Tag Archives: John Ford

Stagecoach

Nicholas Chennault ~ October 2, 2013

Stagecoach—John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Thomas Mitchell, George Bancroft, Andy Devine, John Carradine (1939; Dir: John Ford)

In addition to being the first of the modern westerns, this was also director John Ford’s first use of Monument Valley, which became his favorite filming location for westerns, and his first association with John Wayne in a starring role. It was Ford’s first sound western and his first western of any kind in 13 years. When the film was made, Claire Trevor was the biggest star in the cast and was paid the highest salary. Wayne had been in a number of low-budget westerns in the 1930s, but this was his first big lead in an upscale film since 1930’s The Big Trail with director Raoul Walsh almost a decade earlier. That one had bombed on its theatrical release, although it’s been rediscovered by many in the DVD age. Casting Wayne in Stagecoach was Ford’s idea; the studio preferred Gary Cooper, but ultimately went along with Ford’s recommendation. This film put John Wayne on the track to being an even bigger star than Trevor, especially when he was teamed with Ford in future projects.

The movie is based on a 1937 short story by western writer Ernest Haycox, which is in turn said to be based on Guy de Maupassant’s famous story “Boule de Suif,” which takes place in Normandy during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. In this film, several strangers board the crowded Overland Stage in Tonto, Arizona, heading for Lordsburg, New Mexico. One is Dallas (Claire Trevor), a prostitute being run out of town by the respectable women. Another is Mrs. Lucy Mallory (Louise Platt), a pregnant army wife going to meet her husband, although her pregnancy is neither mentioned nor shown until it’s time for the baby’s birth. The male passengers include alcoholic Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell), also being run out of town; Samuel Peacock (Donald Meek), a timorous whiskey salesman; Hatfield (John Carradine), a professional gambler with a southern accent and an occasional chivalrous streak; and Henry Gatewood (Berton Churchill), a bank president clutching his bag with suspicious tenacity. Riding shotgun to stage driver Buck (Andy Devine) is Marshal Curley Wilcox (George Bancroft), looking for the Ringo Kid (John Wayne), who has just busted out of jail. All these stories would seem complicated enough, but these passengers aren’t on just any stage trip: Geronimo’s Apaches are on the warpath in the area the stage will be traveling through.

The stage stops for Ringo.

As the stagecoach rounds a bend, there’s a figure waving it down, rifle in one hand and saddle in the other. The camera zooms in on his face, and it’s Ringo, in one of the most memorable shots of this film. He’s been in prison because he was framed by the Plummer brothers, who killed his father and brother and sent him to prison before he was 17. Now that he has escaped from jail, he’s on his way to Lordsburg for a final confrontation with the Plummers. Both Curley and Doc Boone know Ringo and like him, and Curley takes him prisoner, in part to keep him alive.

There are two stage stations and a ferry between Tonto and Lordsburg. At the first station, all is well. The stage changes horses but loses its cavalry escort; the passengers eat, and Dallas is shunned by the more respectable passengers: Hatfield, Mrs. Mallory and Gatewood. Ringo and Doc Boone are friendlier, and Ringo suggests that he’s the one being shunned. “I guess you can’t expect to break out of prison and into society in the same week.” There’s amazingly quick character development, including one brief but revealing scene where a canteen is passed around the stage.

The cavalry detail that was to pick up the stage at the first station is out chasing Apaches instead, and after taking a vote among the passengers the stage moves on toward the second station. Here matters develop more quickly. Mrs. Mallory collapses, and as there are hurried instructions for hot water, we realize she’s about to give birth. (At least two of the other passengers didn’t recognize that she was pregnant, either, with the reticence of a bygone era.) Doc Boone sobers up and delivers a baby girl, with the help of Dallas. Outside in the moonlight, Ringo proposes marriage to Dallas and with her help he almost escapes. However, Chris, the Mexican station master, has an Apache wife, who leaves with several vaqueros and the station’s spare horses.

Ringo decides not to escape here because he sees Indian sign and holds up. Curley takes him back into custody, and the stage heads warily for the ferry, after which they all figure they’ll be safe. The ferry and its station are burned out, though. Buck, Curley and Ringo rig supporting logs to help the stage float across the river, and they head for Lordsburg with a sigh of relief. But we know the Apaches are somewhere around, and inevitably they show up and give chase. After an extended chase (featuring some superb, state-of-the-art stuntwork by Yakima Canutt), the stage’s defenders run out of ammunition, with Hatfield saving his last bullet to spare Mrs. Mallory the indignities of capture by the savages. And then ….

Under attack by Geronimo.

Well, Ringo has to make it to Lordsburg, and he does. He has it out with the nefarious Plummer brothers (three Plummers against one Ringo), and matters work out as they should, perhaps not with complete believability. Doc Boone does not miraculously become a respected teetotaler, and Dallas is unable to leave her past completely behind, but things work out for them as they should, too.

It’s great storytelling, with bits of social commentary unobtrusively scattered along the way. John Wayne captures the screen whenever he’s in the frame, and Claire Trevor is magnificent. Wayne has the iconic western line: “There are some things a man just can’t run away from.” If Thomas Mitchell’s hard-drinking Doc Boone seems a bit stereotypical from our vantage point (almost identical to Edmond O’Brien’s hard-drinking newspaperman in Liberty Valance 25 years later, in fact), well, he was perhaps less so in 1939. Donald Meek’s whiskey drummer, whom every one mistakes for a clergyman, is very effective. And we despise the overbearing banker Gatewood as we are meant to do. The Apaches actually look like Indians, which you can’t say of many western films of this era; Ford generally used Navajos instead of Apaches, though.

In addition to being the first use of Monument Valley as a setting (and the first of seven Ford films to use it), there’s other good filmmaking going on here. Ford doesn’t use a lot of close-ups, so we tend to pay attention when he does. The interior ceilings are low, which must have presented problems for the lighting of the time. That adds to the claustrophobic feeling as the movie progresses, and was imitated by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane two years later. And the stunt work by Yakima Canutt was later imitated in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Maverick.

Although there were a couple of other well-made westerns in 1939, it was largely this film that rejuvenated the genre, brought it an element of respectability and started the modern era for westerns. (Many 1940s westerns would still show evidence of low budgets, singing cowboys and lots of stereotypes—the revolution didn’t happen overnight.) But Stagecoach was a real accomplishment and remains highly watchable today. In what is still thought of as Hollywood’s single greatest year, Stagecoach was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration, Best Film Editing, Best Supporting Actor (Thomas Mitchell’s Doc Boone) and Best Score. It won for the last two.

Dallas (Claire Trevor) and Ringo (John Wayne) in Lordsburg, about to confront reality.

In an interview for a 1971 article, Ford reminisced about casting Wayne. ‘I got a call from [producer] Walter Wanger who had one more picture to make under his United Artists contract. So I sent him the short story and he said, “That’s a pretty good story. I’m thinking of Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich,” he said.

“I don’t think you can go that high on salary with a picture like this,” I said. “This is the kind of picture you have to make for peanuts.”

“Have you got anybody in mind?” Wanger asked me.

“Well, there’s a boy I know who used to be an assistant prop man and bit player for me,” I said. “His name was Michael Morrison, but he’s making five-day Westerns and calls himself John Wayne now.”

