original poster on the cover, including the ad line: "John Ford's lusty successor to 'Fort Apache' and 'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.' "

Well, I don't know how "lusty" it is, but "Wagon Master" is a terrific film. And it is on VHS … if you can find a place that's still renting VHS.

But there are other movies on DVD on the subject of going West, young man (and young woman), and, hopefully, those that follow will help you get into the Pioneer Day spirit, whether that's today or over the weekend or next month. Hey, anytime is a great time to watch a Western.

Actually, considering how many Westerns have been made since the earliest days of cinema — and the fact that "Circle the Wagons!" is among the many stereotypes that linger in the zeitgeist — relatively few are about pioneer treks and wagon trains.

The Western subgenres are many, ranging from cleaning up rough-and-tumble towns to sagas of revenge to range wars to Indian relations to cattle drives to building the railroad to post-Civil War trauma to … well, you name it.

But the prairie schooners that carried these families from the East to the West and their subsequent pioneer settlements are more often peripheral story elements in service of the above named plots.

There are exceptions, though, so here are some that are available on DVD, and which, hopefully, you can find at the home-video rental outlet of your choice.

We'll begin with the Big Daddy of Mormon pioneer pictures, "Brigham Young," or, as the posters billed it, "Brigham Young — Frontiersman ..."