Donner Pass: The Road to Survival poster

Movie · 1978

Donner Pass: The Road to Survival

Released 24 October 1978 More from 1978 → Letterboxd ↗ · TMDB ↗

A grim incident from American pioneer history is recreated as a determined group of settlers, facing almost insurmountable odds, struggles to reach California in 1846. Already divided by internal dissension over the choice of a leader and the selection of a route, the wagon train is soon decimated by Indian raids, a scarcity of food and water, and the unrelenting forces of nature. Finally after months of hardship, the party reaches the High Sierras, only to be stranded in the middle of the pass by an early snowstorm. And as fear of an agonizing death from starvation forces the abandonment of conventional rules of human behavior, the pioneers face a new enemy - each other.

FR·01

How old were they?

Oldest first
Whit Bissell
as Uncle Billy Graves
68
John Doucette
as George Donner
57
John Anderson
as Patrick Breen
56
Gregory Walcott
as Will Mckutcheon
50
Robert Fuller
as James Reed
45
Andrew Prine
as Lewis Keyser
42
Michael Callan
as William Eddy
42
Diane McBain
as Margaret Reed
37
FR·02

The numbers

Computed from the cast above
31years between the oldest and youngest billed
68Whit Bissell — oldest on the call sheet
37Diane McBain — youngest billed
50average age of the credited cast
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