The West has long held a powerful appeal to the American imagination. Since the country's beginning, storytellers have fashioned myths about Americans' divine right to venture into the open frontier and remake themselves and the land. The West has been the place where Americans find out who they are and who they are to become. Stories of the mythic West have been told in virtually all forms of American art, including literature, television (see entry under 1940s—TV and Radio in volume 3), radio (see entry under 1920s—TV and Radio in volume 2), and painting, but nowhere more prominently than in movies. Indeed, the Western is the one true American film genre (type of film). Although musicals, comedies, and action films can be set anywhere, the Western can only be set in the American West.

The Western has undergone a slow evolution throughout the twentieth century. The...