Bear them well and wisely." He announced before departing: "Winter is almost over, and things do pile up when you've been gone a hundred years.Early working titles for the film includedLucky StrikeandThe Northern Story.The film, inspired in part by the gruesome Donner Party story, was shot (over a period of 15 months from spring 1924-summer 1925) both on a Hollywood studio back lot and in Truckee, California/Nevada, and premiered in New York at the Strand Theatre in mid-August, 1925." She admitted that she had lied, but had only acted to save and protect her crew when earlier attacked by Krall.The time period of the provocative, sophisticated film is set in the early 50s during the height of right-wing McCarthyism - a time of tense political paranoia with the overriding, reactionary fear that Communists (Russian and Chinese) were scheming to take over the US via advanced brainwashing techniques and programmed terrorist raining.