“Do you think he’s any good?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so,” I said. “And we can get him for peanuts.”‘ And John Wayne became a star.

A production still of the cast, from Claire Trevor on the left to George Bancroft on the right.

As Ford recalled it, he had plenty of confidence in the film, but it wasn’t always obvious that it would be a hit. ‘After I shot Stagecoach, I worked closely with the cutter. But there wasn’t a helluva lot to do. I cut with the camera. When the picture was put together, Wanger invited a few top people – brilliant brains of the industry who proceed to say how they would have done Stagecoach. Sam Goldwyn said, “Walter, you made one mistake: You should have shot it in color. You should start all over again and make it in color.” Douglas Fairbanks Sr. said: “The chase is too long.”

‘Then it was shown to the great producers at RKO, who had turned the project down in the first place. One of them said, “It’s just a B picture.” Another said, “It’s all right, but it’s still a Western.” Well, of course, the picture went out and hit the jackpot. It started a flood of Westerns, and we’ve been suffering from them ever since.”‘

It was also made at a particularly productive period of John Ford’s career, the same year that he made Drums Along the Mohawk and Young Mr. Lincoln and just before he made The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley. It was an amazing streak for a great director.

The 1966 remake of Stagecoach was pleasant enough, but a pale and much less charismatic imitation of the original. A made-for-television version in 1986 seemed to be merely a vehicle for a number of aging country music stars (mostly without much acting ability) and didn’t work at all. The best other variation on this theme (strangers on a stage under attack, complete with social prejudices and hypocrisy, the supposedly respectable but actually corrupt businessman) is the 1967 movie Hombre.

For the 1971 article with comments from various participants in the production (including John Wayne and Claire Trevor), see: http://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1004-Winter-2010-11/Features-On-John-Fords-Stagecoach.aspx

My Darling Clementine

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 30, 2013

My Darling Clementine—Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Cathy Downs, Tim Holt, Ward Bond (1946; Dir: John Ford)

Of all the cinematic versions of the Wyatt Earp story, this is the least accurate historically. (Well, with the exception of 1939’s Frontier Marshal, which is a pretty good movie, too.) But this elegant black and white retelling, with Henry Fonda as a mythic Wyatt, has a visual spareness and beauty that remain unmatched more than sixty years later. If you know much about the historical events in Tombstone, maybe the best way to watch this classic is to just enjoy the story John Ford tells here for what it is without weighing it against the actual history. Bear in mind the line from another Ford western (Liberty Valance) about legends becoming fact. Ford was helping that process along for the Earps.

Filmed in Ford’s favorite western location (Monument Valley, where he made nine movies), there are images from this movie that linger long after it’s over: Fonda sitting in a chair on the boardwalk, tipped back on the rear legs with his leg propped against a post as he watches the town’s comings and goings; Fonda and Downs at a church social, dancing outdoors on the newly-built floor of what will be the church; Fonda and his brothers finding the body of the youngest brother in the pouring rain; a hack actor getting help from Victor Mature’s Doc Holliday in finishing Hamlet’s soliloquy; a badly shot Mature calmly looking through the poles of a corral, his hand holding a white handkerchief near his head as he selects and shoots his next target.

Bruce Willis in a visual Fonda reference (Last Man Standing, a gangster-era remake of Yojimbo directed by western aficionado Walter Hill). Even the chair is the same.

The most eye-catching female role here is not the Clementine Carter of the title, played by Cathy Downs, but smoldering Linda Darnell as Chihuahua, a Mexican saloon girl and prostitute in love with Doc Holliday.

At the movie’s start, Wyatt Earp (Fonda) and his three brothers, Morgan (Ward Bond), Virgil (Tim Holt) and James, are driving a herd of cattle to California when they arrive outside Tombstone in Arizona. Leaving young James to watch the herd, they go into town for a shave and a drink. They return in the driving rain to find the herd stolen and James dead. It’s obvious to us that it’s the work of Old Man Clanton (an unusually malevolent Walter Brennan) and his four sons, who were coveting the herd earlier and tried to buy it. The surviving brothers return to town, where Wyatt, already known as a peace officer from a stint in Dodge City, accepts a job as the town marshal with his brothers as deputies.

Walter Brennan as a malevolent Old Man Clanton.

One of his first actions is to meet and establish some kind of relationship with Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), who owns the local saloon where Chihuahua sings. Doc is volatile and used to having his way, but he and Wyatt arrive at a wary accommodation. There is a sense of impending doom over Doc, due to bouts of wracking coughs that indicate he has consumption (tuberculosis). The stage brings Clementine Carter to town, a figure from Doc’s past with whom Wyatt is immediately taken. Doc is less thrilled to see her, and he tells Clementine to leave town or he will. The jealous Chihuahua thinks Doc will now go to Mexico with her and marry her. Meanwhile, Wyatt discovers Chihuahua with an elaborate silver cross that James had bought for his own girl, and she tells him she got it from Doc. Wyatt chases down the stage for Tucson and retrieves Doc. He doesn’t come easily; the two finally face off, and Wyatt wins.

On their return to Tombstone, they confront Chihuahua, since Doc knows he didn’t give her the cross. She finally confesses that she got it from Billy Clanton (John Ireland), and Clanton, who has been lurking outside the window, shoots her and flees on horseback. Wyatt takes three shots at Clanton to little apparent effect and Virgil pursues him toward the Clanton ranch. At the ranch, Billy falls dead on the porch from wounds, and Old Man Clanton shoots Virgil in the back with a shotgun.

Wyatt delivers an ultimatum to the Clantons at the OK Corral.

Meanwhile, Doc Holliday exercises his now-quite-rusty surgical skills on the badly wounded Chihuahua, using saloon tables for the operation with the assistance of trained nurse Clementine. It’s apparently successful, and for a time Doc is the skilled surgeon of old. However, the Clantons return with Virgil’s body to Tombstone, setting up the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Chihuahua dies, and Holliday joins the Earps against the Clantons. In the extended shootout, all four of the remaining Clantons are killed, with Old Man Clanton as the final member of the family to go down. Wyatt and surviving brother Morgan (Ward Bond) head for California to tell their father what has happened, and Clementine becomes the schoolmarm in Tombstone. Wyatt departs, leaving the sense that he’ll be back to resume the relationship.

Tim Holt and Cathy Downs in My Darling Clementine, 1946.

Wyatt and Clementine say goodbye for a while.

Fonda couldn’t be better as Wyatt Earp in his first movie role after returning from service in the navy during World War II. As it is used in this movie, even Fonda’s hat almost becomes a character itself; both its shape and Fonda’s use of it seem authentic. Victor Mature, whose most obvious characteristic was his physical size and robustness, is a strange choice to play the slight, tubercular Holliday, but it works well enough in the end. Walter Brennan is excellent as Old Man Clanton, setting up a similar role for him in the parody Support Your Local Sheriff more than twenty years later. The Clanton sons never become differentiated and don’t matter much. There’s something of a Mexican stereotype in Darnell’s Chihuahua, but she doesn’t go so far as to attempt a Mexican accent and after enough fiery close-ups she’s effective. Cathy Downs is beautiful as Clementine, and she doesn’t actually have to do much. The character actors such as Alan Mowbray’s Shakespearean hack Granville Thorndyke, Jane Darwell’s townswoman Kate Nelson, and J. Farrell Macdonald as Mac the barman are excellent. Wyatt to Mac: “Mac, you ever been in love?” Mac: “No, I’ve been a bartender all my life.”

This was also John Ford’s first postwar movie, and it began another amazing run for him. Over the next ten years, he’d make a string of some of the most remarkable westerns ever filmed. Ford was said to have known Wyatt Earp as an old man (Earp died in 1929, spending a few of those last years in Hollywood), and this film was loosely based on Stuart Lake’s biography written soon after the old lawman’s death. Ford claimed that the version of the famous gunfight that he shot was based what Earp personally told him, including a diagram and the passage of a dust-raising stagecoach during the shooting. But as usual he was “printing the legend”–telling his story the way he thought it should be. After Ford submitted his film, studio head Darryl Zanuck notoriously took some liberties with it, resulting in some new footage and a shorter cut. (See Lost Masterpieces.)

The black-and-white cinematography by James MacDonald is remarkable, especially in low shots that bring in the sky; in rain at night; in its use of shadows and light in interior shots; and in long shots that end up in the distance on a feature of Monument Valley geography. As the surviving Earps and Doc Holliday walk down the dirt street at dawn toward the OK Corral, they’re barely visible in long shots that emphasize the looming sky. The movie in general has an almost palpable sense of bygone Americana.

The mortally wounded Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) does not go gently.

If you want a more historical recounting of the Tombstone saga, and in particular the famous gunfight, try Tombstone or Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp. So what’s incorrect in Clementine? There was no Clementine historically, and Wyatt’s relations with women were less fastidious than this movie depicts. James was the oldest of the Earp brothers, not the youngest, and the positions of Morgan and Virgil were switched in this film. It was older brother Virgil, not Wyatt, who took on the job of marshal in Tombstone. The Earps did not come to Tombstone driving cattle; they came to a booming mining town looking for gambling opportunities and maybe a quick mining strike. The country around Tombstone isn’t much like Monument Valley. Wyatt didn’t meet Doc Holliday in Tombstone; they’d previously met in Fort Griffin, Texas, and had been friends for some years. Doc came to Tombstone after the Earps were already there. Doc was a dentist, not a surgeon, and he was from Georgia, not Boston, although he was trained in Philadelphia. He was not killed at the OK Corral, but died in a Colorado sanitarium six years later. His mistress was not Mexican, but a Hungarian prostitute, Big Nose Kate Elder, and she outlived Doc by more than 50 years. The Earps’ opponents at the shootout were not Old Man Clanton and three of his four sons—he had only three and he was dead months before the shootout. Ike and Billy Clanton were in the fight; Ike ran and survived, and Billy was killed, along with the two McLaury brothers. The gunfight itself was a more stand-up and shoot-it-out affair than depicted in the movie with less moving around, and it was over much quicker. Some of the more interesting aspects of the real-life story happen during Wyatt’s vendetta ride after the shootout at the corral, and that aftermath is not depicted at all in this film. And that’s for starters.

Some of these less-than-historical elements have their roots in earlier cinematic versions of the story. For example, for a Clementine figure re-entering Doc’s life in Tombstone, Doc as a surgeon rather than a dentist, a dramatic operation on a saloon table and Doc being killed in Tombstone, see Frontier Marshal from 1939, with Randolph Scott as Earp and Cesar Romero as Doc.

Wyatt and Clementine dance--he clumsy but enthusiastic, and with great joy. "Make room for our new Marshall and his Lady Fair".

The marshal dances with Clementine, as Monument Valley looms in the background.

John Ford was indisputably a great director, but he could be nasty to work with. Three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennan would refuse to work with him again after this film. And Henry Fonda, who had an extraordinarily successful history with Ford by the time this was made (Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath), would have his own falling-out with Ford about ten years later.

For historical reading on the actual Tombstone and the Earps, try Paula Marks’ To Live and Die in the West or recent biographies of Wyatt by Allen Barra or Casey Tefertiller.

On the set of My Darling Clementine, 1946.

Note: As of Oct. 2014, this classic was released on a Criterion Collection DVD, complete with commentary, extras, a fully-restored version of the 97-minute theatrical release, and even a 103-minute pre-release cut. It’s the best way to see the film. However, the earlier 2004 DVD has an excellent commentary by film historian and Ford biographer Scott Eyman that is worth listening to.

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Fort Apache

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 28, 2013

Fort Apache—John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, Shirley Temple, John Agar, Pedro Armendariz (1948; Dir: John Ford)

A Custer-esque poster, reminiscent of a print often seen in 19th century saloons.

This is the first of Ford’s cavalry trilogy from the late 1940s, a landmark series and an extraordinary achievement in the western genre. This initial entry revolves around the conflict in leadership between Lt. Col. Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda, with a streak of white in his hair), a by-the-book martinet with no experience in dealing with Indians, and the more reasonable, pragmatic and experienced Capt. Kirby York (John Wayne). The Chiricahua Apaches under Cochise have left their reservation (the leadership of Cochise would place this in the early 1870s) and gone to Mexico. It falls to Thursday’s command to deal with them.

Henry Fonda as Col. Owen Thursday

West Point graduate Thursday rose to be a general in the Civil War, but afterward he was reduced in rank as the military shrank to its peacetime size. He feels that small-time Fort Apache in Arizona Territory isn’t worthy of him, and, Custer-like, he wants to reclaim supposed past military glories in his new posting. He’s overly concerned with insignificant military niceties and too stubborn to accept advice from more experienced subordinates. His highest-ranking subordinates are Captains York, who also saw service as a colonel in the Civil War but has since acquired considerable experience out west dealing with the Apaches, and Collingwood (silent film star George O’Brien, who played older officers in all three of Ford’s cavalry trilogy movies), older than York and with a longer and warmer acquaintance with Thursday. Collingwood is on the verge of retirement, just waiting out the days or weeks in this remote outpost until his final retirement orders come through. Unlike Thursday, York has enough experience to realize the outpost’s vulnerabilities. As York sees it, not everything needs to come to a fight, including the current situation with Cochise. To complicate matters, Thursday’s daughter Philadelphia (an almost grown-up ShirleyTemple) shows up at the post and develops a romantic interest in young West Point graduate Lt. Michael O’Rourke (John Agar). O’Rourke is the son of the post’s Irish sergeant major (Ward Bond)—now a non-commissioned officer, although he was a Medal of Honor winner and a major in the Civil War. To Thursday, that would be a highly unsuitable match.

Wayne as Capt. Kirby York

Thursday shows some signs of being able to learn as he and York discover that the Apaches have left their reservation because they’ve been systematically cheated by a corrupt Indian agent, who’s also selling guns and alcohol to them on the side. York is sent with Sgt. Beaufort (a Mexican and former Confederate major, played by Pedro Armendariz; the sergeant speaks Spanish as does Cochise) on a diplomatic mission to find Cochise and persuade him to come back. In reliance on York’s word, Cochise and his people come far enough back to parley with Thursday. However, Thursday is certain he knows best, and he is grossly and unnecessarily offensive to the Indians, precipitating a battle. He is sure that savages with no training cannot have the military capability of defeating U.S. cavalry, no matter how outnumbered that cavalry might be. Going against York’s advice, Thursday charges into an ambush, with York and young O’Rourke ordered to stay behind with the supply train.

