John Ford Sound Films, Part 6: 1957-1961
The Wings of Eagles through The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The following is a list of John Ford sound films. These film pages are taken from Wikipedia entries (with some minor editing). I will be adding bibliographic material and John Ford film stills from my personal collection to add to these pages. Also, I will be adding bibliographic material and references from noted writers.

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The Wings of Eagles (1957)

Directed by

John Ford

Produced by

Charles Schnee

Screenplay by

Frank Fenton and William Wister Haines

Based on

the life and writings of Commander Frank W. "Spig" Wead

Starring

John Wayne
Dan Dailey
Maureen O'Hara
Ward Bond

Music by

Jeff Alexander

Cinematography

Paul C. Vogel. A.S.C.

Edited by

Gene Ruggiero, A.C.E.

Distributed by

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Release date

February 22, 1957

Running time

110 minutes

Country

United States

Language

English

Budget

$2,644,000[1]

Box office

$3,650,000[1][2]

The Wings of Eagles is a 1957 American Metrocolor film starring John Wayne, Dan Dailey and Maureen O'Hara, based on the life of Frank "Spig" Wead and the history of U.S. Naval aviation from its inception through World War II.[3] The film is a tribute to Wead (who died ten years earlier, in 1947, at the age of 52) from his friend, director John Ford, and was based on Wead's "We Plaster the Japs", published in a 1944 issue of The American Magazine.[4]

John Wayne plays naval aviator-turned-screenwriter Wead, who wrote the story or screenplay for such films as Hell Divers (1931) with Wallace Beery and Clark Gable, Ceiling Zero (1936) with James Cagney, and the Oscar-nominated World War II drama They Were Expendable (1945) in which Wayne co-starred with Robert Montgomery.[5]

The supporting cast features Ward Bond, Ken Curtis, Edmund Lowe and Kenneth Tobey. This film was the third of five in which Wayne and O'Hara appeared together; others were Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), McLintock! (1963) and Big Jake (1971).

Plot

Soon after World War I is over, Naval Aviator "Spig" Wead (John Wayne), along with John Dale Price (Ken Curtis), tries to prove to the Navy the value of aviation in combat. To do this, Wead pushes the Navy to compete in racing and endurance competitions. Several races are against the US Army aviation team led by Captain Herbert Allen Hazard (based on General Jimmy Doolittle—played by Kenneth Tobey).

Wead spends most of his time either flying or horsing around with his teammates, meaning that his wife Minnie, or "Min" (Maureen O'Hara), and children are ignored.

The night Wead is promoted to fighter squadron commander, he falls down a flight of stairs at home, breaks his neck and is paralyzed. When "Min" tries to console him he rejects her and the family. He will only let his Navy mates like "Jughead" Carson (Dan Dailey) and Price near him. "Jughead" visits the hospital almost daily to encourage Frank's rehabilitation ("I'm gonna move that toe"). Carson also pushes "Spig" to get over his depression, try to walk, and start writing. Wead achieves some success in all three goals.[6]

After great success in Hollywood, Wead returns to active sea duty with the Navy in World War II, developing the idea of smaller escort, or "jeep," carriers which follow behind the main fleet as auxiliary strength to the main aircraft carrier force. He returns to active combat duty in the Pacific, witnessing first hand kamikaze attacks. The film's battle scenes, based around aircraft carriers, include real combat footage. Following a 50-hour shift during combat operations, Wead has a heart attack and is retired home before the war ends. When he leaves the carrier he is serving in for the last time, he receives eight side boys in honor of his contributions to aviation—all of them Navy admirals or Army generals.

Director John Ford is represented in the film in the character of film director John Dodge, played by Ward Bond.

Cast

· John Wayne as Frank "Spig" Wead

· Dan Dailey as "Jughead" Carson

· Maureen O'Hara as Min Wead

· Ward Bond as John Dodge

· Ken Curtis as John Dale Price
[Price is credited as film's technical adviser]

· Edmund Lowe as Admiral Moffett

· Kenneth Tobey as Capt. Herbert Allen Hazard

· James Todd as Jack Travis

· Barry Kelley as Captain Clark

· Sig Ruman as Manager

· Henry O'Neill as Capt. Spear

· Willis Bouchey as Barton

· Dorothy Jordan as Rose Brentmann

· Charles Trowbridge as Adm. Crown (uncredited)

· Blue Washington as Bartender (uncredited)

Historical Inaccuracies

Dramatic license allows for some historical inaccuracies in the film. One scene shows first the US Army around-the-world flight and then the US Navy winning the Schneider Cup. In fact the US Navy won the Schneider Cup in 1923 and the US Army embarked on the first aerial circumnavigation from March to September 1924.

Another scene shows a newsreel related to the sinking of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8), suggesting that she had been doomed by the hit of three kamikaze suicide planes. Although two aircraft did crash into her, she also received substantial damage by bombs and torpedoes before finally being sunk by Japanese destroyers. Additionally, the term "kamikaze" was not in use to describe suicide pilots at the time of Hornet's sinking.

Box office

MGM reported that the film earned $2.3 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $1,350,000 elsewhere, resulting in a loss of $804,000.[1]

References

1. The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.

2. Domestic take - see "Top Grosses of 1957", Variety, 8 January 1958: 30

3. "'Rainmaker' 'Full Of Life', 'Wings Of Eagles' At Theaters" (Deseret News and Telegram, February 21, 1957, page 12A; photograph included)

4. Ward, Henry. "Penn Film Stars John Wayne" (The Pittsburgh Press, March 4, 1957, page 6)

5. "The Marquee: 'Wings of Eagles' Another Solid John Wayne Picture" (The Florence Times, April 23, 1957, section two, page seven; illustration included)

6. "John Wayne Film Set For Capitol" (Deseret News and Telegram (February 16, 1957, page A7; photograph included)

The Last Hurrah (1958)

Directed by

John Ford

Produced by

John Ford

Written by

Frank S. Nugent

Based on

The Last Hurrah, by Edwin O'Connor

Starring

Spencer Tracy
Jeffrey Hunter
Dianne Foster
Pat O'Brien
Basil Rathbone

Cinematography

Charles Lawton, Jr.

Edited by

Jack Murray

Color process

Black and white

Distributed by

Columbia Pictures

Release date

November 1958[1]

Running time

121 minutes

Country

United States

Language

English

Budget

$2.3 million[2]

Box office

$1.1 million (est. US/ Canada rentals)[3]

The Last Hurrah is a 1958 American comedy-drama film adaptation of the 1956 novel The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor. The film was directed by John Ford and stars Spencer Tracy as a veteran mayor preparing for yet another election campaign. Tracy was nominated as Best Foreign Actor by BAFTA and won the Best Actor Award from the National Board of Review, which also presented Ford the award for Best Director.

The film tells the story of Frank Skeffington, a sentimental but iron-fisted Irish-American who is the powerful mayor of an unnamed New England city. As his nephew, Adam Caulfield, follows one last no-holds-barred mayoral campaign, Skeffington and his top strategist, John Gorman, use whatever means necessary to defeat a candidate backed by civic leaders such as banker Norman Cass and newspaper editor Amos Force, the mayor's dedicated foes.

Plot

The titles roll as an election campaign for a Frank Skeffington unfolds.

In "a New England city", Skeffington (Spencer Tracy), a former governor, is running for a fifth term as mayor. He rose from poverty in an Irish ghetto, and is skilled at using the power of his office and an enormous political machine of ward heelers to receive support from his Irish Catholic base and other demographics. Rumors of graft and abuse of power are widespread, however, and the Protestant bishop Gardner (Basil Ruysdael), newspaper publisher Amos Force (John Carradine), banker Norman Cass (Basil Rathbone), and other members of the city's traditional elite who the Irish Catholics replaced oppose Skeffington; so do the Catholic cardinal Martin Burke (Donald Crisp), Skeffington's childhood friend, and other Catholics. Skeffington's opponents support the candidacy of Kevin McCluskey (Charles B. Fitzsimons), a young Catholic lawyer and war veteran with no political experience.

Adam Caulfield (Jeffrey Hunter) is a sportswriter for Force's newspaper, and Skeffington's nephew. His father-in-law, Roger Sugrue (Willis Bouchey), is among those who oppose Skeffington, even though Sugrue grew up in the same tenement as Skeffington and Burke. The mayor invites Caulfield to observe in person what will be his last election, his "last hurrah", to document urban politics before radio and television fully change campaigning. Skeffington prefers old-fashioned, hands-on politics, and attends numerous rallies, luncheons, dinners, and speeches. His influence is such that when Skeffington attends an unpopular old friend's wake, hundreds rush to be present. Disgusted at how the wake becomes another political event, Caulfield leaves; one of the mayor's men explains to him, however, that Skeffington attended to attract mourners to cheer the widow, to whom Skeffington has secretly donated $1,000.

After Cass's bank turns down a loan for the city to build a housing development, Skeffington invades the exclusive Plymouth Club to confront him, Force, the bishop, and other members of the elite. The mayor threatens to publicly embarrass Cass's family by appointing his unintelligent son as fire commissioner. The banker is forced to approve the loan, but vows to contribute large amounts of money to defeat Skeffington. McCluskey's campaign arranges for a series of television advertisements, but his ineptness disappoints both the cardinal and bishop.

On election night Skeffington's men expect another victory, but McCluskey unexpectedly defeats the incumbent and his machine. As his men argue over why their usual tactics involving large amounts of "money" failed, Skeffington chastises them as if he were unaware of their actions. He confidently states on television that he will run for governor, but suffers a heart attack that night, and a large crowd comes to pay respect to the invalid. After Skeffington's last confession, the cardinal, Caulfield, Sugrue, and the mayor's men are at his bedside. When Sugrue suggests that the patient would relive his life differently, Skeffington regains consciousness enough to reply "Like Hell I would" before dying.

Cast

· Spencer Tracy as Mayor Frank Skeffington

· Jeffrey Hunter as Adam Caulfield

· Dianne Foster as Maeve Sugrue Caulfield

· Pat O'Brien as John Gorman

· Basil Rathbone as Norman Cass, Sr.

· Donald Crisp as Cardinal Martin Burke

· James Gleason as "Cuke" Gillen

· Edward Brophy as "Ditto" Boland

· John Carradine as Amos Force

· Willis Bouchey as Roger Sugrue

· Basil Ruysdael as Bishop Gardner

· Ricardo Cortez as Sam Weinberg

· Wallace Ford as Charles J. Hennessey

· Frank McHugh as Festus Garvey

· Carleton Young as Winslow

· Frank Albertson as Jack Mangan

· Bob Sweeney as Johnny Degnan

· Edmund Lowe as Johnny Byrne

· William Leslie as Dan Herlihy

· Anna Lee as Gert Minihan

· Ken Curtis as Monsignor Killian

· Jane Darwell as Delia Boylan

· O.Z. Whitehead as Norman Cass Jr.

· Arthur Walsh as Frank Skeffington Jr.

· Charles B. Fitzsimons as Kevin McCluskey

· William Forrest as Dr. Tom

· James Dime as Man at Campaign HQ.[4]

The role of Mayor Frank Skeffington was first offered to Orson Welles, as Welles recounts in Peter Bogdanovich's 1992 book This Is Orson Welles:

“When the contracts were to be settled, I was away on location, and some lawyer -- if you can conceive of such a thing -- turned it down. He told Ford that the money wasn't right, or the billing wasn't good enough, something idiotic like that, and when I came back to town the part had gone to Tracy.”

Production

Like the novel, the film was based in part on the career of former Boston mayor James Michael Curley, and the unnamed New England city that he runs was based on Boston, Massachusetts.[5] Curley opposed the film's production, but not because of the negative dramatization; rather, he believed that The Last Hurrah might prevent Hollywood from making a biographical film of his life.[6] Columbia paid Curley $25,000 in exchange for signing away any future legal action.[2]

The movie was budgeted at $2.5 million but came in at $200,000 under budget.[2] For The Last Hurrah a large, expensive New England exterior set was constructed around an existing park at Columbia Ranch in Burbank, CA. Most of this 'Boston Row homes' set burned down in 1974, but the 'Skeffington Mansion' still stands, and can be seen in many TV shows and movies. Part of the structures behind the Park can be seen in the opening credits for the series Friends.

Reception

The film received generally positive reviews from critics.[7] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it "robustly amusing and deeply touching. And Mr. Tracy is at his best in the leading role."[8] Variety wrote, "The two-hour running length is somewhat overboard but Tracy's characterization of the resourceful, old-line politician-mayor has such consummate depth that it sustains the interest practically all the way. A little editing might have helped but the canvas is rich and the political machinations replete."[9] Harrison's Reports called the film "a vastly entertaining study of a resourceful old-time politician, wonderfully portrayed by Spencer Tracy, who makes the character warmly human, sympathetic, witty and charming even though he is not above resorting to trickery and malice to combat political enemies."[10]

John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote "There are some sprightly moments in this film...but as a really sound representation of political shenanigans it is a long way from home. (While Skeffington was going about spreading sweetness and light, I kept thinking nostalgically about the film called The Great McGinty; now there was an elucidation of American politics."[11] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post praised Spencer Tracy's performance as "deep and alert" but still found the film disappointing, writing that it "isn't exactly bad, but it's nowhere near the movie Edwin O'Connor's hard, rollicking political novel should have made...Very rarely does Hollywood risk meeting politics head-on and this shows clearly in Frank Nugent's fairly empty, very sentimental screen treatment of O'Connor's vigorous book."[12]

A positive review in the British Monthly Film Bulletin commented that it was "directed with humour, feeling (notably in the relationships between Skeffington and his supporters, the clownish Ditto and the shrewd ward politicians) and a superlative sense of the big occasion. The election scene, moving from bustling confidence to cold defeat, is masterly; the death-bed scene is a triumphant piece of old-style sentiment. Tracy's Skeffington suggests the real power that lies beneath the Irish charm and effrontery."[13]

The movie was not a box-office success and recorded a loss of $1.8 million.[2] Tracy was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his work in The Old Man and the Sea released earlier that year, but believed his performance in The Last Hurrah was superior. [5] Ronald Bergan believed that the movie was perhaps Ford's "most personal" film among his later works. He stated that Tracy's portrayal of Skeffington was a surrogate for Ford and that the film was "full of Fordian moments."[14]

References

1. "The Last Hurrah - Details". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved July 3, 2018.

2. James Curtis, Spencer Tracy: A Biography, Alfred Knopf, 2011 p741-752

3. "1959: Probable Domestic Take", Variety, 6 January 1960 p 34

4. "James Dime". Turner Classic Movies.

5. Tatara, Paul. "The Last Hurrah". Turner Classic Movies.

6. As stated by Robert Osborne in his introduction of The Last Hurrah on Turner Classic Movies, 14 January 2012.

7. Arneel, Gene (August 10, 1960). "New Hard Look at Film Critics And Their Relationship To B.O." Variety. p. 3.

8. Crowther, Bosley (October 24, 1958). "Spencer Tracy in 'The Last Hurrah'". The New York Times. p. 40.

9. "The Last Hurrah". Variety. October 15, 1958. p. 6.

10. "'The Last Hurrah' with Spencer Tracy, Jeffrey Hunter and Dianne Foster". Harrison's Reports: 166. October 18, 1958.

