Brigham Young on the Silver Screen

A power ranking of the best – and worst – depictions of Brigham Young in film and television.

According to Joseph Smith, an angel of the Lord once promised him that his name would one day “be had for good and evil among all nations.” But the Latter-day Saint prophet who has perhaps made the largest pop cultural footprint in that regard is not Smith but his successor, Brigham Young. When it comes to onscreen portrayals of Young, sensationalism rules the day — he’s been depicted as harshly authoritarian, wheedling and manipulative, or even morose and soft-spoken. But other portrayals offer some interesting nuance and an important glimpse of the ever-changing target of Mormonism in media.

So in a break from our traditional interview format, here’s a ranked guide to Brigham Young’s filmography throughout the years, in all its work and glory. Enjoy!

A Mormon Maid (1917)

Luckily after this movie came out, no one ever produced an anti-Mormon movie ever again… right?

To be clear, Brigham Young isn’t explicitly named in this one, but the wicked prophet of this silent film has the trademark chinstrap beard and is referred to as “The Lion of the Lord.” It’s classic turn-of-the-century anti-Mormon propaganda, following a virtuous young woman named Dora whose family falls prey to the vicious Mormons. Specifically, Dora is torn away from her handsome beau (a recent LDS convert) and forced to be a polygamous wife to a sneering apostle while Brigham looks on superciliously. He rules over his Salt Lake Colony with an iron fist, but he’s also an oddly lethargic character, and, as you might expect, a bit of a straw man. Also, the Mormons are all Klu Klux Klan members in this one.

Rating: 1 out of 5 Brighams

I’m sure this costuming choice made sense to someone at some point in time, but I’m missing something here.

Brigham Young (1940)

This film ends with the climactic cricket and seagull scene, as do several others on this list. It’s a seminal moment in Mormon history!

A resoundingly heroic take on the Mormon pioneer story, as done by mainstream Hollywood? Yep – and Joseph Smith is played by a young Vincent Price. He’s pretty good! Brigham is cast as the reluctant heir to Joseph’s mantle following his martyrdom at Carthage (a well-staged and affecting scene) as he leads the desperate Saints across the plains to the Salt Lake Valley. Porter Rockwell, in a bizarre directorial choice, functions as the movie’s comic relief.

Dean Jagger gives a solid performance as Brigham here, and despite the general hamminess of the film I felt like he has genuine character. He’s full of self-doubt as to whether he’s received revelation, filled with concern over the future of the Church, and firmly certain that only righteousness will allow the Saints to prosper. In perhaps one of the earlier examples of method acting, Jagger would years later be baptized and join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Brighams

Joseph Smith, as portrayed by Vincent Price, has never looked better!

Brigham (1977) aka The New Brigham aka Savage Journey (1983)

You wouldn’t guess from the poster that this was a biopic about Brigham Young.

This one was released three times under different titles, and the best I can say about it is… it’s so bad it’s good? Though not produced by the Church, it’s a fairly propagandistic take on early Mormon history that’s mostly just playing the hits. Brigham Young comes across as a larger-than-life character, a bearded frontiersman facing down thugs and Indian chiefs and US soldiers with stern, unflappable righteousness. That said, his bromance with Joseph Smith is unmatched – just look how they bond over mutual hard work and industrious labor!

Rating: 3 out of 5 Brighams

The Avenging Angel (1995)

Man, this film is so full of great moments. Porter Rockwell even gets a scene to showcase his invincible head of hair.

Charlton Heston as Brigham Young? A Mormon Danite commando who goes rogue to foil an assassination attempt on the Prophet? Consider my curiosity piqued. And I actually really enjoyed this! It’s part western, part palace coup intrigue, but it stands out to me because of the way religion feels integrated through the story – the perils of fanaticism, the power of redemption, the peculiarities of LDS lore. (There’s even a great aside where some thugs fail to drown our hero in the Great Salt Lake because it’s too buoyant.) Heston plays an excellent Brigham, mixing paternal sternness with rays of warmth. My one complaint is he doesn’t get much screen time. I’d love to see more films like this that embrace the unique milieu of Mormonism with a genre bent.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Brighams

After she nurses him back to health, Miles Utley shares a tender moment with Liza, the neglected plural wife of duplicitous coup-planner Benjamin Rigby.

September Dawn (2007)

Remarkably unsubtle editing shows the wicked Brigham looming over the violence that runs rampant in Utah Territory.

In the heady days of the early 2000s, it apparently wasn’t much of a stretch to make an anti-Mormon film that draws a direct link between the terrorism of September 11th and the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The movie makes matters worse by twisting a horrific true event into a vicious screed against the LDS Church writ large and depicting Brigham Young as directly ordering the massacre. (Which, as most historical sources agree, he did not.) Terrence Stamp plays the tyrannical Prophet, booming his bloody rhetoric from the pulpit. Jon Voight also stars as an evil Mormon bishop with a silly beard. Robert Ebert gave the film a rare “zero stars.”

