Western Union (film)
Western Union is a 1941 American Western film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Robert Young, Randolph Scott, and Dean Jagger. Filmed in Technicolor on location in Arizona and Utah, Western Union is about a reformed outlaw who tries to make good by joining the team wiring the Great Plains for telegraph service in 1861. Conflicts arise between the man and his former gang, as well as between the team stringing the wires and the Native Americans through whose land the new lines must run. In this regard, the film is not historically accurate; the installation of telegraph wires was met with protest from no one.
The film is based on the novel Western Union by Zane Grey, although there are significant differences between the two plots.
Western Union was only the second western made by Lang, The Return of Frank James being the first in 1940. Both movies explore the conflicts and obstacles of former criminals trying to return to law-abiding society. And both films were complicated by the Hays Code, which stipulated strict moral conduct in films at the time.
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