11. McCarten, John (November 1, 1958). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker. p. 170.

12. Coe, Richard L. (October 31, 1958). "'Last Hurrah' at Trans-Lux". The Washington Post. p. C9.

13. "The Last Hurrah". The Monthly Film Bulletin. London: British Film Institute. 26 (301): 15. February 1959.

14. Bergan, Ronald (May 2009). "The Last Hurrah". Undercurrents. No. 5. FIPRESCI.

Gideon's Day (1958)

Directed by

John Ford

Produced by

Michael Killanin

Screenplay by

T. E. B. Clarke

Based on

Gideon's Day
by John Creasey

Starring

Jack Hawkins
Dianne Foster
Cyril Cusack
Andrew Ray

Music by

Douglas Gamley

Cinematography

Freddie Young

Edited by

Raymond Poulton

Distributed by

Columbia Productions

Release date

21 March 1958 (London)
June 22, 1958 (USA)

Running time

91 minutes

Countries

United Kingdom
United States

Language

English

Gideon's Day (originally released in the United States as Gideon of Scotland Yard) is a 1958 British-American police procedural crime film starring Jack Hawkins, Dianne Foster and Cyril Cusack. The film, which was directed by John Ford, was adapted from John Creasey's 1955 novel of the same title.[1]

This was the first film to feature a character named George Gideon, but Jack Hawkins had played a similar role in the British film The Long Arm two years earlier.

The film follows a day in the life of Detective Chief Inspector George Gideon of the Metropolitan Police. His day starts when he receives information that one of his officers has been taking bribes. Despite his hectic schedule, his wife reminds him his daughter has a violin recital that evening; she also tells him her aunt and uncle are coming for tea before the concert. This becomes a recurring theme throughout the film, as Gideon is continually hampered in his efforts to finish work and return home.

On the way to Scotland Yard he drops his daughter off at the Royal College of Music, but is stopped by a young constable for running a red light. Once at his office, he calls in the detective whom a "snout" [i.e. informant] has told him is taking bribes and suspends him. Gideon then gets word that an escaped mental patient from Manchester is on his way to London. Meanwhile, an audacious gang is robbing payrolls.

The mental patient is soon arrested, but not before he has killed the daughter of his former landlady. Gideon wants to congratulate personally the policeman who made the arrest, only to discover it is the same young officer who gave him a summons for his early morning traffic offence. Various jobs then preoccupy the chief inspector while his detectives continue to investigate the bribery case. News then arrives that the suspended policeman has been run down by a car — whose tyre tracks match one used in the earlier payroll jobs. After Gideon visits the dead officer's wife, evidence soon emerges that links the dead detective to a woman, Mrs. Delafield, who went to clubs he frequented.

Gideon goes to her address and discovers that the woman's husband Paul was responsible for the robberies, because he wanted the financial means to be a painter. The husband then tricks his wife into holding a gun on Gideon while he makes his escape. The detective uses his calm manner to defuse the situation. But before he can return home, the phone rings again. A safety deposit firm has been robbed by a gang of rich socialites who have been cornered inside. When the police finally draw them out, Gideon catches one of the gang himself. But he loses his temper when he finds out that the elderly night watchman was killed in cold blood by the man he arrested, telling him "you'll hang for this, you rich nobody!"

Finally Gideon gets home. His wife tells him that their daughter has met a nice young man at her recital. It turns out it's the young constable again. He had been holding the chief inspector's concert ticket all day following their first encounter that morning. This led him to meet Gideon's daughter, who is quite taken by him. But finally, just as they are all sitting down to supper, the phone rings one last time. A man believed to be Paul the painter has been arrested at London Airport. The film concludes with a final irony. The young constable, who is driving Gideon to the airport, is stopped by another policeman as he races through the capital's foggy streets for running a red light — and is unable to produce his driving license!

Cast

· Jack Hawkins - DCI George Gideon

· Dianne Foster - Joanna Delafield

· Cyril Cusack - Herbert ‘Birdie’ Sparrow

· Maureen Potter – Mrs. Sparrow

· Andrew Ray - PC Simon Farnaby Green

· Anna Massey - Sally Gideon

· James Hayter - Robert Mason

· Ronald Howard - Paul Delafield

· Howard Marion-Crawford - The Chief

· Laurence Naismith - Arthur Sayer

· Derek Bond - Detective Sergeant Kirby

· Anna Lee - Kate Gideon

· John Loder - Ponsford "The Duke"

· Miles Malleson - Judge

· John Le Mesurier - Prosecuting Counsel (uncredited)

· Robert Raglan - Dawson (uncredited)

· Michael Trubshawe - Sergeant "Golly" Golightly

· Jack Watling - Reverend Small

· Francis Crowdy - Francis Fitzhubert

· Grizelda Harvey – Mrs. Kirby

Production

The film, which was shot on location in and around London, was Anna Massey's cinematic debut (she was aged 19 at the time). Interiors were completed at the MGM British Studios, Borehamwood in Hertfordshire, England.

References

1. "Gideon's Day". British Film Institute.

The Horse Soldiers (1959)

Directed by

John Ford

Produced by

John Lee Mahin (uncredited)
Martin Rackin (uncredited)

Screenplay by

John Lee Mahin
Martin Rackin

Based on

The Horse Soldiers, 1956 novel, by Harold Sinclair

Starring

John Wayne
William Holden
Constance Towers

Music by

David Buttolph

Cinematography

William H. Clothier

Edited by

Jack Murray

Color process

Color by Deluxe

Production company

The Mirisch Company

Distributed by

United Artists

Release date

June 12, 1959

Running time

120 minutes

Country

United States

Language

English

Box office

$3.8 million (US and Canada rentals)[1]

The Horse Soldiers is a 1959 American adventure war western film set during the American Civil War directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, William Holden and Constance Towers. The screenplay by John Lee Mahin and Martin Rackin was loosely based on Harold Sinclair's 1956 novel of the same name, a fictionalized version of Colonel Benjamin Grierson's Raid in Mississippi.

Plot

A Union cavalry brigade led by Colonel John Marlowe (John Wayne)—a railroad construction engineer in civilian life—is sent on a raid behind Confederate lines to destroy a railroad and supply depot at Newton Station. Major Henry Kendall (William Holden), a regimental surgeon who is torn between duty and the horror of war, is constantly at odds with Marlowe.

While the unit rests at Greenbriar Plantation, Miss Hannah Hunter (Constance Towers), the plantation's mistress, acts as a gracious hostess to the unit's officers. But she and her slave, Lukey (Althea Gibson), eavesdrop on a staff meeting as Marlowe discusses his battle strategy. To protect the secrecy of the mission, Marlowe is forced to take the two women with him. Initially hostile to her Yankee captor, Miss Hunter gradually comes to respect him and eventually falls in love with him. In addition to Kendall and Miss Hunter, Marlowe also must contend with Col. Phil Secord (Willis Bouchey), a politically ambitious officer who continually second-guesses Marlowe's orders and command decisions.

Several battles ensue, including the capture of Newton Station, later a fire fight during which Lukey is killed, and a skirmish with boy cadets from a local military school (based on the actual Battle of New Market). After destroying the crucial supply line, and with Confederate forces in pursuit, the brigade reaches a bridge that must be stormed in order to access the Union lines. After taking the bridge, Marlowe's men rig it with explosive charges, and Marlowe bids Hannah farewell. Kendall chooses to remain behind with some badly wounded men—knowing he will be captured with them—rather than leave them unattended until Confederate medical personnel arrive.

Marlowe, though wounded, kisses Miss Hunter goodbye, lights the fuse and is the last of his men to cross the bridge before it is destroyed, halting the Confederate advance. Their mission accomplished, he and his brigade continue on toward Baton Rouge.

