This film is a very fictionalized account of the early days of Wells Fargo---long before it metastasized into the gigantic mega-bank that charges innumerable service fees like it does today. However, instead of focusing on the big-wigs at the company, it focuses on a fictional man, Ramsay (Joel McCrea) and his many difficulties he had establishing banking, transportation and mail services in the wild west. It also focuses on his marriage--one that eventually became very rocky and problematic.The problem with this film is that it is extremely episodic--with giant jumps in time here and there. As a result, it comes off more like a Cliff Notes version of a story instead of a rich and complete on. Compacting the story much more would have helped immensely, as the characters come off as very stiff and distant to the audience. Not a bad film but one that really should have been a lot better considering the large budget and cast. More money should have been spent on the script and less on extras and sets.

Fans of McCrea looking for a standard shoot-em-up should look elsewhere. That would be okay if the movie were as good as most McCrea westerns, but it's not. Too much time is spent trying to get Ramsay's (McCrea) love life straightened out. The trouble is this tends to crowd out the interesting other two themes— namely, opening highways to the West and action and adventure along the way. Now, with so much going on, narrative transitions from one thread to the next become important. But, I agree with reviewer Maxwell-- this key element in the storyline is handled very clumsily. It's sometimes hard to follow developments because of muddy segues, plus a sloppy script that appears to want to do too much with too many marginal characters. On a different note, what's with IMDb listing Lloyd Nolan in the credits. If he's in the picture, I couldn't spot him, and he's not someone easy to miss. Maybe he got edited out. On the plus side are actors McCrea, winsome wife Dee, and a fearsome Mary Nash, some good crowd scenes, and several edifying historical facts. Still, I too, was left wondering just what Wells-Fargo did as a day-to-day business, which seems an odd omission given the movie's title. Anyway, to me, the movie was a disappointment despite a bigger than average budget and an effort at historical sweep.

This is a largely fictional account of Ramsay MacKay (McCrea) who rises from a humble wagon driver in pre-Civil War New York state to become, after much travail, one of the Vice Presidents of Wells Fargo, the Butterfield Overland Stage Company, American Express, the Bank of America, the Ford Motor Company, AT&T, American Airlines, Ben and Jerry's, and Microsoft Corporation. Yes, he reaches dizzying heights.But it costs him dearly over the years. He marries Frances Dee and is alienated from her by the conflict between the Union, for which he works, and the Confederacy, which is her homeland. It takes more than ten years just so straighten that ONE misunderstanding out so the movie can end happily. And there are plenty other misunderstandings and deaths along the way.The movie fits into the end of a genre, which might be called the rough-hewn biography of an individual or a corporation. The genre flourished in the 30s. There were stories of Reuters, Lloyds of London, Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, Walter Reed and others. Those were more or less historical. Some were completely fictional, like Howard Hawks' "Come And Get It." They were all pretty much the same -- simple and entertaining -- except that, I guess, "Citizen Kane" fits in there somewhere too.Joel McCrea is as likable as ever. It's not his fault that I always have to look up the spelling of his last name. He married his co-star here, Frances Dee, and they stayed married for some fifty-seven years. Lucky Joel. She really sparkles and looked just fine well into middle age.I wish this had come off better than it did. I can't quite pin down the reasons why it's less satisfying than others of its type. I suppose, for one thing, the editing is really clumsy. A stagecoach rushes into a town and the citizens turn out to cheer its arrival. And I swear that for several minutes I couldn't figure out whether we were in San Francisco or St. Louis. The actual BUSINESS of Wells Fargo isn't made clear enough. The telegraph lines figure prominently but seem to have nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Butterfield's Overland Stage and the Pony Express are worked adventitiously into the plot. Lloyd Nolan shows up and then promptly disappears. We see quite a lot of Mister Wells but I can't remember meeting Mister Fargo, although he's in there somewhere because he's listed in the credits. In 1868, Mister Wells was generous enough to build a college for ladies in the Finger Lakes Region of New York.No reflection on any of the actors. For the most part they hit their marks and say their lines professionally. An exception is the twenty-seven-year old Robert Cummings, who is not yet ready for prime time. There are several scenes of action. As incidents in themselves, they're reasonably well done. It's the script that torpedoes the production.

This is a very interesting western, more so nowadays, because it shows how a fast mail service was created in the West at the time that the only sensible way to go to California was on sailing ships passing through Panama. Surprisingly this film did not age and there are some scenes like when they show San Francisco that look incredibly real. The creation of Wells Fargo, is presented through the story of Ramsey MacKay(Joel McCrea), and Justine (Frances Dee). Their relationship gets into trouble because of Ramsay's long absences and also the civil war, where her family joins the Confederates and Ramsay is called by Lincoln to make sure the money arrives to the soldiers. Robert Cummings and Johnny McBrown are on supporting roles.