Coming up on Saturday at the Described Movies, How the West was Won and Sleeping Beauty.

From this Saturday at 12am Eastern, that’s 4pm Saturday in NZ, 2pm in Sydney and 5am in the UK, and repeated every four hours throughout the day, it’s the described movies How the West was Won from 1962 and Sleeping Beauty from 1959.
How the West Was Won is a 1962 American epic Western film directed by Henry Hathaway (who directs three out of the five chapters involving the same family), John Ford and George Marshall, produced by Bernard Smith, written by James R. Webb, and narrated by Spencer Tracy.
Originally filmed in true three-lens Cinerama with the according three-panel panorama projected onto an enormous, curved screen, the film stars an ensemble cast consisting of (in alphabetical order) Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne and Richard Widmark.
The supporting cast features Brigid Bazlen, Walter Brennan, David Brian, Ken Curtis, Andy Devine, Jack Lambert, Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln, Agnes Moorehead, Harry Morgan as Ulysses S. Grant, Thelma Ritter, Mickey Shaughnessy, Harry Dean Stanton, Russ Tamblyn and Lee Van Cleef.
How the West Was Won is widely considered one of Hollywood's greatest epics.
The film received widespread critical acclaim and was a box office success, grossing $50 million on a budget of $15 million.
At the 36th Academy Awards, it earned eight nominations, including Best Picture, and won three, for Best Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Best Sound and Best Film Editing.
In 1997, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Directed by: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall.
Written by: James R. Webb.
Produced by: Bernard Smith.
Starring: Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, and Richard Widmark.
Narrated by: Spencer Tracy.
Cinematography: William Daniels, Milton Krasner, Charles Lang, and Joseph LaShelle.
Edited by: Harold F. Kress.
Music by: Alfred Newman.
Production companies: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Cinerama.
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Release dates: 1 November 1962 (United Kingdom), and 20 February 1963 (United States).
File Length: 164 minutes.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
Budget: $15 million.
Box office: $50 million.
Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney based on the 1697 fairy tale Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault.
The 16th Disney animated feature film, it was released to theatres on 29 January 1959, by Buena Vista Distribution.
It features the voices of Mary Costa, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Barbara Luddy, Barbara Jo Allen, Bill Shirley, Taylor Holmes, and Bill Thompson.
The film was directed by Les Clark, Eric Larson, and Wolfgang Reitherman, under the supervision of Clyde Geronimi, with additional story work by Joe Rinaldi, Winston Hibler, Bill Peet, Ted Sears, Ralph Wright, and Milt Banta.
The film's musical score and songs, featuring the work of the Graunke Symphony Orchestra under the direction of George Bruns, are arrangements or adaptations of numbers from the 1890 Sleeping Beauty ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Sleeping Beauty was the first animated film to be photographed in the Super Technirama 70 widescreen process, as well as the second full-length animated feature film to be filmed in anamorphic widescreen, following Disney's Lady and the Tramp four years earlier.
The film was presented in Super Technirama 70 and 6-channel stereophonic sound in the first-run engagements.
In 2019, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Supervising Director: Clyde Geronimi.
Sequence Directors: Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, and Les Clark.
Story by: Erdman Penner.
Based on: Sleeping Beauty: by : Charles Perrault.
Produced by: Walt Disney.
Starring: Mary Costa, Bill Shirley, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Barbara Luddy, Barbara Jo Allen, Taylor Holmes, and Bill Thompson.
Narrated by: Marvin Miller.
Edited by: Roy M. Brewer Jr., and Donald Halliday.
Music by: George Bruns.
Production Company: Walt Disney Productions.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Distribution.
Release date: 29 January 1959.
File Length: 75 minutes.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
Budget: $6 million.
Box office: $51.6 million (United States and Canada).
Any questions, comments, or ideas for future described movies: e-mail me: anthony at mushroomfm dot com (e-mail address written that way to cut down on
spam)
Enjoy the movies,