Cast

· John Wayne as Colonel John Marlowe

· William Holden as Major Henry 'Hank' Kendall

· Constance Towers as Miss Hannah Hunter of Greenbriar

· Althea Gibson as Lukey, Miss Hunter's maid (slave)

· Judson Pratt as Sergeant Major Kirby

· Ken Curtis as Cpl. Wilkie

· Willis Bouchey as Colonel Phil Secord

· Bing Russell as Dunker, Yankee Soldier Amputee

· O.Z. Whitehead as Otis 'Hoppy' Hopkins (medical assistant)

· Hank Worden as Deacon Clump

· Chuck Hayward as Captain Winters

· Denver Pyle as Jackie Jo (rebel deserter)

· Strother Martin as Virgil (rebel deserter)

· Basil Ruysdael as the Reverend (Jefferson Military Academy)

· Carleton Young as Colonel Jonathan Miles, CSA

· William Leslie as Major Richard Gray

· William Henry as Confederate lieutenant

· Walter Reed as Union officer

· Anna Lee as Mrs. Buford

· William Forrest as General Steve Hurlburt

· Ron Hagerthy as Bugler

· Russell Simpson as Acting Sheriff Henry Goodbody

· Hoot Gibson as Sgt. Brown

· Jack Pennick as Sgt. Maj. Mitch Mitchell (uncredited) Senior member of John Ford's Stock Company

· Stan Jones as General Ulysses S. Grant (uncredited)

· Richard H. Cutting as General William Tecumseh Sherman (uncredited)

Production

Exterior scenes were filmed in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, along the banks of Cane River Lake, and in and around Natchez, Mississippi.[2] The film company built a bridge over the Cane River for the pivotal battle scene, and many locals were hired as extras.[2] It also features scenes shot in Wildwood Regional Park in Thousand Oaks, California.[3] The film used DeLuxe Color.

Holden and Wayne both received $750,000 for starring, a record salary at the time.[4] The project was plagued from the start by cost overruns, discord, and tragedy. Holden and Ford argued incessantly. Wayne was preoccupied with pre-production logistics for The Alamo.[5] Lukey's dialog was originally written in "Negro" dialect that Althea Gibson, the former Wimbledon and U.S. National tennis champion who was cast in the role, found offensive. She informed Ford that she would not deliver her lines as written. Though Ford was notorious for his intolerance of actors' demands,[6] he agreed to modify the script.[7]

During filming of the climactic battle scene, veteran stuntman Fred Kennedy suffered a broken neck while performing a horse fall and died. "Ford was completely devastated," wrote biographer Joseph Malham. "[He] felt a deep responsibility for the lives of the men who served under him."[8] The film was scripted to end with the triumphant arrival of Marlowe's forces in Baton Rouge, but Ford "simply lost interest" after Kennedy's death. He ended the film with Marlowe's farewell to Hannah Hunter before crossing and blowing up the bridge.[9]

Reception

The film opened at number one in the United States[10] but the film was a commercial failure; analysts said this was due largely to Wayne's and Holden's high salaries, and the complex participation of multiple production companies. The response of audiences and critics was "lackluster".[9]

Historical Accuracy

The film was loosely based on Harold Sinclair's 1956 novel of the same name,[11] which in turn was based on the historic 17-day Grierson's Raid and Battle of Newton's Station in Mississippi during the Civil War.

In April 1863, Colonel Benjamin Grierson led 1,700 Illinois and Iowa soldiers from LaGrange, Tennessee to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, through several hundred miles of enemy territory, destroying Confederate railroad and supply lines between Newton's Station and Vicksburg, Mississippi. The mission was part of the Union Army's successful Vicksburg campaign to gain control over boat traffic on the Mississippi River, culminating in the Battle of Vicksburg.[12] Grierson's destruction of Confederate-controlled rail links and supplies played an important role in disrupting Confederate General John C. Pemberton's strategies and troop deployments. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman reportedly described Grierson's daring mission as "the most brilliant of the war".[13]

Though based loosely on Grierson's Raid, The Horse Soldiers is a fictional account that departs considerably from the actual events. The real-life protagonist, a music teacher named Benjamin Grierson, becomes railroad engineer John Marlowe in the film. Hannah Hunter, Marlowe's love interest, has no historical counterpart. Numerous other details were altered as well, "to streamline and popularize the story for the non-history buffs who would make up a large part of the audience."[14]

Dr. Erastus Dean Yule, the real-life surgeon counterpart of Major Hank Kendall, actually did volunteer to stay behind and get captured by the Confederates with the casualties who were too wounded to continue.[15] The raid actually took place about a year before the notorious Andersonville POW camp was built, and he was eventually exchanged after several months as a POW.

References

1. Cohn, Lawrence (October 15, 1990). "All-Time Film Rental Champs". Variety. p. M164.

2. York, Neil Longley (January 2001). Fiction as Fact: The Horse Soldiers and Popular Memory. Kent State University Press. p. 82.

3. Schad, Jerry (2009). Los Angeles County: A Comprehensive Hiking Guide. Wilderness Press. Pages 35-36.

4. "Brando, Holden, Wayne: $750,000-Per-Picture As Box Office Giants". Variety. November 26, 1958. p. 1.

5. Malham (2013), pp. 262-3.

6. Gallagher, T. John Ford: The Man and His Films. University of California Press (1988), p. 93.

7. Gray, FC; Lamb, YR. Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson John Wiley & Sons (2004), pp. 120-1.

8. Malham (2013), pp. 263-4.

9. Malham (2013), p. 264.

10. "National Box Office Survey". Variety. July 1, 1959. p. 5.

11. Sinclair, H. The Horse Soldiers. Harper & Brothers (1965). ASIN: B0000CJIT1.

12. Jones, Terry L. (2011). Historical Dictionary of the Civil War. Scarecrow Press. p. 621. .

13. Malham, J. John Ford: Poet in the Desert. Lake Street Press (2013), pp. 261-2. .

14. York, N.L. Fiction as Fact: Horse Soldiers and Popular Memory. Kent State University Press (2001).

Sergeant Rutledge (1960)

Directed by

John Ford

Produced by

Willis Goldbeck
Patrick Ford

Written by

James Warner Bellah
Willis Goldbeck

Starring

Jeffrey Hunter
Constance Towers
Billie Burke
Woody Strode
Juano Hernandez
Willis Bouchey

Music by

Howard Jackson

Cinematography

Bert Glennon

Edited by

Jack Murray

Production company

John Ford Productions

Distributed by

Warner Bros.

Release date

May 18, 1960 (United States)

Running time

111 minutes

Country

United States

Language

English

Sergeant Rutledge is a 1960 American Technicolor Western crime film directed by John Ford and starring Jeffrey Hunter, Constance Towers, Woody Strode and Billie Burke.[1] Six decades later, the film continues to attract attention because it was one of the first mainstream films in the U.S. to treat racism frankly and to give a starring role to an African-American actor.[2] In 2017 critic Richard Brody observed that "The greatest American political filmmaker, John Ford, relentlessly dramatized, in his Westerns, the mental and historical distortions arising from the country’s violent origins—including its legacy of racism, which he confronted throughout his career, nowhere more radically than in Sergeant Rutledge."[3]

The film starred Strode as Sergeant Rutledge, a black first sergeant in a black regiment of the United States Cavalry. At a U.S. Army fort in the early 1880s, he is being tried by a court-martial for the rape and murder of a white girl as well as for the murder of the girl's father, who was the commanding officer of the fort. The story of these events is recounted through several flashbacks.

Plot

The film revolves around the fictional court-martial of 1st Sgt. Braxton Rutledge (Strode) of the 9th U.S. Cavalry in 1881. At the time, the United States Army maintained four African American regiments, including the 9th Cavalry. His defense is handled by Lt. Tom Cantrell (Hunter), who is also Rutledge's troop officer. The story is told through a series of flashbacks, expanding the testimony of witnesses as they describe the events following the murder of Rutledge's Commanding Officer, Major Custis Dabney, and the rape and murder of Dabney's daughter Lucy, for which Rutledge is the accused.

Circumstantial evidence suggests that the first sergeant raped and murdered the girl and then killed his commanding officer. Worse still, Rutledge deserts after the killings. Ultimately, he is tracked down and arrested by Lt. Cantrell. At one point, Rutledge escapes from captivity during an Indian raid, but later, he voluntarily returns to warn his fellow cavalrymen that they are about to face an ambush, thus saving the troop. He is then brought back in to face the charges and the prejudices of an all-white military court.

Eventually he is found not guilty of the rape and murder of the girl when a local white man breaks down under questioning and admits that he raped and murdered the girl.

Cast

· Woody Strode as First Sergeant Braxton Rutledge, 9th Cavalry. Sergeant Rutledge was the first of four films Strode made with John Ford. In an interview, Strode recalled how he was cast for the role: "The big studios wanted an actor like Sidney [Poitier] or [Harry] Belafonte," recalled Strode. "And this is not being facetious, but Mr. Ford defended me; and I don't know that this is going on. He said, "Well, they're not tough enough to do what I want Sergeant Rutledge to be." [4]

· Jeffrey Hunter as 1st Lt. Tom Cantrell, 9th Cavalry (counsel for the defense). Hunter's role in Sergeant Rutledge was the last of his three roles in films directed by Ford. He was previously cast in The Searchers and The Last Hurrah.

· Constance Towers as Mary Beecher. Towers had also been cast in Ford's previous film, The Horse Soldiers.

· Billie Burke as Mrs. Cordelia Fosgate. Burke was a veteran actress who had played a good witch in The Wizard of Oz (1939); her part in Sergeant Rutledge was her final film role.

· Juano Hernández as Sgt. Matthew Luke Skidmore, 9th Cavalry

· Willis Bouchey as Lt. Col. Otis Fosgate, 9th Cavalry (president of the court-martial)

· Carleton Young as Capt. Shattuck, 14th Infantry (prosecutor)

· Judson Pratt as 2nd Lt. Mulqueen, 9th Cavalry (court-martial board member) (uncredited)

· Toby Michaels as Lucy Dabney (uncredited)

· Jack Mower as Courtroom Spectator (uncredited)

Production & Release

The screenplay for Sergeant Rutledge was original and was written by the film's co-producer, Willis Goldbeck, and by James Warner Bellah. Bellah has written that he and Goldbeck interested John Ford in directing a film after a screenplay was completed. Bellah had previously written the stories on which John Ford based his "cavalry trilogy" of films: Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950). The screenplay was subsequently adapted by Bellah for a novel of the same name.[5]

Parts of the film were shot in Monument Valley and the San Juan River at Mexican Hat in Utah.[6]

As illustrated in the poster image above, for the 1960 domestic theatrical release of the film the theater patrons were warned that they could not be seated during the final 10 minutes of the film in order to preserve its suspense. The film did poorly in U.S. theaters. Scott Eyman summarized: "Sergeant Rutledge is a film of considerable formal beauty about the bonds between a black band of brothers. Not surprisingly, it did miserably at the domestic box office, grossing $784,000. It did considerably better overseas, grossing $1.7 million, but was probably still a marginal financial failure."[7]

Other Countries

In Spain, the film was shown under the title of El Sargento Negro (The Black Sergeant).

Reception

Black Classic Movies mentions that this is one of the few American films of the 1960s to have a Black man in a leading role and the first mainstream western to do so.[8] Lucia Bozzola at All Movie gave it four out of five stars and mentioned "the expressionistic use of light and color, particularly during Rutledge's encounter with a sympathetic female witness, points to the repressed sexual terror that drives the case against him" and praised Strode's performance.[9] Jonathan Rosenbaum at Chicago Reader considered the film to be "effective", but "slightly long" and mentioned that it is "one of Ford's late efforts to treat minority members with more respect than westerns usually did."[10] Time Out agreed that the film is "often pigeonholed as one of Ford's late trio of guiltily amends-making movies" and although it praised it, it concluded that "he can't confront the cultural fear of miscegenation that mechanises [the movie], only its distorted expression."[11]

In Mike Grost's anthology presenting Ford's movies, the film was described as being one of his best, but also one of his most underrated. It also mentioned how the film mocked traditional femininity as being an "artificial construct".[12] TV Guide said the film "is a fascinating, detailed look at racism" and mentioned how some characters are directly racist, while others suffer from "repressed racism".[13] Variety said that the movie has an "intriguing screenplay which deals frankly, if not too deeply, with racial prejudice in the post-Civil War era."[14] The Movie Scene was more mixed, saying it is an "interesting movie because it is slightly different to what you expect from a John Ford western", but mentioned that it "is not the intelligent courtroom drama of say Anatomy of a Murder", but that it instead relies on Ford's customary use of the flashback.[15]

Home Media

A region 1 DVD was released in 2006 in the United States as part of a set of movies directed by John Ford.[16] In 2016 the film's DVD was released individually.[17] A VHS tape had been released in 1988.[18]

References

1. Harrison's Reports film review; April 16, 1960; page 64.

2. Manchel, Frank (1997). "Losing and finding John Ford's 'Sergeant Rutledge' (1960)". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 17 (2): 245–259. Ford's message and his means of delivering it create problems. But his agenda and its relevance to film history are significant. The film itself may not provide the most memorable moments in the director's career, but it is an important contribution to our understanding of race in the 1960s.

3. Brody, Richard (August 1, 2017). "The Front Row: 'Sergeant Rutledge'". The New Yorker.

4. Manchel, Frank (Spring 1995). "The man who made the stars shine brighter: An interview with Woody Strode". The Black Scholar. San Francisco. 25 (2): 37–46.

5. Bellah, James Warner (1960). Sergeant Rutledge. Bantam Books. Novelization of the film's screenplay. Bellah describes the development of the screenplay in the novel's preface.

6. D'Arc, James V. (2010). When Hollywood came to town: a history of moviemaking in Utah. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. p. 289. .

7. Eyman, Scott (2015). Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford. Simon and Schuster. p. 453. Reprinting of book published in 1999.

8. Bozzola, Lucia. "Sergeant Rutledge (1960)". allmovie.com.

9. Rosenbaum, Jonathan (October 1, 1994). "Sergeant Rutledge". Chicago Reader.

10. "Sergeant Rutledge". Time Out (magazine). Ford can show us an innocent victim of American racism, and stress in courtroom flashbacks his heroic credentials in white man's uniform, but he can never make the leap to offering us a black who actually rejects the role of honorary white.

11. Grost, Mike. "The Films of John Ford".

12. "Sergeant Rutledge". TV Guide. Sergeant Rutledge was the first mainstream western to cast an African-American as the central heroic figure. There already had been other westerns with black characters--from the 1923 silent The Bull-Dogger to Bronze Buckaroo (1938) and Harlem on the Prairie (1939)--but these films were low-budget, all-black productions that were never screened for white audiences. Not only was Sergeant Rutledge produced by a major studio, but also it was directed by one of filmdom's most-respected talents, Ford.

13. "Sergeant Rutledge". Variety. December 31, 1959. Give John Ford a troop of cavalry, some hostile Indians, a wisp of story and chances are the director will come galloping home with an exciting film. Sergeant Rutledge provides an extra plus factor in the form of an offbeat and intriguing screenplay which deals frankly, if not too deeply, with racial prejudice in the post-Civil War era.

Two Rode Together (1961)

Directed by

John Ford

Produced by

Stan Shpetner

Screenplay by

Frank Nugent

Based on

Comanche Captives, 1959 novel, by Will Cook

Starring

James Stewart
Richard Widmark
Woody Strode
Shirley Jones
Linda Cristal
Andy Devine
John McIntire

Music by

George Duning

Cinematography

Charles Lawton, Jr.

Edited by

Jack Murray

Color process

Eastman Color

Production companies

John Ford Productions
Shpetner Productions

Distributed by

Columbia Pictures

Release date

June 28, 1961

Running time

109 minutes

Country

United States

Language

English

Two Rode Together is a 1961 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring James Stewart, Richard Widmark and Shirley Jones. The supporting cast includes Linda Cristal, Andy Devine and John McIntire. The film was based upon the 1959 novel Comanche Captives by Will Cook.

Plot

In 1880s Tascosa, Texas, Marshal Guthrie McCabe is content to be the business and personal partner of attractive saloon owner Belle Aragon, receiving ten percent of the profits. When relatives of Comanche captives demand that Army Major Fraser find their lost ones, he uses a combination of army pressure and rewards from the families to get the reluctant McCabe to take on the job of ransoming any he can find. He assigns Lt. Jim Gary, a friend of McCabe's, to accompany him.

Marty Purcell is haunted by the memory of her younger brother Steve, abducted nine years earlier when he was eight and she was thirteen. She keeps a music box that belonged to him. McCabe warns her that Steve will not remember her because he was a young boy when he was taken. McCabe is also promised a large reward by Harry Wringle, the wealthy stepfather of another boy.

McCabe bargains with Chief Quanah Parker and finds four white captives. Two refuse to go back with him, one a young woman who is now married with children and the other an old woman, Mrs. Clegg, who regards herself as already dead. He does ransom a teenaged boy named Running Wolf, who McCabe hopes is the lost son of the wealthy Wringles, and a Mexican woman, Elena de la Madriaga. Elena is the wife of Stone Calf played by Woody Strode, a militant rival of Quanah. The evening the two men leave camp with their "rescued" captives, Stone Calf tries to take back his wife and is killed by McCabe, much to Quanah's satisfaction.

Running Wolf makes it very clear that he hates white people and the rich man refuses to accept him. However, a severely traumatized and broken woman is convinced that Running Wolf is her long lost son and claims him. Later, when she tries to cut his hair, he kills her. The settlers decide to lynch the boy, despite Lt. Gary's attempt to stop them. As they drag him away, Running Wolf knocks over Marty's music box. He hears it play and recognizes the melody. Marty cannot save him and is forced to accept that nothing could have been done to bring back the brother she remembered. She accepts Lt. Gary's proposal of marriage.

Elena finds herself ostracized by white society, deemed a woman who "degraded herself" by submitting to a savage rather than killing herself. Meanwhile, she and McCabe have fallen in love, exemplified when he gives the soldiers and their wives a dressing down for their treatment of Elena. Then McCabe discovers that Belle took his simple-minded deputy as a lover and got him elected to replace McCabe as marshal. After one last humiliation from Belle, Elena decides to go to California, and McCabe happily decides to go with her. As they leave, Lt. Gary tells Belle that his friend "finally found something that he wants more than 10% of."

Cast

· James Stewart as Marshal Guthrie McCabe

· Richard Widmark as First Lieutenant Jim Gary

· Shirley Jones as Marty Purcell

· Linda Cristal as Elena de la Madriaga

· Andy Devine as Sergeant Darius P. Posey

· John McIntire as Major Frazer

· Paul Birch as Judge Edward Purcell

· Willis Bouchey as Mr. Harry J. Wringle

· Henry Brandon as Chief Quanah Parker

· Harry Carey Jr. as Ortho Clegg

· Olive Carey as Mrs. Abby Frazer

· Ken Curtis as Greeley Clegg

· Chet Douglas as Deputy Ward Corby

· Annelle Hayes as Belle Aragon

· David Kent as Running Wolf (Steve Purcell)

· Anna Lee as Mrs. Malaprop

· Jeanette Nolan as Mrs. Mary McCandless

· John Qualen as Ole Knudsen

· Ford Rainey as Reverend Henry Clegg

· Woody Strode as Stone Calf

· O.Z. Whitehead as Lieutenant Chase

Production

The shoot was far from a happy one. This was not a personal project for Ford but something he did only for the money ($225,000 plus 25% of the net profits) and as a favor to Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn, who died in 1958. Ford said he admired Cohn like "a large, brilliant serpent." The director hated the material, believing he had done a far better treatment of the theme in The Searchers (1956). Even after he brought in his most trusted screenwriter, Frank Nugent—the man responsible for The Searchers and nine other Ford classics—to fix the script, the director said it was "still crap."

Nevertheless, he took the project on and proceeded to take out his frustrations on his cast and crew. Not that this was uncharacteristic. Stewart had been warned about the director's behavior by such longtime Ford stalwarts as John Wayne and Henry Fonda—who Ford had once socked in the jaw, during the filming of Mister Roberts (1955). Stewart came to learn Ford liked to keep his actors in the dark about the direction of the picture and suspicious of each other. In Andrew Sinclair's 1979 biography, John Ford, Stewart revealed that Ford's "direction took the form of asides. Sometimes he'd put his hand across his mouth so that others couldn't hear what he was saying to you. On Two Rode Together he told me to watch out for Dick Widmark because he was a good actor and that he would start stealing if I didn't watch him. Later, I learned he'd told Dick the same thing about me. He liked things to be tense."

One of the film's most renowned and impressive shots has been credited solely to Ford's mean streak. In the famous five-minute two-shot of Stewart and Widmark bantering on a river bank about money, women, and the Comanche problem, the film's downbeat comedy, misogyny, and careless attitude toward human life are summed up perfectly. Ford justified the take as a simple preference for a wide-screen two-shot over cross-cutting between close-ups of "pock-marked faces". But Stewart and others insisted Ford forced his crew to wade waist-deep into the icy river and stay there all day until the shot was completed.

The film was shot at the Alamo Village, the movie set originally created for John Wayne's The Alamo (1960).[1]

This film was the fifteenth that Jack Murray edited for John Ford. It was also the last; Murray died a few months before the film's release.[2]

Relationship between Ford and Stewart

Although the movie was not a commercial success and Stewart and Ford did not make the best collaborative team, they would work together three more times, two of those in films that took a radically different and even darker view of the western myth: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). They might not have been the best of friends on-and-off the set but they had a grudging respect for each other. The closest Ford ever came to praising Stewart was when he said, "He did a whale of a job manufacturing a character the public went for. He studied acting." Stewart wore the same hat in the film that he had worn in all his westerns with director Anthony Mann, prompting Ford to remark, "Great, now I have actors with hat approval!". Ford refused to allow Stewart to wear any hat in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, while John Wayne wore the most flamboyant wide-brimmed ten-gallon hat that he'd worn in film since the 1930s.[3]

References

1. Blumenthal, Ralph (March 26, 2004). "The Alamo of the Big Screen Tries to Skirt the Fate of the Original". The New York Times.

2. "Films with credits for both Jack Murray and John Ford". Internet Movie Database.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1961)

Directed by

John Ford

Produced by

Willis Goldbeck

Screenplay by

James Warner Bellah
Willis Goldbeck

Based on

A 1953 short story by Dorothy M. Johnson

Starring

John Wayne
James Stewart
Lee Marvin
Vera Miles

Music by

Cyril J. Mockridge

Cinematography

William H. Clothier

Edited by

Otho Lovering

Color process

Black and white

Production company

John Ford Productions

Distributed by

Paramount Pictures

Release date

April 22, 1962 (USA)[1]

Running time

123 minutes

Country

United States

Language

English

Budget

$3.2 million

Box office

$8 million[2]

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a 1962 American dramatic western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and James Stewart. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a 1953 short story written by Dorothy M. Johnson.