Rating: 1 out of 5 Brighams

The movie’s only saving grace is that it features some of the most unintentionally hilarious bad acting that I’ve ever seen on the screen.

Hell on Wheels (2011)

Brigham Young’s influence looms large over the later seasons of Hell on Wheels. But this photo makes it look like he’s about to drop the beat.

I haven’t watched enough of Hell on Wheels, the five-season-long show about the bloody, brutal path of the transcontinental railroad across the United States, to have an informed opinion on it. (Though from what I can tell, Mormons feature heavily and don’t come across particularly well.) But all that aside, I’m fascinated by actor Gregg Henry’s magnetic performance of Brigham Young. He’s a shrewd businessman and a stern leader, harsh but fiercely devoted to his flock. Unlike many of the entries on this list, there’s the sense of a real, complicated person to this portrayal.

In the scene below, we catch Brigham immediately after an arm-twisting negotiation to ensure the railroad terminus runs through Salt Lake City. He then encounters Eva, a former Church member who now runs a brothel.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Brighams

Under the Banner of Heaven (2022)

The wicked, tricksy Brigham Young holds court over his brainwashed flock in a flashback from the heavy-handed Under the Banner of Heaven.

This show is definitely out to take its pound of flesh from the Mormon Church, and that bleeds into its portrayal of its spiritual leaders. Brigham Young comes off worse than we’ve ever seen him – conspiring to murder Joseph Smith, for example, and then preaching a violent rhetoric of religious extremism. He’s portrayed as a sneaky, manipulative schemer, but the show’s relentlessly one-note ideology – namely, that religion is the tool of violent men, and Mormon men are the most violent of all – makes him more straw man than actual character.

Rating: 1 out of 5 Brighams

Probably the most spectacularly over-the-top depiction I’ve ever seen of the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor. Those awful Mormons!

Six Days in August (2024)

A lot of the gravitas of this film is undercut by the fact that neither Joseph Smith nor Brigham Young look old enough to shave.

On the other end of the spectrum is this low-budget dramatization of the succession crisis to lead the Church following the assassination of Joseph Smith. It’s a fascinating subject deserving of a thoughtful, nuanced portrayal – which unfortunately is not what we get on the screen. Rather, it’s a rushed and muddied hagiography of Brigham Young, hollowing out all of the uncertainty and tension in its effort to portray a simplistic, black-and-white message. The actor playing Brigham is just too young and too earnest; he lacks any of the grounded sense of self and rugged determinism that defined the man in real life.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Brighams

Brigham delivers his seminal sermon to the assembled crowd that convinces them of his ordained right to lead the Church.

American Primeval (2025)

This mixture of beige and taupe is about as colorful as the show gets.

The kindest thing I can say about American Primeval is that it was very successful for Netflix. By all other metrics – factual accuracy, enjoyability, color grading – it’s a sensationalized, overly grim, horrifying mess. (With a hideously drab color palette.) Brigham Young, somehow, comes off as surprisingly banal, offering glib threats and scowling but never really projecting any character, menacing or otherwise. The show suffers from overwrought and cartoonish dialogue, and Brother Young comes off much the same way. The only character trait they got right was the prophet’s work ethic; he’s quite busy scheming, smirking, and ordering his army of zealots to murder everyone in sight.

Rating: 1 out of 5 Brighams

One reviewer of American Primeval referred to its depictions of the LDS Church as “polite American ISIS.” Not exactly a balanced depiction.

Honorable Mention – Bioshock: Infinite (2013)

They refer to it as a new Eden instead of Zion, but the Mormon parallels in the 2013 video game Bioshock: Infinite are strong.

Sure, it’s not a movie or a TV show. And sure, it’s not really Brigham Young. But this video game sends you to the steampunk city in the clouds of Columbia, a breakaway city-state led by a charismatic prophet named Nathaniel Comstock. There’s dark secrets lurking in the Americana-drenched Columbia, and you uncover them one by one as you fight off killer automatons of George Washington (which is pretty awesome). Comstock’s booming voice is ever-present, exhorting the city to rise against you, the False Prophet. The game designers have stated how much inspiration they took from Brigham Young for Comstock, so I think this deserves a mention for creativity alone. Comstock’s a villain, but the game narrative gives you quite the glimpse inside his head before you finally take him down.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Brighams

Columbia is far from the paradise in the sky it’s promised to be – you’ll find that its trappings of Americana also conceal darker truths of racism and economic exploitation from the nation’s troubled past.