This episode is brought to you by Lux Coffee,

caffeinating the new Christendom with artisan roast coffee.

Western cinema began almost as soon as motion pictures were invented.

One of the first narrative films ever made, debuting in 1903,

the Great Train Robbery, was a Western and a massive hit.

Shot in New Jersey, it told the story of outlaws and lawmen featuring shootouts, horseback chases, and frontier justice.

It helped establish the basic template of the genre.

Rugged landscapes, men with grit, frontier survival,

cowardice, and great courage. This early period coincided with a monumental shift in American culture with the closing of the American frontier, officially declared by the U.S. Census Bureau

in 1890. While this marked a formal declaration, its cultural and psychological impact reverberated

for decades.

And Western cinema would step in to mythologize what was lost.

The myth of the American West, more than its reality, was taking root.

The Western exploded in popularity during the years between 1930 and 1950.

This is known today as the golden age of Western cinema.

Major studios cranked out hundreds of films, often starring larger than live figures like John Wayne and Gary Cooper.

These films mirrored the American values of individualism, justice, bringing order to chaos,

and unflinching moral clarity.

Directors, like John Ford, elevated the genre with cinematic mastery, using locations

like Monument Valley and its sweeping vistas to give the American landscape an almost

sentient character.

For decades, the Western dominated American film

...