Which segment of How the West Was Won did John Ford direct?

John Ford directed “The Civil War” segment of *How the West Was Won*.

The 1962 epic is an anthology-style Western tracing one family and the expansion of the United States across several generations. It contains five major sections: “The Rivers,” “The Plains,” “The Civil War,” “The Railroad,” and “The Outlaws.” Ford handled the Civil War chapter, while Henry Hathaway directed three sections and George Marshall directed “The Railroad.”

Ford’s segment features the family’s wartime experiences and includes John Wayne, George Peppard, Russ Tamblyn, and Harry Morgan. Some of its combat imagery came from *Raintree County*, a 1957 MGM film, rather than being newly shot entirely for the epic.

The film is sometimes treated as a single-director work because it has one title, narrator, cast, and continuous family story. That is the main source of confusion: Ford directed only one chapter, not the entire picture. It was filmed in three-lens Cinerama, an unusually wide format designed for a curved screen.