How the West Was Won

How the West Was Won is an American western television series that featured an all star cast that included: James Arness, Eva Marie Saint, Fionnula Flanagan, Bruce Boxleitner, G. W. Bailey, Trisha Noble, William Shatner, Jack Elam, Woody Strode, Anthony Zerbe, Richard Kiley, Lloyd Bridges, Christopher Lee, Kay Lenz, Brian Keith, Vera Miles, Tim Matheson and Ricardo Montalban. Loosely based on the 1962 Cinerama film of the same name, it aired as a mini-series in 1977, and as a regular series in 1978 and 1979. A 2.5-hour long pilot episode, The Macahans, ran in 1976. A total of 25 episodes were... aired. The show was a great success in Europe, apparently finding a larger and more lasting audience there than in the United States. It has been rebroadcast many times on various European networks, e.g. in France, Germany, Italy and Sweden, and has built a cult following. It was released on DVD in Europe in November 2009. A sequence of paintings by Charles Marion Russell were shown during the end credits. In the pilot episode, Bruce Boxleitner's character is called Seth and William Kirby Cullen's character is called Jed.
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