The result is the massacre of all Thursday’s men, including Collingwood and the elder O’Rourke. In the final scene at the post some years after the event, York is now the commanding officer, and not-quite-so young O’Rourke is his second in command, now married to Philadelphia Thursday. Members of the press are asking York about Thursday’s supposedly heroic last stand and a famous painting of “Thursday’s Charge,” and York confirms the glorious myth—“Correct in every detail,” he says of the overblown and obviously inaccurate painting. It’s a foretaste of the Liberty Valance valedictory: “When the legend become fact, print the legend.”

There are the usual Ford cavalry characters here: Irish sergeants led by Michael O’Rourke (Ward Bond), Fergus Mulcahey (Victor McLaglen) and Quincannon (Dick Foran); young, mouthy lieutenants (John Agar); beautiful eastern young women (Temple) inexperienced with the west; savvy long-time military wives (Emily Collingwood and Mary O’Rourke, played by Anna Lee and Irene Rich); noble Indian leaders (Cochise, played here by Miguel Inclan); former Conferates now serving well out west (Armendariz); and scurrilous Indian agents (Silas Meacham, played by Grant Withers). There are names that will recur in future parts of the cavalry trilogy: Quincannon (a stereotypical Irish sergeant played by twice by McLaglen in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande) and Kirby York (played again by Wayne in Rio Grande). No Ben Johnson or Harry Carey, Jr., yet, though; they’ll have to wait for She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Young lovers Agar and Temple were in fact married at the time, although they’d be divorced in a couple more years.

Production still: Wayne, Fonda, Agar and Temple

These three movies were not conceived as a trilogy, and, though they all have typical Ford weaknesses (nostalgia, sentimentality, broad stereotypes), they have his strengths as well, including his unparalleled visual sense. This, like the others, was filmed at Utah’s Monument Valley (although the Fort Apache set was located in Simi Valley, California), and is in black and white. In some ways, the plot of Fort Apache is the strongest of the three. It’s based on a short story by James Bellah, “Massacre.”

In addition to Custer, an Arizona inspiration for the story might be Lt. Howard Cushing of the 3rd Cavalry. Cushing led his troopers into an Apache ambush at Bear Spring northwest of Fort Huachuca in Arizona Territory and was killed. He is sometimes referred to as “the Custer of Arizona.”

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 26, 2013

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon—John Wayne, Ben Johnson, Victor McLaglen, John Agar, Joanne Dru, Mildred Natwick (1949; Dir: John Ford)

“… Wherever they rode, whatever they fought for, that place became the United States.” Obviously, Ford’s own Rio Grande and Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee hadn’t been made yet, since they both involve cavalry expeditions into Mexico (still not part of the United States). Maybe Ford would have said it anyway.

Of Ford’s cavalry trilogy, this one gives the best feel for cavalry life. John Wayne is Capt. Nathan Cutting Brittles, a widower at Fort Stark about to retire from the military in 1876 with some reluctance after 40 years’ service. He’s good with his men—authoritarian enough but pragmatic when he has to be. His repeated advice, including to a young woman: “Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.” But he also means for those so instructed to take responsibility for what’s happened. He’s experienced in dealing with Indians and has long-term relationships with some of them. His unit’s job of keeping the peace will be a lot harder without his experience and judgment.

Contrary to what the Italian poster suggests, Joanne Dru does not wear pants with her military costume.

To make matters worse, as the day for his retirement approaches there are new Indian hostilities to cope with. The news of the Little Bighorn is fresh (placing this in 1876), and it makes the entire frontier military jumpy, as well as the Indians (Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Kiowas and Apaches are said to be among them here, an unlikely mix of tribes). The local fort sutler might be running guns to the Indians. (Sutlers and Indian agents are often venal, bad characters in John Ford and other westerns; see, for example, Fort Apache and They Died With Their Boots On.) A beautiful visiting young lady from the East (Olivia Dandridge, played by Joanne Dru) has the young lieutenants at each other’s throats. And Brittles is keeping a lid on it all in the face of his imminent retirement from the army and departure for California.

Brittles is sent out on a last patrol, taking along two women against his objections so they can be delivered to a stagecoach stop. On the way they encounter hostile Indians and have to take military action against much greater numbers. We get a sense of how decisions had to be made with incomplete information, and what it was like to deal with long distances with only horseflesh to depend on for transportation and communication. In the end, Brittles is not banished from his military family and is given appropriate honors.

Joanne Dru: Looking good in her military garb.

This has the usual John Ford characters: the experienced, wise, and sometimes inspirational field leader in Brittles; the Irish sergeants (McLaglen in this case) who drink a lot; the immature lieutenants (John Agar and Harry Carey, Jr.) who embody the future of the cavalry; former Confederates who are respected for their military abilities (Sgt. Tyree, played by a young Ben Johnson); idealized young women who don’t understand the West or the military—yet (Joanne Dru); military wives as sage and experienced as their men (Mildred Natwick as the post commander’s wife). Ford makes these familiar characters all work, even if we now feel like we’ve seen them before. Ford’s work here is also marked by a certain sentimentality; sometimes heavy-handed manipulation with music, especially the title song; and the brilliant visuals and use of the desert locations that is one of Ford’s trademarks. Unlike Fort Apache a year earlier and Rio Grande a year afterward, this one’s in color; it won Winton C. Hoch the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. (Hoch also did 3 Godfathers with Ford the year before and The Searchers a few years later.)

This is the most striking visually of Ford’s cavalry trilogy. Although Winton Hoch, the cinematographer, won an Academy Award for his work here, filming was not a smooth creative process because of Hoch’s conflicts with Ford. One of the most iconic scenes from the film was created during a dispute. As a line of cavalry rides through the desert, a real thunderstorm grows on the horizon. Hoch began to pack up the cameras as the weather worsened, only to have Ford to order him to keep shooting. Hoch argued that there was not enough natural light for the scene and, more importantly, the cameras could become potential lightning rods if the storm swept over them. Ford ignored Hoch’s complaints, completing the scene as the thunderstorm rolled in, soaking the cast and crew with rain. Hoch later had filed a letter of complaint against Ford with his trade union over the filming of this scene, but it’s a masterful sequence visually. Hoch was still willing to work with Ford on The Searchers a few years later, however.

The dialogue is well-written and this film does an excellent job of depicting some of the logistics of cavalry life—what it was like to depend on horses and be out in all weather, and the need to walk periodically to rest the horses, for example. There’s a real affection for the military and an elegiac feel. However, the story seems a little like a bunch of incidents strung together, without a strong enough major story arc to it. The parts may be greater than the whole, story-wise.

Nathan Brittles negotiates with an old friend (John Big Bear) among the Cheyennes.

The performances are good. As in Red River, Wayne in his prime (at age 42) is called upon to play much older than he is, and he can do it, complete with an occasional touch of world-weariness here and there. Ben Johnson has one of his better early roles here, as an ex-confederate captain now a sergeant in the western U.S. cavalry, providing a competent counterpoint to Brittles. He can really ride, having come to Hollywood as a stunt man fresh from ranch work. Joanne Dru is well-cast and does an excellent job as the romantic distraction to the young officers, and she looks good in a military hat and cloak. (She was also in the Hawks classic Red River about the same time, in a rather different and more demanding role. Compare her here with the beautiful Linda Darnell wearing a cavalry hat in Two Flags West.) Mildred Natwick is very good as well. McLaglen as Sgt. Quincannon seems broadly stereotypical and over-the-top, and one can get tired of the romantic squabbles of the young lieutenants. Both Johnson and McLaglen show up again as characters named Tyree and Quincannon in the following year’s Rio Grande, although Wayne’s character is back to being named York in that one, as he was in Fort Apache. And the commanding officer at Fort Stark, Major Mac Allshard, is played well by silent film star George O’Brien. This was one of his last movies, although he would show up again 15 years later as another major in Ford’s Cheyenne Autumn. The bartender in a scene in which Sgt. Quincannon is arrested is Ford’s brother Francis, a long-time character actor who pops up in small roles in many Ford films.

Production Still: Wayne, Harry Carey, Jr., Ben Johnson, John Agar and George O’Brien

The cavalry is idealized in the post-World War II period when this was made, and the soldiers look cleaner than they probably could have in real life. But it’s still stirring stuff to watch. In Ford’s cavalry trilogy, this one is not as dark as the preceding Fort Apache nor as sentimental as the subsequent Rio Grande.

Although Ford’s sentimentality can occasionally seem heavy-handed to a current audience, he has qualities that more than compensate if you watch (and listen) for them. This is especially true in the framing of shots and other visual touches. For example, look for the thunderstorm in the background while the troop is out on patrol (the subject of the Ford-Hoch dispute referred to above), in the days before such things could be conjured up by special effects. But it also reaches the use of music as well. As Wagner, the regiment’s blacksmith, is working at his forge and anvil, the music playing is the “Nibelung” motif from Richard Wagner’s famous opera “Siegfried.” In the opera that motif is connected with the forging of Siegfried’s sword, appropriate in this military setting but easy to miss. Richard Hagerman provided the score.

Rio Grande

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 25, 2013

Rio Grande—John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Victor McLaglen, Ben Johnson, Claude Jarman, Jr., Harry Carey, Jr., Chill Wills, J. Carroll Naish (1950; Dir: John Ford)

This is the last and the least critically-regarded of the John Ford cavalry trilogy. The story goes that Ford didn’t intend to make this film and only did so when the RKO studio head Herbert K. Yates told him they’d let him make The Quiet Man on location in Ireland if he made another cavalry picture with John Wayne first. It had only half the budget of Fort Apache, the first in the trilogy, and according to Harry Carey, Jr., Ford and the rest of the crew treated the shooting as something of a vacation, although Ford was always responsible enough to get the film done if he wasn’t drinking too heavily.

It’s also the first of five movies (with The Quiet Man, The Wings of Eagles, McLintock!, and Big Jake) pairing Wayne and Maureen O’Hara as romantic partners, an enduring screen couple. The story for this film seems more hastily put together than those for its two predecessors in the series. There is some confusion surrounding the individual movies in the trilogy, since names recur and the same actors show up in each film without any explicit connection. Even Wayne here has the same name as his character in Fort Apache, Kirby York, although it’s spelled York in Fort Apache and Yorke here. As in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Ben Johnson is a trooper named Tyree, although apparently not the same one. Victor McLaglen is Sergeant Quincannon again, and he may or may not be the same one. Harry Carey, Jr., is again a young soldier, although this time he’s an enlisted man from Texas named Daniel Boone. In any event, he’s never the one that gets the girl if there is one to get. It all leads to a sense of elements and names from the previous two movies by the same director being thrown into a hastily-crafted story here, with more overt sentimentality and the Sons of the Pioneers.

Still of the Yorke family.

The Wayne-O’Hara relationship forms the dramatic core of the story, to the extent that the story hangs together at all. They’re the long-separated (15 years after the Civil War battles in the Shenandoah, making it 1879) and frequently hostile parents of young Jefferson Yorke (Claude Jarman, Jr., from The Yearling), a West Point dropout who has recently signed on as a new private and been posted to Yorke’s command out west in Texas. Kathleen Yorke (O’Hara) is not without influence herself, as the daughter of a powerful southern family from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. That family has never forgiven Yorke for burning their home Bridesdale (among others) during Phil Sheridan’s Shenandoah campaign, when Yorke was a Union officer in the late unpleasantness between the states. Will Col. Yorke be able to rebuild his family, repair his relationship with his estranged wife and get to know the son long absent from his life while he’s been out on the frontier? And what will young Trooper Yorke decide about his military future now that his mother is presenting him an opportunity to get out and pressing him to take it? The answers to those questions are fairly predictable, but it plays out well

Meanwhile, the soldiers’ principal military problem is the raiding Apaches, who who strike in the U.S. and then retreat into Mexico across the Rio Grande where Yorke and his men can’t follow them. A crisis comes when the Apaches capture a group of women and children from the military post and take them across the river. With the complicity of the visiting Phil Sheridan (J. Carroll Naish), Yorke risks his career to cross the river and rescue the captives, leading to a final battle in an Indian-held town with the prisoners being held in a church.

Taking the church.

There is excellent chemistry between Wayne and O’Hara, leading to their pairing in four subsequent films. (The most sucessful of these pairings was probably The Quiet Man, a non-western.) A significant element of this chemistry is the sparks that fly from their disagreements, which may be why they frequently seem to play married but estranged partners. It works better here than it does in, for example, McLintock! O’Hara at 30 seems young to be the mother of a (more or less) adult soldier. The supporting cast is good, although it contains many of John Ford’s usual suspects in their usual roles: McLaglen as the grizzled, alcoholic Irish sergeant who provides occasional comic relief that doesn’t work all that well for current audiences; Ben Johnson as the former Confederate trooper; and Harry Carey, Jr., as a green trooper or young officer. Chill Wills is good as the regimental surgeon. Even if the story doesn’t hang together as well as the previous two in the trilogy, the movie is nevertheless quite watchable.

Col. Yorke busts down the door.

Most of Ford’s films have a streak of populist sentimentality, and this has more than most. Some of that sentimental tone comes from the music, including traditional tunes and ballads provided by the Sons of the Pioneers (with one song even written by Dale Evans). The source material is also a common thread with the others in the cavalry trilogy, since they’re all based on short stories by James Warner Bellah. It was filmed in black and white, although a colorized version exists. Bert Glennon, who did Ford’s Stagecoach more than a decade earlier, was in charge of the cinematography, and you can see some of the technical and artistic advances in the decade between the two films. This one was filmed in the desert locations around Moab, Utah, not Ford’s usual Monument Valley in the Four Corners area to the south.

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Hondo

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 21, 2013

Hondo—John Wayne, Geraldine Page, Ward Bond, James Arness, Lee Aaker, Leo Gordon (1953; Dir: John Farrow)

John Wayne plays Hondo Lane, an ill-tempered part-Indian army scout in Arizona territory in 1870. This movie doesn’t have as high a profile as some of the Wayne westerns of the late 1940s and early 1950s (Red River, The Searchers), but Hondo Lane is a quintessential Wayne character.

So why doesn’t it have a higher profile? There are at least three major reasons: (1) The story isn’t as epic in nature as some others. (2) The rights are owned by Wayne’s production company, Batjac, and Batjac kept it largely out of circulation for a few decades. (3) It was made during the brief 3D fad of the early 1950s and bears some of the hallmarks of that specialized kind of moviemaking. Along with Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, it might be the best 3D movie made during that period. It is certainly the best movie made from a story by the best-selling western author Louis L’Amour, although it doesn’t have much good competition for that title.

A stranger from the desert, accompanied by a feral dog.

As the movie opens, army scout and dispatch rider Hondo Lane walks up to an isolated Arizona ranch, looking somewhat the worse for wear, carrying saddlebags and a rifle and followed by a scruffy-looking feral dog, Sam. Lane’s horse was killed when he was attacked by Apaches a few days earlier, and he’s been on foot ever since. At the ranch he finds Angie Lowe (Geraldine Page) and her son Johnny (Lee Aaker). She says her husband Ed is up in the hills rounding up strays, but the place doesn’t show much sign of a man’s upkeep for the past several months. Lane buys a wild horse from her, tames it and does some other tasks to earn his keep. He develops the beginnings of a relationship with Angie and Johnny, and reveals that he once lived among the Mescalero Apaches and was married to one of them. Lane tries to talk Angie into coming back to the military post and safety, but her family has lived for a long time at the ranch originally built by her father. They have always had decent relations with the Chiricauhua Apaches in the area, now led by Vittorio (Michael Pate), and Angie insists on staying.

Lane returns to the army post with the tattered pennant of C Troop that he has recovered from an Apache. He has a couple of run-ins with an unpleasant loudmouth who turns out to be named Lowe (Leo Gordon, who was just getting started in a career as a bad guy and thug). Yes, he’s Angie’s husband, who has abandoned his family on the isolated ranch in Apache country. As Lane leads a pack horse back toward the Lowe ranch, Lowe and a confederate follow at a distance, planning to attack and rob Lane when they find him in a convenient spot. When they do attack, a band of Apache warriors attacks the three white men. They get Lowe’s friend; Lane is forced to shoot Lowe and then tries to outrun the Apaches. He’s not successful and is captured by Silva (Rodolfo Acosta), one of Vittorio’s nastier subchiefs.

Hondo (John Wayne) and Mrs. Lowe (Geraldine Page) survey the situation.

After Lane’s departure from the Lowe ranch, Vittorio shows up with his warriors in a less than friendly mood. However, Vittorio is taken with Johnny’s spirit in his youthful attempts to defend his mother, and he adopts the boy as a blood brother. Now that Lane is a captive of the Apaches, they begin to torture him until they discover in his possession a tintype of Johnny that Lane had taken from Lowe’s body. He is given the right to single combat against Silva. He wins after being wounded, but declines to kill Silva. Vittorio deposits him at the Lowe ranch, where Angie lies and confirms to the chief that Lane is her husband. This saves her from having to take an Apache husband. And she’s starting to wish that the lie were true.

Lane gives Angie the tintype and tells her that he got it from Lowe’s body. There follows an interlude in which Lane bonds with the boy and his mother. Vittorio shows up unexpectedly to extract from Lane a promise that he won’t help the soldiers and will mislead them about Vittorio’s whereabouts. Lane refuses to lie to the soldiers, knowing that the Indians hate lies.

When they do show up, the soldiers are led by Lt. McKay, a recent West Point graduate who won’t listen to the voice of experience, as represented by Lane and his fellow scout Buffalo Baker (Ward Bond). In a subsequent altercation with the Apaches, McKay is badly wounded and Vittorio is killed. With Vittorio dead, Lane knows he and his new family are now in greater danger from the Apaches, and from white men who know that Lane killed Lowe. There is a stirring resolution with a cavalry-Apache battle on the run. Observing the departing Indians at the end, Lane notes, “End of a way of life. Too bad. It was a good way.”

Hondo may not be all that different from other John Wayne western characters, but he’s not identical, either. For one thing, there’s Hondo’s irascibility: “No wonder the Apaches call him Enverrado. It means bad-tempered.” He’s given to saying “A man oughta do what he thinks is best” just when somebody’s about to do something blatantly wrong or stupid. Note the battered hat worn by Hondo throughout the movie; it’s the same one worn by the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach, Capt. Nathan Brittles in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Sheriff John T. Chance in Rio Bravo. It was honorably retired after Rio Bravo in 1959 after 20 years of hard use.

The cast is excellent, and aside from the central role of Hondo Lane, the young Geraldine Page really makes the movie as slightly prissy pioneer woman Angie Lowe. Previously known only for her work on the New York stage, she got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her work here. (A political liberal, she was reportedly horrified at the right-wing views of Wayne, Bond, Arness and director Farrow.) Ward Bond, one of the usual John Wayne-John Ford suspects, is also superb as a slightly rougher than usual variation of the rough-hewn frontier character he normally played. Australian actor Michael Pate is credible as Vittorio, more than you’d expect, and he shows up in other movies (McLintock!, for example) as an Indian. The young and blond James Arness plays yet another scout, this one of a morally dubious nature. The overconfident recent West Point graduate, Lt. McKay (Tom Irish), might have stepped out of John Ford’s cavalry trilogy. And Paul Fix as the post commander is good in a small part. Sam, Hondo’s dog, is a good character, very similar to “Dog” in Big Jake.

There are some remaining traces of the movie’s 3D origins, but they’re not too distracting. They include the garish titles, a few lunges at the camera during the knife fight and the battle sequences and a couple of strange camera angles. There is an Intermission card, needed for this relatively short movie so that film could be changed in both projection cameras at the same time.

Garish 3D titles

The movie is directed in a thoroughly professional manner by John Farrow, although there are stories that Farrow was restrained some by Wayne. The movie’s final sequences (including the cavalry-Apache battle) were directed by John Ford when Farrow had to leave before the film was quite finished. The screenplay is by James Edward Grant, whose brand of terse dialogue was particularly congenial to Wayne. It was filmed on location in the Mexican desert, in Camargo, Chihuahua, during the summer months, which no doubt accounts for the authentic-looking dust and sweat. At less than 90 minutes, it’s pretty tight story-telling.

By the time the film was released in late 1953, the 3D fad had already passed, and Hondo was mostly seen in a more normal format. But it was a hit. Based the short story “A Gift of Cochise,” author L’Amour reworked it into a novel that sold 3,000,000 copies, the first with his real name attached. It started him on the road to best-sellerdom, although that mostly arrived in the 1970s and 1980s.

Note that Wayne recycled the names “Lane” and “Mrs. Lowe” twenty years later in one of his last movies, The Train Robbers. It’s not one of his better films, though, unlike Hondo.

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The Searchers

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 16, 2013

The Searchers—John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, Ward Bond, Vera Miles, Harry Carey, Jr., Olive Carey, Dorothy Jordan, Hank Worden, Natalie Wood, Lana Wood, Ken Curtis (1956; Dir: John Ford)

In the movie’s opening shot, the camera sits in the dark interior of a cabin as the silhouette of Martha Edwards (Dorothy Jordan) moves to the door. Both Martha and the camera look out into the bright sunlight at a distant horseman—Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), her brother-in-law. It’s 1868, supposedly on the Llano Estacado of Texas. We can tell, however, that it’s shot in John Ford’s favorite location, the Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona border. Edwards has been away at the War Between the States, and it’s taken him three years after the war to find his way back to what home he has. As he greets his only living relatives, he kisses Martha on the forehead, and we sense that some of his distance is caused by his warm feelings for his brother’s wife. It’s never more explicit than that, though.

Similarly, we’re never really told what he’s been up to for the three years since the war ended, except that he didn’t go to California and he has $180 in freshly minted Yankee gold. The implication is that he never surrendered (“I don’t believe in surrenders”), and he’s been outlawin’ somewhere. Just as he’s getting reacquainted with his family, up rides a band of Texas rangers led by Capt. the Reverend Samuel Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond), with a neighbor whose cattle have been run off by Indians. Ethan and young Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), an Edwards foster son whose parents were killed by Indians when he was small, join the rangers and take off in pursuit.

Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) and Ethan (John Wayne) begin their search.

The cattle raid was just a ruse, though. The Comanches double back and hit the Edwards place, killing the parents and young son and taking captive the daughters, Lucy and Deborah. After the initial chase, the rangers get called to other responsibilities, and then it’s just Ethan, Martin and young Ben Jorgensen (Harry Carey, Jr.), Lucy’s beau, on the trail of the raiders. Early in the chase, Ethan finds Lucy’s body and buries it. When Ethan is forced to tell Ben, Ben goes crazy and is killed attacking the Comanches by himself. Now it’s just Ethan and Martin on an odyssey that will take the next five years.

Periodically they drop back in on the Jorgenson ranch, where it develops that Laurie Jorgensen (Vera Miles) and Martin have feelings for each other, although Martin’s never around enough to do anything about it and Laurie gets increasingly desperate. Over time, Ethan and Martin figure out which Comanche band has Debby and try to catch up with it. Ultimately they do, more than once. Martin inadvertently acquires a Comanche wife, Look, and she suffers the fate most Indian wives do in westerns (see Jeremiah Johnson and Little Big Man, for example).

The search continues.

This may be a plot centering on how the chase is conducted over five years, but it’s principally a character study of Ethan Edwards, all edges, absolutes and internal conflicts. He doesn’t concede that Martin has any actual relationship to any Edwards, although they’re all the family the boy has known. Martin has some Cherokee blood, which Ethan doesn’t like; he keeps calling the boy Blanket-head. Ethan won’t swear an oath to the Rangers because he’s already sworn one to the Confederacy. When he and Martin are attacked by venal trader Jerem Futterman and two henchmen with robbery in mind, Ethan doesn’t mind shooting them in the back as they’re trying to get away. They’re bad guys and that’s all they deserve. The camera work emphasizes Ethan’s obsessive qualities: When he’s aiming at Comanches with his rifle, he can almost kill them by his look without pulling the trigger. In a winter scene, Ethan and Martin check out white female captives the cavalry has recently taken back from the Comanches. They’re kept in a rough chapel at a cavalry post. None of the rescued women appears to be stable mentally, and as Ethan walks to the door to leave he turns suddenly and looks at them. In the dim room we can barely see his eyes under the brim of his hat, but his look is obsessive and filled with anger and frustrated purpose—excellent acting and a brilliant shot.

Ethan surveys a group of recaptured white women and children.

It becomes more apparent to Martin that Ethan means to kill Debby (Natalie Wood, then 18) when he finds her. She’s been sullied by living too long among the Indians and has been defiled by her relations with them. In one of their brief encounters, Laurie makes Ethan’s case for killing Debby to Martin as she attempts to persuade Martin to discontinue the chase and stay with her. That was likely an accurate attitude for the time, although one that this movie doesn’t really share.

The movie depends on Ethan, and John Wayne plays him superbly—so much so that it’s hard to think of any one else in the role. (Maybe a younger Tommy Lee Jones—Jones can play this kind of implacability, as he did with Woodrow Call in Lonesome Dove.) This also has one of Ward Bond’s more colorful parts, and he makes the most of it as he repeatedly rides in and out of the plot. (As he gives the order to attack: “Brethren, leave us go amongst them.” “Mount! M-O-N-T-E, mount!”) Mrs. Jorgensen is played by Olive Carey, widow of one Harry and mother of another, and she’s good in the very limited requirements of the part. At the time Jeffrey Hunter was an up-and-coming young actor, and he’s good enough here. Hank Worden plays Mose Harper, an addled scout, and it’s one of his better roles. A 15-year-old Patrick Wayne makes his significant film debut as a young cavalryman. The clunky note in the cast is Ken Curtis, who plays Charlie McCorry, a young Ranger suitor of Laurie’s. Although his dialect may be authentic, it simply sounds like he’s having trouble talking around his teeth. German actor Henry Brandon as Scar looks very imposing, and Scar is played as an intelligent and courageous leader, if one, like Ethan, filled with and perhaps crippled by hatred.

Ethan changes some by the end, regaining a bit of his humanity. But the closing shot is a bookend of the opening shot. The camera is inside the dim Jorgensen cabin, looking out the front door into the sun-lit landscape. Walking in the sun and through the doorway toward the camera, Mr. and Mrs. Jorgensen take the newly-liberated Debby into their care. Next come Martin and Laurie, moving into the cabin the same way. As they enter the cabin interior and walk past the camera, that leaves only the figure of Ethan standing on the porch looking in, holding his right elbow with his left hand in perhaps the most memorable single image from the film (Wayne said the posture was an homage to Harry Carey). He watches for a moment, seemingly with a touch of longing, then turns and walks out into the bright sunlight—to what future we have no idea. Presumably he has more peace now, but he still doesn’t belong with regular people.

Ethan isolated.

The direction is John Ford at his best: Low camera angles in the Monument Valley emphasize the rock formations, the sky and John Wayne’s looming size. There is brilliant use of light and dark in interior shots. The editing shows remarkable and very effective restraint in the attack on the Edwards cabin; after setting the atmosphere by showing the fear of various members of the Edwards family, the only element of the attack shown is Comanche chief Scar (Henry Brandon) finding the very young Debby (Lana Wood) huddled by her grandmother’s grave. In a current western, it would be hard to imagine not showing the violence, but the effect of doing it Ford’s way here is to emphasize the off-screen violence’s effect on the characters and especially the violence within Ethan Edwards. There’s a lot of information in this movie conveyed without dialogue, so watch closely.

The cinematographer was Winton C. Hoch, who had won back to back Oscars in 1948 and 1949, as well as in 1952. The music by Max Steiner involves the usual Ford Americana themes: Lorena, Bonny Blue Flag, Garry Owen, etc. The participation of the Sons of the Pioneers now seems a bit old-fashioned, like the comic relief. Based on a novel by Alan LeMay, the screenplay was written by frequent Ford collaborator Frank Nugent (nominated for an Oscar for his work with Ford on The Quiet Man). For an extended discussion of both (a) the historical roots of the story (the Comanche capture of Cynthia Ann Parker as a child and her ultimate tragic recapture 24 years later), and (b) the making of the movie in the 1950s, see The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, by Glenn Frankel (New York, Bloomsbury, 2013).

It has been said that another historical influence on this story was Brit Johnson, an African-American teamster who spent years in a successful quest to find and ransom his kidnapped wife and daughter from the Comanches, then almost immediately set off again to find and rescue yet another child kidnap victim. Brit Johnson was killed by the Kiowas.

There are only five westerns on the AFI’s list of the 100 greatest American movies, and The Searchers is the highest-ranked of them at no. 12. (The other four are High Noon, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch and Unforgiven. There are six if you count Treasure of the Sierra Madre. See http://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx.)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 5, 2013

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance—John Wayne, James Stewart, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles, Woody Strode, Andy Devine (1962; Dir: John Ford)

Director Ford with his two principal stars on set.

Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) return to Shinbone, the western town where he initially made his reputation decades earlier. As matters slowly develop, they are there for the funeral of an old friend, Tom Doniphan (John Wayne). And the movie goes into an extended flashback, to when Stoddard initially arrived, only to be robbed and badly beaten by a band of stage robbers. The gang is led by the Liberty Valance of the title, so there is no suspense on the fate that awaits Valance in the course of the film. The remaining question is who will take care of Valance, since the younger Stoddard doesn’t really seem up to the task.

Stoddard represents the forces of civilization that, as we all know, will ultimately be successful in taming even the West, although the question is in doubt in Shinbone at the start of the movie. The traditional tools of civilization, law and courts, seem powerless to deal with the brutal, relentless violence of Liberty Valance. The badly beaten Stoddard is brought to town by Doniphan and his hired hand/servant Pompey (Woody Strode), and given to the care of a family of Swedish immigrants who run a restaurant. Their daughter is Doniphan’s girlfriend, although he seems slow to do anything to move the relationship along. Doniphan is comfortable and capable in the west in a way that easterner Stoddard is not. Having been robbed, Stoddard earns his keep washing dishes in the restaurant, and he starts a school for adults and children and hangs out his shingle at the office of the newspaper (the Shinbone Star) run by Dutton Peabody (Edmund O’Brien).

The confrontation builds.

It’s clear that there will have to be a reckoning with Valance, described by Doniphan as “the toughest man south of the Picketwire, except for me.” (Use of the name of the Picketwire [or Purgatoire] River would seem to place this in southeastern Colorado Territory. And the talk of impending statehood would put it before 1876, when the Centennial State joined the Union.) We look forward to seeing Doniphan and Valance shoot it out. But Stoddard won’t leave town, despite his demonstrated ineptitude with a gun, and, worse, his determination not to use violence but the largely ineffective tools of the law.

“The next one is right between the eyes.”

That Insistence on staying in Shinbone results in a shootout that leaves Valance dead and makes Stoddard’s reputation. But in the wrangling over statehood that follows, Stoddard learns that events the night of the shootout were not quite what they seemed, even to him as a participant. His own career takes off; he marries Hallie and becomes governor and then senator; Tom Doniphan, who seemed much better suited to life in the west at the start of the movie, goes in a different direction–downhill.

The central conflict in this movie is among three, not two, characters: Valance obviously shouldn’t and doesn’t win; the realist Doniphan deserves to win but doesn’t, entirely. Stoddard, the face of American populist idealism, comes out on top, as we know from the beginning of the movie.

There’s a fair amount of Capra-esque Grapes-of-Wrath-style frontier populism in this movie, which wouldn’t be palatable without a strong underlying story, excellent main characters and the violence of the confrontations with Valance. This populist quality is emphasized by the presence of Stewart from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The faith in the common man as citizen and voter and the 1940s New Deal-ish black-and-white politics seem naïve now, and maybe they were even in the early 1960s. It all seems simplistic, with undue reverence for freedom of the press even when that press is in the hands of an alcoholic editor, the scenery-chewing Dutton Peabody (Edmond O’Brien)—a character very reminiscent of the alcoholic Doc Boone, played by Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach more than twenty years earlier.

Stoddard contemplates the non-legal way.

Speaking of black and white, it was an interesting choice to film the movie that way in 1962 when color movies had taken over pretty thoroughly. Half a decade earlier, even the relatively low-budget Boetticher-Scott westerns had been filmed in color, and Ford had been using it since the late 1940s. It adds to the retro feel—not back to the open west, exactly, but to the 1940s. Ford still has his visual style with a western, although this one is not set in Monument Valley. It’s shot largely on a studio back lot at Paramount. The opening stage robbery and beating takes place on an obvious sound stage, but other times there is great use of expansive western vistas, even with medium shots.

A twist at the end of the movie seems similar in many ways to the ending of an earlier John Ford movie, Fort Apache. In both, the film ends with the main character (Stewart here, Wayne in Fort Apache) affirming or allowing his support for an erroneous public version of a major historical event, when he knows the truth is different. As Stoddard recounts the actual truth of long-past events to the current editor of the Shinbone Star, he asks in surprise, “You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?” Scott replies with the signature line for this movie, and perhaps for many other Ford westerns: “No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” By this, director Ford seems to be encouraging a skepticism toward conventional history.

The closing paradoxes and strongly-developed characters give this film its lasting impact. John Wayne is at his best, even with his continual use of the word “pilgrim”—more than in any other movie he made. He smokes frequently on screen, ironic when we know that John Wayne will be dead within two more decades from lung cancer. In one shot, his exhaled cloud of smoke is used to dissolve to a past scene, a technique that seemed old-fashioned even in 1962. Stewart is good with his character’s ups and downs, although he sometimes seems a little too hysterical and his halting Stewart-ish mannerisms, especially in speech, can be slightly annoying. Wayne and Stewart are a little old for the age their characters are supposed to be for most of the movie, and Stewart plays much older than he actually is for the framing story. O’Brien is over the top as the loquacious newspaper editor, and we see too much of Andy Devine as the ineffectual but supposedly loveable town marshal Link Appleyard; he’s supposed to be the comic relief. Vera Miles is lovely and plays well in her minor part.

This movie has an all-star cast of villains, too: Lee Marvin is at his nastiest and most brutish as Liberty Valance, supported by the weaselly and perhaps mentally unstable Floyd (Strother Martin) and that personification of slit-eyed menace, Lee Van Cleef, as Reese. Valance’s sheer evil, with him always seemingly on the edge of losing control, and a psychotic tendency to try to kill people with his silver-handled whip, make this trio of evildoers more intimidating than their modest numbers would suggest.

Belgian poster for Liberty Valance, with pictures of Wayne and Stewart clearly taken from other movies.

The title song, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and sung by Gene Pitney, was a hit in the early 1960s, although the hit version does not appear in the film. Apparently Gene Pitney was not asked to record it until after the film was released. However, it ranks with Tex Ritter’s “Do Not Forsake Me” in High Noon and Johnny Horton’s theme for North to Alaska. They’re among the very best western film theme songs with actual singers.

Liberty Valance is John Ford’s last great western, although Ford continued making movies. It’s a good bookend for the second half of his career, since there are three actors in this who appeared in Stagecoach, the movie that kicked off that career segment: John Wayne, obviously, Andy Devine and John Carradine (as anti-statehood orator Cassius Starbuckle)—all of them Ford favorites. This was Wayne’s last film with Ford, although Stewart shows up again as a too-old Wyatt Earp in a strange lnterlude in Ford’s Cheyenne Autumn a couple of years later.

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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance