The premiere advance program (Signal) booklet for the 1923 silent film The Covered Wagon, directed by James Cruze with J. Warren Kerrigan, Alan Hale, Charles Ogle, Lois Wilson, and others.
"Tim McCoy,
as Technical Advisor, recruited the Native Americans who appeared in
this movie which included Northern Arapaho Nation from the Wind River
Reservation in Wyoming. "--Joe Franklin.
"The covered wagons gathered by Paramount from all over the Southwest
were not replicas, but the real wagons that had brought the pioneers
west. They were cherished heirlooms of the families who owned them. The
producers offered the owners $2 a day (equal to $35.77 today) and feed
for their stock if they would bring the wagons for the movie. Most of
the extras seen on film are the families who owned the covered wagons
and were perfectly at home driving them and living out of them during
the production."--Brownlow and Gill.
The Covered Wagon was the second highest grossing film of 1923. The film premiered in New York City on March 16, 1923, and ran 98 minutes.