# Help me identify an old movie about a young woman who lived with her father in a shack in the Old West **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [December 26, 2025, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-an-old-movie-about-a-young-woman-who-lived-with-her-father-in-a-shack-in-the-old-west/1026083 "2025-12-26T22:08:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![themapleleaf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/themapleleaf/32/14349_2.png) [@themapleleaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/themapleleaf)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2025, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-an-old-movie-about-a-young-woman-who-lived-with-her-father-in-a-shack-in-the-old-west/1026083/1 "2025-12-26T22:08:04Z")
Circa 1987, I watched a movie on TV with my grandmother. I don’t remember the whole story, but there was a young woman – I remember her as good-looking and fair-haired – who lived alone with her father in a shack or cabin somewhere in the Old West or elsewhere on the American pioneer frontier. As I remember, they lived a harmonious hillbilly life, but one day, some bootleggers or other criminals murdered her father. I think I was too young to understand everything that was happening in the movie, but I think she buried her father herself, lived for a while alone, possibly dressing in his clothes, and maybe in the end she was received in the house of another woman. A final detail I recall is of this movie having the protagonist’s narration as voiceover. The overall aesthetic suggests a Western from maybe the late 60s or the 70s? (It is _not_ “The Ballad of Little Jo”, which came out in 1993, about five years later, though the aesthetic of that movie is not dissimilar). Ring a bell, anyone? ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2025, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-an-old-movie-about-a-young-woman-who-lived-with-her-father-in-a-shack-in-the-old-west/1026083/2 "2025-12-26T22:14:02Z")
Pioneer Woman (1973, TV movie)? [![](https://ntvb.tmsimg.com/assets/p5043_v_h10_ac.jpg?w=1280&h=720) ](https://ntvb.tmsimg.com/assets/p5043_v_h10_ac.jpg?w=1280&h=720) ---
**Author:** ![themapleleaf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/themapleleaf/32/14349_2.png) [@themapleleaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/themapleleaf)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2025, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-an-old-movie-about-a-young-woman-who-lived-with-her-father-in-a-shack-in-the-old-west/1026083/3 "2025-12-26T22:15:32Z")
Well, that was quick. You may be right. I’ll check it out. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2025, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-an-old-movie-about-a-young-woman-who-lived-with-her-father-in-a-shack-in-the-old-west/1026083/4 "2025-12-26T22:17:17Z")
I do believe that‘s Shatner there. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2025, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-an-old-movie-about-a-young-woman-who-lived-with-her-father-in-a-shack-in-the-old-west/1026083/5 "2025-12-26T22:35:53Z")
> [@DCnDC](#): > > I do believe that‘s Shatner there Well, beam me up, Scotty, I believe you are right. ---
**Author:** ![ricepad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b38774/32.png) [@ricepad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricepad)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2025, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-an-old-movie-about-a-young-woman-who-lived-with-her-father-in-a-shack-in-the-old-west/1026083/6 "2025-12-26T22:43:17Z")
I can imagine him chewing the scenery during his murder! ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2025, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-an-old-movie-about-a-young-woman-who-lived-with-her-father-in-a-shack-in-the-old-west/1026083/7 "2025-12-26T22:51:58Z")
Also Helen Hunt played the young daughter. ---
**Author:** ![themapleleaf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/themapleleaf/32/14349_2.png) [@themapleleaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/themapleleaf)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2025, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-an-old-movie-about-a-young-woman-who-lived-with-her-father-in-a-shack-in-the-old-west/1026083/8 "2025-12-26T23:52:43Z")
Well, I watched the movie [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGZRgrZfJUA). At first I thought it was the movie I was thinking about, but having watched it, I don’t think it is. The protagonist went out West with her husband and children, not her father. At first I thought I might have conflated her own father with her children’s father, but having watched it, I’m pretty sure I haven’t. The husband did lose his life, but it was in a natural calamity, he wasn’t murdered (though he _was_ assaulted by people who accused him of claim jumping early in the movie). That said, it does bear an uncanny resemblance, and it was nice to watch a classic Western after a while. Thematically, it reminds me of [“Drylanders”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCQqakScRSI), an old black and white Canadian movie about a homesteading family that we watched in my high school geography class. Thank you, @DCnDC.