In 2007, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[3][4]

Plot

Senator Ranse Stoddard and his wife Hallie arrive in Shinbone, a frontier town in an unnamed western state, to attend the funeral of Tom Doniphon. As they pay their respects, local newspaper editor Maxwell Scott asks Stoddard why a United States senator would make the long journey from Washington to attend the funeral of a local rancher. Stoddard's story flashes back 25 years. Upon entering the territory as a young attorney, Ranse is beaten and robbed by Liberty Valance and his gang. Tom Doniphon finds Ranse and takes him to Shinbone. Ranse's wounds are treated by Tom's girlfriend, Hallie, and others, who explain to him that Valance terrorizes the residents, and the town's Marshal Appleyard is powerless to stop him. Tom is the only man who stands up to Valance, stating that force is all Valance understands.

Ranse is determined that law and justice can prevail over Valance; however, Ranse begins practicing with a gun. Hallie, attracted to Ranse and concerned for his safety, tells Tom of Ranse's gun practice. Tom advises Ranse of Valance's trickery. Tom also makes sure Ranse understands Hallie is Tom's girl by showing renovations to his ranch house are intended for his marriage to her. Shinbone's men meet to elect two delegates to the statehood convention at the territorial capital. Ranse and Dutton Peabody, the local newspaper editor, are elected, despite Valance and his gang's attempt to bully the residents into nominating him in order to represent the cattle barons. Valance challenges Ranse to a gunfight to be held later in the evening. Tom offers to assist Ranse in leaving town, but Ranse stubbornly declines.

Valance and his gang vandalize Peabody's newspaper office and beat him nearly to death after Peabody ran a story about Valance's prior murder of some farmers. At a saloon, Valance learns Ranse is waiting for him outside. Valance toys with Ranse, shooting him in the arm, and then aims to kill him, when Ranse fires his gun and Valance drops dead. Ranse returns to Hallie to treat his arm. Tom sees how much the two care for each other, and he retreats to his farm in a drunken rage where he burns down his house.

At the territory's convention to consider statehood, Ranse decides to withdraw as a candidate for delegate to Congress, concluding he is not worthy after killing Valance. As presented through another flashback within the flashback that frames the story, Tom tells Ranse it was he who fired the fatal shot, not Ranse. Tom regrets saving Ranse's life, because he lost Hallie to him but he encourages Ranse to accept the nomination and make Hallie proud.

In the present, Stoddard's political accomplishments fill in the intervening years; but editor Scott says Stoddard's story about who killed Valance will not be published, stating, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." As Stoddard returns to Washington, D.C. with Hallie, and contemplates retiring to Shinbone, he thanks the train conductor for the railroad's many courtesies. The conductor replies, "Nothing's too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance." Stoddard blows out the match for his unlit pipe, and stares downward.

Cast

· John Wayne as Tom Doniphon

· James Stewart as Ransom "Ranse" Stoddard

· Vera Miles as Hallie Stoddard

· Lee Marvin as Liberty Valance

· Edmond O'Brien as Dutton Peabody

· Andy Devine as Marshal Link Appleyard

· Ken Murray as Doc Willoughby

· John Carradine as Major Cassius Starbuckle

· Jeanette Nolan as Nora Ericson

· John Qualen as Peter Ericson

· Willis Bouchey as Jason Tully - Conductor

· Carleton Young as Maxwell Scott

· Woody Strode as Pompey

· Denver Pyle as Amos Carruthers

· Strother Martin as Floyd

· Lee Van Cleef as Reese

· Robert F. Simon as Handy Strong

· O. Z. Whitehead as Herbert Carruthers

· Paul Birch as Mayor Winder

· Joseph Hoover as Charlie Hasbrouck - Reporter for 'The Star'

Production

In contrast to prior John Ford Westerns, such as The Searchers (1956) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Liberty Valance was shot in black-and-white on Paramount's soundstages. Multiple stories and speculations exist to explain this decision. Ford claimed to prefer that medium over color: "In black and white, you've got to be very careful. You've got to know your job, lay your shadows in properly, get your perspective right, but in color, there it is," he said. "You might say I'm old fashioned, but black and white is real photography."[5] Ford also reportedly argued that the climactic shoot-out between Valance and Stoddard would not have worked in color.[6]

Others have interpreted the absence of the magnificent outdoor vistas so prevalent in earlier Ford Westerns as "a fundamental reimagining [by Ford] of his mythic West" – a grittier, less romantic, more realistic portrayal of frontier life.[7] A more pragmatic interpretation cites the fact that Wayne and Stewart, two of Hollywood's biggest stars working together for the first time, were considerably older (54 and 53, respectively) than the characters they were playing. Filming in black and white helped ease the suspension of disbelief necessary to accept that disparity.[8] According to cinematographer William H. Clothier, however, "There was one reason and one reason only ... Paramount was cutting costs. Otherwise we would have been in Monument Valley or Brackettville and we would have had color stock. Ford had to accept those terms or not make the film."[9]

Another condition imposed by the studio, according to Van Cleef, was that Wayne be cast as Doniphon. Ford resented the studio's intrusion and retaliated by taunting Wayne relentlessly throughout the filming. "He didn't want Duke [Wayne] to think he was doing him any favors," Van Cleef said.[10] Strode recounted that Ford "kept needling Duke about his failure to make it as a football player", comparing him to Strode (a former NFL running back), whom he pronounced "a real football player". (Wayne's football career at USC had been curtailed by injuries.) He also ridiculed Wayne for failing to enlist during World War II, during which Ford filmed a series of widely praised combat documentaries for the Office of Strategic Services and was wounded at the Battle of Midway,[11] and Stewart served with distinction as a bomber pilot and commanded a bomber group. "How rich did you get while Jimmy was risking his life?" he demanded. Wayne's avoidance of wartime service was a major source of guilt for him in his later years.[12]

Stewart related that midway through filming, Wayne asked him why he, Stewart, never seemed to be the target of Ford's venomous remarks. Other cast- and crew-members also noticed Stewart's apparent immunity from Ford's abuse. Then, toward the end of filming, Ford asked Stewart what he thought of Strode's costume for the film's beginning and end, when the actors were playing their parts 25 years older. Stewart replied, "It looks a bit Uncle Remussy to me." Ford responded, "What's wrong with Uncle Remus?" He called for the crew's attention and announced, "One of our players doesn't like Woody's costume. Now, I don't know if Mr. Stewart has a prejudice against Negroes, but I just wanted you all to know about it." Stewart said he "wanted to crawl into a mouse hole", but Wayne told him, "Well, welcome to the club. I'm glad you made it."[10][13]

Ford's behavior "...really pissed Wayne off," Strode said, "but he would never take it out on Ford," the man largely responsible for his rise to stardom. "He ended up taking it out on me." While filming an exterior shot on a horse-drawn cart, Wayne almost lost control of the horses and knocked Strode away when he attempted to help. When the horses did stop, Wayne tried to pick a fight with the younger and fitter Strode. Ford called out, "Don't hit him, Woody, we need him." Wayne later told Strode, "We gotta work together. We both gotta be professionals." Strode blamed Ford for nearly all the friction on the set. "What a miserable film to make," he added.[14]

Stewart received top billing over Wayne on promotional posters, but in the film itself Wayne's screen card appears first and slightly higher on a sign post. The studio also specified that Wayne's name appear before Stewart's on theatre marquees, reportedly at Ford's request.[15] "Wayne actually played the lead," Ford said, to Peter Bogdanovich. "Jimmy Stewart had most of the sides [sequences with dialogue], but Wayne was the central character, the motivation for the whole thing."[16]

Parts of the film were shot in Wildwood Regional Park in Thousand Oaks, California.[17][18]

Music

The film's music score was composed by Cyril J. Mockridge, but in scenes involving Hallie's relationships with Doniphon and Stoddard, Ford reprised Alfred Newman's "Ann Rutledge Theme", from Young Mr. Lincoln. He told Bogdanovich that he used the theme in both films to evoke repressed desire and lost love.[19] ] Portions of the song There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight are played in scenes by bar musicians and a marching band.

