September Dawn

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This article or section contains information about one or more scheduled or expected films. The content may change as the film's release approaches and more information becomes available.

Promotional movie poster for the film

September Dawn is an upcoming 2007 film by Christopher Cain. It sets a fictional love story against the historical tragedy of the Mountain Meadows massacre of September 11, 1857, when a wagon train of emigrants (more than 120 men, women and children) was attacked and murdered by a group made up of the Utah territory militia and Paiute Indians . The movie stars Jon Voight, Terence Stamp, Dean Cain, Trent Ford, Tamara Hope, John Gries, Taylor Handley, Lolita Davidovich and Shaun Johnston. Cain claims to have relied on historical records for the account of the massacre depicted in the film, using dialog taken from speeches by Brigham Young and the confession of Mormon John D. Lee who led the attack. The love story between the young daughter of the wagon train's pastor and the son of the local Mormon bishop plays out against the build-up to the massacre and the tragedy itself. Cain was prompted to make September Dawn because, in his opinion, religious extremism is particularly relevant today.

[edit] Earlier story treatments

An award-winning documentary film Burying the Past: Legacy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre was directed by University of Utah film studies professor Brian F. Patrick and released in 2004.

Will Bagley, a columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune, wrote a detailed account this event, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 2004, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, ISBN 978-0-8061-3639-4. The book won several western history awards.

Historian Juanita Brooks (1898 -1989) published her take on the event in the 1950 book The Mormon Meadows Massacre, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, ISBN 0-8061-2318-4.

Brooks added more to the topic with the 1961 publication of John Doyle Lee: Zealot, Pioneer Builder, Scapegoat (1961), Utah State University Press, reissue November 1992 (paperback, 404pp). ISBN 0-87421-162-X. First published in 1961.