One of my family's all time favorite westerns! We saw this at the Honolulu Cinerama theatre in December 1963, and were just blown away by the beauty of the film, it's immense screen that curved around the theatre, and the sound system that thundered in your ear. When the shell burst in the Civil War episode right after Zeb killed the reb deserter, my little brother, who was sitting on my father's lap, almost jumped into orbit! He went around singing "Home in the Meadow" for weeks afterward. The great soundtrack was the second one I got, the first being (of course) Duke's "The Alamo".
The well done book, written after by Louis L' Amour, does ties up some Prescott family loose ends. For example, Sam Prescott, who is the older son who leg is broken in the battle with the river pirates, becomes a surveyor who is killed by Cheyenne in the railroad sequence (not the same ones that Jethro Stuart (Hank Fonda) brings in.) Zeb, as Lt. of US Cavalry, finds the bodies and has them buried, but is haunted by one of them, who looks like his mother Eve. The other Prescott son, Zeke, becomes the outlaw Zeke Ralls, whose gang rides into Jethro Start's camp. Ralls mortally wounds Jethro Stuart before dying in an attack from a grizzley bear that Jethro lures on him & his gang.
My family remembers the shock of seeing Walter Brennan playing a cruel river pirate who jams a pistol into the belly of one of the Harvey's and blows his guts across the room! All in all, it was a film to remember!