The Burt Bacharach-Hal David song "(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance" became a top-10 hit for Gene Pitney. Though based upon the movie's plotline, it was not used in the film. Pitney said in an interview that he was in the studio about to record the song when "... Bacharach informed us that the film just came out." The film was released April 18, 1962, and the song entered the Billboard Hot 100 the week ending April 28, 1962, peaking at number four in June.[21] . Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the top 100 Western songs of all time.[22]

Reception

Liberty Valance was released in April 1962, and achieved both financial and critical success. Produced for $3.2 million, it grossed $8 million,[2] making it the 15th-highest grossing film of 1962. Edith Head's costumes were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design (black-and-white), one of the few Westerns ever nominated in that category.[23]

Contemporary reviews were generally positive, although a number of critics thought the final act was a letdown. Variety called the film "entertaining and emotionally involving," but thought if the film had ended 20 minutes earlier, "it would have been a taut, cumulative study of the irony of heroic destiny," instead of concluding with "condescending, melodramatic, anticlimactic strokes. What should have been left to enthrall the imagination is spelled out until there is nothing left to savor or discuss."[24]

The Monthly Film Bulletin agreed, lamenting that the "final anticlimactic 20 minutes ... all but destroy the value of the disarming simplicity and natural warmth which are Ford's everlasting stock-in-trade." Despite this, the review maintained that the film "has more than enough gusto to see it through," and that Ford had "lost none of his talent for catching the real heart, humor and violent flavor of the Old West in spite of the notable rustiness of his technique."[25] A. H. Weiler of The New York Times wrote that "Mr. Ford, who has struck more gold in the West than any other film-maker, also has mined a rich vein here," but opined that the film "bogs down" once Stoddard becomes famous, en route to "an obvious, overlong, and garrulous anticlimax."[26]

Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post called the film "a leisurely yarn boasting fine performances," but was bothered by "the incredulous fact that the lively townsfolk of Shinbone didn't polish off Valence [sic] for themselves. On TV he would have been dispatched by the second commercial and the villainy would have passed to some shadowy employer, some ruthless rancher who didn't want statehood."[27] John L. Scott of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Director Ford is guilty of a few lengthy, slow periods in his story-telling, but for the most part the old, reliable Ford touches are there."[28] Harrison's Reports gave the film a grade of "Very Good",[29] but Brendan Gill of The New Yorker was negative and called it "a parody of Mr. Ford's best work."[30]

More recent assessments have been more uniformly positive. The film is considered one of Ford's best,[31] and in one poll, ranked with The Searchers and The Shootist as one of Wayne's best Westerns.[32] Roger Ebert wrote that each of the 10 Ford/Wayne westerns is "... complete and self-contained in a way that approaches perfection", and singled out Liberty Valance as "the most pensive and thoughtful" of the group.[33] Director Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) listed Ford as a major influence on his work, and Liberty Valance as his favorite Ford film. "It was the only film," he said, "where [Ford] learned about something called pessimism."[34] In a retrospective analysis, The New York Times called Liberty Valance "...one of the great Western classics," because "it questions the role of myth in forging the legends of the West, while setting this theme in the elegiac atmosphere of the West itself, set off by the aging Stewart and Wayne."[35] The New Yorker's Richard Brody described it as "the greatest American political movie", because of its depictions of a free press, town meetings, statehood debates, and the "civilizing influence" of education in frontier America.[33]

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

· 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:

o Tom Doniphon – Nominated Hero[36]

· 2005: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:

o Maxwell Scott: "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." – Nominated[37]

· 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10:

o Nominated Western Film[38]

References

1. "This Week's Movie Openings". Los Angeles Times. April 15, 1962. Calendar, p. 18.

2. ^ "Box Office Information for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance".

3. "Librarian of Congress Announces National Film Registry Selections for 2007". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

4. "Complete National Film Registry Listing | Film Registry | National Film Preservation Board | Programs | Library of Congress". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

5. McBride (2003), p. 306

6. Kalinak (2007), p. 96

7. Coursen, D. (May 21, 2009). "John Ford's Wilderness: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". Parallax View.

8. McBride (2003), p. 312

9. Munn (2004), p. 232

10. Munn (2004), p. 233

11. "A Look Back ... John Ford: War Movies". cia.gov.

12. Wayne, Pilar. John Wayne. pp. 43–47.

13. McBride (2003), p. 631

14. Munn (2004), p. 234

15. Matthews, L. (1984). History of Western Movies. Crescent. p. 132.

16. Bogdanovich (1978), p. 99

17. Schneider, Jerry L. (2015). Western Filming Locations, Book 1. CP Entertainment Books. p. 116.

18. Fleming, E.J. (2010). The Movieland Directory: Nearly 30,000 Addresses of Celebrity Homes, Film Locations and Historical Sites in the Los Angeles Area, 1900–Present. McFarland. p. 48.

19. Bogdanovich (1978), pp. 95–96

20. Kalinak (2007), pp. 96–98.

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22. Western Writers of America (2010). "The Top 100 Western Songs". American Cowboy.

23. "The 35th Academy Awards (1963) Nominees and Winners". Oscars.org.

24. "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". Variety: 6. April 11, 1962.

25. "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 29 (341): 78. June 1962.

26. Weiler, A. H. (May 24, 1962). "'Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' Opens at Capitol Theatre". The New York Times: 29.

27. Coe, Richard L. (April 21, 1962). "Way in Egg Role". The Washington Post: C9.

28. Scott, John L. (April 20, 1962). "'Liberty Valance' Tale of Frontier Violence". Los Angeles Times: Part IV, p. 10.

29. "Film Review: 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'". Harrison's Reports: 58. April 21, 1962.

30. Gill, Brendan (June 16, 1962). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker: 102.

31. "Top 7 John Ford films (because we couldn't pick just 5)". movie mail.com.

32. "Readers suggest the 10 best westerns". guardian.com archive.

33. Ebert, Roger (December 28, 2011). "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". rogerebert.com archive.

34. Nixon, R. "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". Turner Classic Movies archive.

35. Erickson, H. (2013). "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Baseline & All Movie Guide.

36. "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains Nominees" (PDF). AFI

37. "AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes Nominees" (PDF). AFI.

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Sources

· Bogdanovich, P. (1978). John Ford. University of California Press.

· Kalinak, K. (2007). How the West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford. University of California Press. .

· McBride, Joseph (2003). Searching For John Ford: A Life. New York: St. Martin's Press.

· Munn, Michael (2004). John Wayne – The Man Behind The Myth. Robson Books.

John Ford Sound Films, Part 6: 1957-1961The Wings of Eagles through The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Return to John Ford Table of Contents

The Wings of Eagles (1957)

Plot

Cast

Historical Inaccuracies

Box office

References

The Last Hurrah (1958)

Plot

Cast

Production

Reception

References

Gideon's Day (1958)

Cast

Production

References

The Horse Soldiers (1959)

Plot

Cast

Production

Reception

Historical Accuracy

References

Sergeant Rutledge (1960)

Plot

Cast

Production & Release

Other Countries

Reception

Home Media

References

Further Reading

Two Rode Together (1961)

Plot

Cast

Production

Relationship between Ford and Stewart

References

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1961)

Plot

Cast

Production

Music

Reception

References

Sources

Return to John Ford Table of Contents

John Ford Sound Films, Part 6: 1957-1961
The Wings of Eagles through The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance