This big-budget re-telling of the early career of civil War general Jeb Stuart (Errol Flynn), his friendship with George Armstrong Custer (Ronald Reagan) and their fight against radical abolitionist John Brown (Raymond Massey) is short on historical fact but long on entertainment value. A great cast and brilliant direction (by Michael Curtiz) make SANTA FE TRAIL as exciting and involving today as it ever was – a true Forties classic.

Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn co-starred with each other in nine Warner Bros. movies.

Ronald Reagan plays doomed George Armstrong Custer. The very next year, Flynn would play Custer in THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON (1941).