Episode 16: Stagecoach w/ Dr. Will Dodson

Film professor Dr. Will Dodson returns to discuss the movie that made John Wayne a star, John Ford's Stagecoach. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome back to Tumbleweeds and TV Cowboys, a classic Western
film and TV podcast. My name is Hunter. This week,
doctor Will Johnson is back and we're talking about the
movie that made John Wayne Starr from nineteen thirty nine.
It's John Ford's Stage Coach. I will say it's a
little more challenging to talk about a movie like Stage Coach.
It's such a huge movie and it's been written about
and talked about so much. But hopefully this will be

(00:38):
informative and entertaining. Here's our conversation. All right, we welcome
back Will. How's it going.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Oh, great, glad to talk with you again. I'm looking
forward to it. How you doing.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
I'm doing well. Yeah, I'm very happy to have you
back on. I think we're gonna have a fun discussion
on what is, without question, the biggest movie you and
I have talked about, and I think the biggest movie
I've covered to this point so far. But before we
get into Stagecoach, are there any physical media announcements or
other projects you've been working on recently that you can

(01:11):
talk about?

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Oh? Geez uh, oh, let's see what am I allowed
to talk about what has come out recently. Did a
piece for the interestingly named Inflatable sex Doll of the
Wastelands Japanese noirm nineteen sixty seven, with some elements of

(01:41):
early pink films. Did that for Deaf Crocodile, and that's
a beautiful, beautiful film, really stylish, very much in the
style of Stage in Suzuki. In fact, the filmmakers were
part of Suzuki's orbit. Let's see what else one that's
coming out soon, but I don't think I can announce

(02:02):
it yet, so I'll be quiet about that one. This
will probably come out too late. But if anyone is
in the North Carolina area during Memorial Day weekend, come
out to Carolina Fearfest. We'll let where. I'll be with
my friend John Daly representing Severin and Terror Vision Films,

(02:22):
running tables for both of them. Malcolm McDowell's going to
be there as well. So two reasons to come out.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Oh very nice. Okay, So we are going to get
into Stagecoach and other Westerns from thirty nine, but I'd
like to talk a little bit about Westerns in between
the Big Trail and Stagecoach. First, so there were tons
of westerns made during this period, but very few were
made by one of the big studios, or we're directed
by prestigious filmmakers. I know, in thirty one Cimarron won

(02:54):
Best Picture, but like The Big Trail, it also did
not do well at the box office. And then some
directors that were kind of more prestigious that made westerns
during this era were William A. Wellman made a couple
of westerns during this period. He made The Conquerors, and
he made Robin Hood of El Dorado, and Rabel Walsh
directed Wild Girl, which is a really fun pre code western,

(03:18):
and Cecil B. De Mille made The Plainesmen. And then
there's the thirty six version of the Three Godfathers, which
is excellent. I actually think it's better than John Ford's
later version. And there are some others, but the overwhelming
majority of westerns from thirty one to thirty eight were
B movies. It was definitely like a quantity over quality genre.

(03:39):
But although you and I did discover I think some
pretty entertaining John Wayne B movies when we did our
B movie episode.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, there tend to be you know, a lot of
elements and the stories and the craft that are interesting.
I kind of think about this period of Westerns, and
this might get some mean comments, but I kind of
feel like this period of Westerns is a little bit
like a a sort of inverse budget mc U period

(04:15):
where the majority of Westerns are aimed at kids and
and younger people. They are very action oriented, very focused
on spectacle and and and h and violence and exploitation elements,

(04:40):
but there there are elements in the in the in
the films that are always a little bit interesting. You know,
there's these occasional performances that are they're really cool, or
there's references to his historical events or contemporary events that
are really interesting. And I think if it is as
sort of similar to the of course, the the Marvel

(05:01):
Comics movies are huge budget blockbusters, but essentially it's the
same kind of deal. They're they're spectacle that's aimed at
generally younger audiences, but they also have tidbits that can
be entertaining for for more as they say, adult audiences
as well. So I kind of see it as as

(05:24):
like if you look at the history of cinema over
one hundred years or so, it's it's like they're uh, parentheses. Right,
there's like these low budget exploitation westerns that are that
are kind of the equivalent of superhero movies at the time,
compared to these these these big budget blockbusters superhero movies

(05:48):
that are essentially giant extensions of the early serials that
accompanied a lot of these these B movies as the
uh as the first feature of Like if you go
to a Saturday matinee, you'd see a serial with like
Commander Cody or something like that, and then you'd see

(06:08):
a B Western, and then you'd see your a picture.
If that makes any sense at all.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Oh, yeah, no, that makes sense. I also thought of
kind of the thirties B westerns as even something like
what the horror genre was at some point where it
was something like filmmakers didn't necessarily want to be working
in that genre, but maybe they did working. Maybe they
did work in it, hoping to find their way into

(06:36):
better projects down the line based on how how the
movie either performed or what they were able to do
differently with it.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Sure. Yeah, and I mean, certainly in the case of
John Wayne, it was easy to kind of fall into typecasting,
and he himself kind of thought, you know, by nineteen
thirty ninety one years old. At that point, he was
kind of thinking that this was his the end of

(07:06):
his career trajectory. He was just going to be a
B movie actor. Yeah, until fate intervened.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah. So then in nineteen thirty nine, so things started
to change. You had a few celebrated like big studio
filmmakers make westerns. Cecil B. De Mille made Union Pacific,
and Henry King made Jesse James. Michael Kurtiz made Dodge City,
and I don't think of this filmmaker as prestigious, although
he did make other good movies. But George Marshall made

(07:36):
Destry Rides again. Lloyd Bacon made The Oklahoma Kid, which
starred James Cagney and Harry Bogart. Another movie I'll mentioned
from thirty nine is Frontier Marshall, which, like Stagecoach like
in my opinion, it's also kind of somewhere in between
an A and a B movie, but it's it's an

(07:58):
official whaet Art movie. It's the movie that I talked
about back on the first episode of this podcast with
David Lambert and then Jesse James and Dodge City, which
Dodge City is actually like an unofficial White Art story.
We're in the top ten of the box office that year.
In nineteen thirty nine in general is a really important

(08:19):
year for movies. I mean, it's considered one of the
best years for Hollywood cinema of all time by many people.
And you had mentioned to me that you gathered some
interesting information on nineteen thirty nine. Do you want to
get into that now we can do that.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Of course, nineteen thirty nine is often considered the hands
down greatest year for film in Hollywood history. You have
gone with the Win, Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Only

(08:55):
Angels Have Wings, Mister Smith goes to Washington. John Ford
himself made three films in that year that we'll talk
a little bit about young mister Lincoln, Drums along the
Mohawk and Stagecoach. Stage Coach being his first sound western
and Drums along the Mohawk being his first technicolor film.

(09:15):
So this was just a huge year for artistic and
technical triumph. It's also the same year that Nazi troops
entered Poland. France and Great Britain declared war on Germany,

(09:38):
so Francisco Franco took power in Spain. The United States
is still neutral at this point, but you know, in
just two years, obviously, Pearl Harbor will drag us into
the the Second World War. Batman debuted nineteen thirty nine,

(10:03):
fairly important figure in American mythology. Yeah, just so many
big things happened. This is the same year that American
Nazis had a rally in Madison Square Garden, which you

(10:23):
can bet people like John Ford took exception to the
very beginnings of the modern civil rights movement are starting
to rumble. Marian Anderson saying at the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial, the world's fair open to New York. I mean,

(10:45):
the Access Powers signed their agreement, so Italy and Germany
formally joined forces. So this is this is this is
a year where world history is tipping in unclear directions.

(11:06):
And it's kind of amazing that this same year two
troubled productions get taken over by a journeyman director named
Victor Fleming, and then they turn out to be The
Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind Right. Yeah,
the two films arguably that define Hollywood cinema more than

(11:27):
any other. So yeah, you know, it was a big year.
I mean, and we'll talk more as this is our
kind of occasional series of John Wayne films goes on,
because obviously John Ford would leave Hollywood a couple of

(11:49):
years after this to serve in the military. John Wayne
did not stayed in Hollywood, and that's when he became
a superstar. So what we're talking about today with the
Stagecoaches kind of laying the groundwork for the entire careers
of Ford and Wayne from this point on.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, And I mean nineteen thirty nine
is definitely a huge year for movies. Another one that
didn't come up as Gunga Dean, the George Stevens movie
with Kerry Grant. I used to absolutely love that movie.
I have no idea how many times I've seen it,

(12:35):
but yeah, and then with a westerns from thirty nine,
for the most part, they were either like star driven
or somewhat based on historical figures. I mean, if you
look at the top box office, the westerns that made
it in the top ten had Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda,
Errol Flynn, and also they were shot in technicolor, which

(12:57):
I would think would be a huge factor when looking
at the rest of the list of what made the
top box office, and I didn't get to rewatch everything
I wanted to leading up to this, But I did
rewatch Jesse James and Dodge City, and I think both
movies are pretty entertaining, and Dodge City has a spectacular
barroom brawl. It is fantastic. It's really chaotic, and there's

(13:21):
some awesome stunts. But I didn't get to watch the
two I didn't get to rewatch. I really wanted to
Reunion Pacific and Destrie Rides Again, and of course both
of those had big stars and they both did very well.
I know Destrie Rides Again was the most successful movie
that Universal Pictures released that year, and some of the

(13:43):
box office information from this era is not always easy
to track down or there's a conflicting information. But the
top ten list I found doesn't include Union Pacific. But
then there's an article that I read on TCM's website,
so that says that Union Pacific was the top grossing
Western of the year, and so I don't really know

(14:04):
who to believe, but basically, all of these movies outperformed
what is now considered to be the most influential and
arguably the best Western of thirty nine, which is Stagecoach
and Stage Coach was the only Western that was nominated
for Best Picture, and although it wasn't necessarily as impactful
like immediately after its release, if you look at westerns

(14:26):
like from the early forties or from like nineteen forty specifically,
they have way more in common with the more star
driven westerns like Michael Curtiz and Ero Flynn made two
westerns in nineteen forty. They did Santa Fe Trail in
Virginia City, and then there was a sequel to Jesse James,
the Return of Frank James, and William Wiler made The

(14:49):
Westerner in nineteen forty, and he not unlike john Ford,
he did take a break from westerns like he made
Hell's Heroes in twenty nine, which another telling of the
Three Godfathers.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Oh yeah, I love that one.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah. I still haven't seen it, but I've heard it's great.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yeah. And then he also made The Storm in nineteen thirty,
which is another Western, but didn't make another Western until
ten years later with the Westerner. And then Tyrone Power
starred in Brigham Young, which is I think a Henry
Hathaway directed movie. Yes, and John Wayne worked On worked
with Raoul Walsh again in nineteen forty they made The
Dark Command, and de Millon and Gary Cooper made Northwest.

(15:36):
Is it Northwest Mounted Police?

Speaker 3 (15:38):
That's what it's called, right, I'm not familiar with that one.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Actually, Okay, I think it's I think it's north I'm
going to look this up real quick. I feel silly
if I get it wrong. Northwest Mounted. You are correct, Oh,
I am correct. Oh, tremendous. That's all right.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
I got to put that on my to watch list,
know this one.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah. And then also that year George Marshall made when
the Daltons wrote Rode with Randolph Scott. And so I
mean all this to say like westerns were definitely back,
and you know, with top stars and big directors making them.
But I know, is there anything else that you would
want to say they would kind of help put Stage

(16:22):
Coach in context of other westerns from nineteen thirty nine,
or anything about the impact on westerns that followed it.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah. Well, I think you're right to note that it
took a little while for the you know, artistic impact
of Stagecoach too really roll into more a picture minded productions.
But the reactions were pretty immediate, and yet it's very interesting.

(16:56):
Ford had had gained some cloud for you know, winning
the Oscar for the Informer, but he hadn't made a
Western since what the the Iron Horse.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
I think since Three Bad Men, which was from twenty
six I think.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Okay, yeah, so over a decade his first sound Western Selznick,
who he originally was going to be working for, David O.
Selznik was not I say, Salesnick, like I knew the
guy David O' Salesnick was was. Did not trust you know,
Ford on this one. Wanted bigger stars, wanted Gary Cooper,

(17:35):
Marlene and Dietrich. But Ford believed in the project so
much that he purchased the wrights the original story with
his own money and took it to United Artists. So
my point in bringing that little anecdote up is that,
you know, westerns are still kind of existing in this
liminal space between A and B pictures. And in fact,

(17:58):
Wayne made what five pictures in nineteen thirty nine, four
of which were three mesquite the Three Musketeers films with
George Sherman, The Night Riders, Three Texas Steers, Wyoming Outlaw,
New Frontier, and these were his last films as as

(18:19):
Stony Brook and The Three Misketeers, and then of course
he made Allegheny Uprising, which we'll talk about another time
with William Sater. It's character in Allegheny Uprising incidentally, Jim So.
But going back to the point, you know, the quickie

(18:44):
b westerns were still, you know, the primary stock in
trade in the genre. Yeah, and so for Wayne to
kind of step out of that kind of production mo
into you know, Ford's world for the first time is

(19:11):
it's kind of an amazing thing. I mean, it's it's
to call it a pivotal moment doesn't really do it justice.
And to say that, you know, Stage Coach came out
in such a great year for movies, reminds us that
it was nominated for seven Oscars itself. You know, so

(19:32):
this is a yeah, this is a singular film happening
at a time where westerns are generally not singular films.
If that makes.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Sense, Yeah, yeah, for sure. Now, now from here, I
do want to get into John Ford's career a little
bit of leading up to Stage Coach. So Ford had
made ninety movies before he made Stage Coach, and forty
one of them were Westerns. And all of these Westerns

(20:02):
are from the Silent era, and unfortunately the majority of
them are lost. I think that there are seven films
that are available in their entirety, and there are a
couple of reels from other films that have been discovered.
And one of the lost films, called The Scarlet Drop,
was actually just discovered recently. I think it was last year,
so I mean, hopefully more will be discovered in the future.

(20:25):
One of these lost films is actually an even earlier
telling of the Three Godfathers. It's called Marked Men. I
think it's from nineteen eighteen, So if that got discovered,
that would be very interesting to see. And then Ford's
last silent Western was Three Bad Men and it was
released in twenty six and so then, of course he

(20:46):
didn't work again in the genre till thirty nine. And
Ford had talked about westerns in the thirties and he
said that people didn't make them and that they were
like a drug on the market. And I still don't
really know exactly what that means, but it's definitely not accurate.
There were tons of westerns made, they just weren't, you know,

(21:07):
like a list westerns. And during the Silent era. When
he was making these, he was also making melodramas and
westerns and melodramas were both dismissed by critics and had
a poor reputation, And from what I read, it sounds
like he was feeling like his skills as a director

(21:28):
continued to improve throughout the Silent Era, and he felt
like working in these genres was holding him back artistically.
And then he saw a movie that had a major
impact on him and inspired him to go in a
different direction cinematically. And the movie was FW. Murnow's Sunrise.

(21:49):
So Ford was at Fox at the time and Sunrise
was a Fox Film's production, and just based off of
seeing rushes from the film, he said it was the
greatest picture ever produced. And Ford's next movie was called
Four Sons, and I haven't seen it, but Joseph McBride's
book Searching for John Ford, he describes it as being

(22:10):
an over Murnow imitation, which really makes me want to
track it down. Have you seen Four Sons?

Speaker 3 (22:15):
Will? No? I haven't. I knew that Ford admired Sunrise,
but I did not know that Four Sons was influenced
by it.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, I'm very, very curious to see it now, and
then the movie he made after Four Sons, Hangman's House,
was also inspired by Murnow and I know in the
critic at Variety said that it was some of the
most striking compositions since Sunrise and that they often resemble them.
And the other notable thing about Hangman's House is it

(22:45):
was the first time John Wayne appeared in a John
Ford film. It's an uncredited role, and I think he's
just in two scenes and then.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
He's still Maryan Morrison at that point, right.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yes, yep, still Marian Morrison. And then the other significant
thing during this period, in between Three Bad Men and
Stage Coach is he started collaborating with writer Dudley Nichols. Yeah,
and Nichols wrote Men Without Women, which was released in
nineteen thirty and he wrote twelve other john Ford movies,

(23:19):
including Stage Coach, and his final strip for him was
a movie released the following year, The Long Voyage Home,
and Nichols also wrote The Informer and he and Ford, Yeah,
they both won Oscars for it. It was Ford's i
think his first Best director Oscar and Nichols's only award
for Best Screenplay. And like a lot of people, Ford

(23:39):
collaborated with It sounds like they had an unusual working relationship.
Nichols said he felt like Ford was always trying to
displace him and find a more compatible writer. And Nichols
was someone who wasn't afraid to argue with Ford, and
he said he wasn't capable of giving Ford the blind
loyalty he desired. And then one thing Joseph McBride says

(24:02):
is that Nichols had the self aggrandizing, intellectual persona that
Ford disdained. And will we might want to pitch this
as a limited series to one of the streamers. I
think Ford v. Nichols could be just tremendous.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, that'd be worth a watch.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
All right. Now you got a little bit into kind
of the a little bit into the pre production history
of Stage Coach. Did you have anything you wanted to
add to that?

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Well, no, I think you I think you set the
stage pretty well. I guess you know what was going on,
was you know Ford? I guess the original story Stage
two Lordsburg was in Collier's magazine, written by Ernest Haycocks.

(24:59):
And and if I'm remembering correctly, it was Ford's son
Patrick who brought the story to him, and then Nichols
turned that into the screenplay added quite a bit to
the I mean, the whole revenge subplot was added, the

(25:23):
development of the characters and so on. John Wayne was
having some significant things happening in his life. His father
had just died, his son Patrick was born in nineteen
thirty nine. He was about to go through a divorce
with his wife, Josephine, particularly difficult because she was Catholic.

(25:46):
So he had quite a bit of turmoil I guess
is a good word going on in his life, and
the death of his father had him pretty hard. And
and Ford, you know, they they had been kind of
estranged for almost a decade, but Ford had recently invited

(26:10):
Wayne to you know, spend some time on on the
on the boat down by the marina and do some fishing.
And uh, you know, Wayne and word Bond were very close,
and of course word Bond was also close to Ford.

(26:33):
So there they were fishing over the weekends. The Ford
was developing the Searchers, and eventually the story goes that
Ford asked Wayne if he knew of any actors who
would be good for the part, and Wayne suggested Lloyd Nolan.

(27:01):
Now different in different versions of the story. Wayne is
characterized as having no idea that Ford wants him for
the part, and genuinely suggests Lloyd Nolan. In others, he's
kind of playing a game with Ford, knowing that Ford
is teasing him and is eventually going to offer him

(27:23):
the role, which of course he eventually did for the
Ringo Kid. And I mentioned that originally Ford was developing
this for David O Selznick. Selznick wanted Gary Cooper, who
reportedly right up to pre production thought he had the

(27:43):
role along with Marlena Dietrich, but Ford wanted to go
with a stable of character actors headed up by Claire Trevor,
who actually top lines the film. She was well known

(28:04):
as a a stage actress, and I guess Dead End
was her biggest film up to that point, nineteen thirty
seven with Humphrey Bogart. She was nominated for Best Supporting
Actress in that so she was she was the top

(28:24):
line star, which you know, she won an oscar, but
she was not exactly box office gold right by any means.
And Wayne at that point is basically an anonymous uh

(28:45):
Be movie actor and the rest of the cast character actors,
So this was a really huge risk on the on
the part of Ford putting this to the other.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, now let's talk about Wayne in this. Obviously, he
had starred in The Big Trail, which you and I
absolutely love, and I might actually like it more than
Stage Coach, I'd be honest with you. But unfortunately The
Big Trail, you know, didn't make Duke a starr, and
Stage Coach, you know, succeeded in making him a star.
And I think we've touched on this a little bit

(29:23):
in the B Movie episode, But when I watched, I
watched nine of his B movies for that episode, and
I did feel like you were seeing Wayne become more
like his star persona in those movies, especially compared to
his performance in The Big Trail. But here I do
think it's taken to a new level. I think there

(29:45):
are a couple like obvious reasons for that. One. I
think it's it's probably the best script he's he's worked with,
and also he's being directed by John Ford, of course,
but he's also surrounded by a number of actors that
are putting on I think, a much bigger performance than
he is, and there's something about him being a bit

(30:08):
quieter and less theatrical. That to me makes him stand
out a bit more. But yeah, what do you think
of John Wayne in this? And what do you think
John Ford did that brought out something different than him?

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Oh my gosh, where to even start with this? I'm
going to start with some like the big part of
the answer, and then I'm going to get into some details, okay,
and hope and hopefully that'll bring us into a bit
of a conversation about the cast. So the rest of
the cast all accomplished actors background in theater cinema. Wayne

(30:46):
had no formal training, you know, he was He started
out as a prop prop person, a production assistant, kind
of learned from from watching I think in the Big
Trail episode, we talked a little bit about how reportedly
Wayne based some of his persona on the real Wyatt Earp,

(31:08):
who says Wayne also says that he based a lot
of his characterizations on Harry Carey, whom Ford had had
a long partnership with in the silent years before becoming estranged.
But but the thing to know before you know, going

(31:29):
any further, and this is not new. This is not
gonna be a revelation to anyone who's familiar with John
Ford's Westerns. But Ford was very much engrossed in not
just American history but mythology, and he was very taken

(31:50):
by a Western expansion as a as a symbolic concept.
And he was aware of himself as an Irish immigrant
and the the idea of America as a recreation of

(32:12):
a people of a of a people from the ground up.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
You know.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
He was very and Stagecoaches is certainly a good example.
He was very concerned with class tension, and his sympathies,
of course lay with the the the underclass, the downtroden,
the common folk. Right. He had no truck for royalty
or aristocracy, and he saw the Western as a as

(32:42):
a a place for American mythology to be worked out.
You know, he was very interested in Western novel novels
and and and stories that kind of broke with, you know,

(33:03):
the Victorian type of fiction and and and so on.
So he he's already kind of looking at at film
as a as a mythological storytelling device. Now you get
to Wayne, whom Ford sees as this you know, raw

(33:25):
and inherently charismatic figure who just embodies the everyman. And
so what do you do when you get a hunk
of clay like that, well you mold the hell out
of it. And so Ford, in his way, was relentlessly
bullying and just tortured the poor guy. But uh he

(33:53):
you know, according to I got Glenn Frankel's book about
the Searchers, The Making of American Legend, it's got a
lot of material about Stagecoach, some choice quotes from from Ford,
who was trying to kind of, you know, pull Wayne

(34:18):
out of you know, b movie filmmaking. He reportedly made
John Wayne wash his face over and over again in
a scene until his skin was raw, called him a
big dumb bastard. My favorite quote was, can't you walk,

(34:39):
for Christ's sakes instead of skipping around like a goddamn fairy?
You know, just just all these all these things. But
it's it's it's very much of a piece with the way,
you know, Ford saw his relationship with his own dad
and Wayne had you know, father issues. I don't I
don't want to get too freudy in here, but but
there is some of that, and I mean they've they've

(35:00):
Wayne talked about a little bit in interviews how he
kind of after the death of his own father kind
of looked to Ford as a father figure, and and
many writers have talked about how Ford himself looked at
Victor McLaughlin as a kind of similar figure as his

(35:25):
own father had been. And there's this great quote from
Claire Trevor. She said Ford took Duke by the chin
and shook him, said, why are you moving your mouth
so much? Don't you know you act with your mouth
that you don't act with your mouth and pictures you
act with your eyes. So just you know, just tore

(35:46):
him to pieces. And this this is going to prefigure
some of the abuse that Ford showers Wayne with, you know,
after World War Two. But but in this case, it
kind of fits in with Ford's understanding of the American

(36:10):
West as this place where men beat each other into
shape and it was a it was a matter of
life or death. And it's kind of strange to think
about that in the context of filmmaking, which is, you know,
not easy work, but it's not coal mining either. Yeah,

(36:34):
you know, these most of these actors are coming from
a Broadway stage out to Monument Valley and they're trying
to brush the dust off of their their shoulders, you know.
So it's it's this weird tension between a character in
the in the in the form of John Ford, who

(36:56):
you know, has very particular ideas about loyalty and how
to shape a performance and how to shape shape a man,
you know, uh into his idea of what an ideal

(37:19):
figure is. You know, this will keep psychologists uh in
business for a long time just analyzing the the relationships here.
But I I linger on it because this movie really

(37:40):
and it has a lot of similarities to The Big
Trail in that, you know, it's it's characters who are
defined by you know, single characteristics, are defined by their
professions and there and they're moving west and and there's
a revenge going on. But what's very different is that

(38:03):
each of the characters changes and that the character of
the Ringo Kid kind of goes through the forge, goes
you know, goes into it as the Ringo Kid and
comes out as as something more of a man. And

(38:25):
I think that's that's really where Stagecoach differs from so
many other Westerns of its time, and that it is
a very even though it's working with stock characters, there
there's very much a psychology at work. There's an interiority
to the film and a complexity to the film in

(38:48):
terms of the individual characters, but also the mythic slash
historical landscape that they're they're moving through.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree. I think one thing I
actually like in There's I can't think of too many
examples off the top of my head, but of Westerns
that take a kind of a character that might be
like a a trope or an archetype, but kind of

(39:21):
take a little more time to investigate that character. The
only example that I can think of off the top
of my head is actually in Johnny and Johnny Guitar.
There's a character who is your typical kind of like
a small and stature gunman who is maybe like too

(39:43):
big for his bridges and things he can kind of
shoot up, I guess she would say, but he's really
no match for Sterling Hayden in the movie, not that
they actually go head to head that much except for
the opening scene, but I feel like that movie they care,
They're more care in that character than you see in

(40:03):
that character previously, where the character is sometimes written for
humor or is just you know, dismissed, you know, by
the characters immediately and not seen again. But I think
that this movie does that kind of with all of
these characters.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
I would say, yeah, yeah, I think that's a good point.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
And now you wanted to get into the ensemble as
a kind of as a whole. Who did you want
to start with with that?

Speaker 3 (40:34):
Oh? Good question. There are so many great performances and
performers here. I guess I'll start with Claire Trevor. Right.
We mentioned she won an oscar for dead End.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
And.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
You know she she founded the aptly named Claire sc
Claire Trevor School of the Arts, which is still in business.
I mean, she's she was a theatrical actress, a very
strong film actress, did a lot of TV. Never became

(41:14):
a huge star. But one of her best performances later
in her career was another John Wayne film, The High
in the Mighty and where at this time John Wayne
did headline.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
And she's just great as Dallas. You know. Some critics
have pointed out that she's her character is both naive
and world weary, and she's a little bit older. She's
older than than Wayne in the in the film, and
that's really important too. She's got the she's she's experienced

(41:54):
things in life. And we'll talk about this more later.
But she's experienced things in life or character Dallas as
that Ringo is completely ignorant of. And yet she's also
still got this I don't want to overuse the word naivete,
but she's got this spunk in her, a kind of

(42:18):
why is everybody picking on me? Attitude that I think
makes her really appealing, especially to the Ringo character. So
she's just a real striking actress for this particular character.
So I found her really interesting.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, I to me, she gives my favorite performance in
the movie. I think she's tremendous in this.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
Yeah, especially in comparison. And I don't blame her for this,
But poor Luise Platte, she's stuck in a rather thankless
role where she's she's either she either looks like she's
about to vomit from her pregnancy or she looks like
she smelled something nasty whenever she looks.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
At Dallas or the doc.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
You know, her role, and others have pointed this out.
You know, she was a very much a theatrical actress
who came to Hollywood. She had just gotten to Hollywood
after a couple of years on Broadway in nineteen thirty eight,
so she was still learning to kind of restrain her performance,

(43:35):
and she's got a very patrician look, and so for
her to be a counterpart to Claire Trevor, I think
worked really well. Yeah, she doesn't really have a whole
lot to do here, yet she really anchors the whole
film because you know, her desire to get to her
husband is what keeps everyone together. And the fact that

(44:01):
she is pregnant has hidden that pregnancy and then has
a baby along the way adds to the dramatic impetus.
So she's she's very key in the role, and she
doesn't she doesn't have a whole lot of dialogue, but
she manages to convey her simultaneously simultaneous discomfort both social

(44:26):
and physical, along with the sort of regal bearing of
her social class. So I've found her performance really interesting
as well.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, Yeah, I think I think she's, like you said,
considering really how little she's given, I think that she
does make the most of it, for sure.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
Yeah, but you know you so you've you've said that
Claire Trevor was your favorite performance performance. Mine was actually
Burton Churchill, Okay, who plays a who plays the banker.
I thought he was fantastic.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, he is good. He and he and he definitely
does add a little bit of humor too.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
Gate would oh, yeah, he's got the best monologue of
the whole film. But one thing I found find really
interesting about Burton Churchill. He's a Canadian actor from Toronto,
and his casting is so ironic because here he is
this banker who's who's stolen money and constantly going on

(45:37):
to these uh Gilded age harangues about the government and
the the importance of bankers. Yeah, but in fact, in
real life, Burton Churchill was an activist union man in

(45:58):
in this early years were in theater in New York City,
became a foreman and leader of his union and in
the when he came out to Hollywood, he was one
of the first members of Actors Equity and helped form
the Screen Actors Guild in nineteen thirty three as one
of the original founders of the Screen Actors Guild. So

(46:22):
I find it so ironic that this guy who spent
so much of his energy supporting unions would play this
rapacious banker. So he was he along with of course
Thomas Mitchell as Doc get My Now. Mitchell won the

(46:45):
Oscar for this and he had a busy nineteen thirty
nine Good Grief. So Thomas Mitchell was in Stagecoach, Only Angels,
Half Wings, Mister Smith goes to Washington, Gone with the Wind,
and the Hunchback of Notre Dame in nineteen thirty nine. Geez,
john Ford, Howard, Hawks, Frank Kappra, Victor Fleming and William Dieterley.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Yeah, I forgot about the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I
actually I really love that that version of it. That's
Charles Lawton and Marina Harra.

Speaker 3 (47:15):
Right, yeah, and Mitchell plays Cloaping.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Okay, yeah, that's a great movie.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
Yeah, I mean, talk about talk about working for a living. Yeah,
what a what a what a great year. Mitchell won
Oscar Emmy, Ana Tony, and he would have gotten a Grammy.
He actually had a great disk track about Jimmy Stewart,

(47:45):
but nobody ever heard it.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
A disk track.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
I'm kidding. He dropped a Jimmy Stewart disc track, or
he would have got it would have been an egott
if that if that had gotten.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Released, Oh that sounds tremendous. That would have been a no.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
But I mean, you know, so Mitchell is an incredibly
talented actor. You know, another Irish American actor who'd worked
with Ford before on The Hurricane. And really this character
the doc is is the Ford surrogate, right, the the drunk,
the happy drunk who gets it together when he has

(48:22):
to to to kind of pull through. Gosh. And that's
only that's only half the cast that we've talked about. Yeah,
we've still got Andy Devine, We've got Tim Holt as
as curly.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Now, Tim Holt wasn't he somebody who tried to stand
up for John Wayne and like told John Ford to
basically like stop stop being so cruel towards him or
something like that.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
Yeah, I think so that was. That was a moment.
And he was a big presence, you know, which is
a thing to say when you've also got John Carrodane
in the cast. Yeah, so many big presences. I mean

(49:13):
even Donald Meek is a big presence. M hm. So yeah,
I mean the the people they have. Oh wait, I
said Tim Holt was curly. I'm wrong. Tim Holt was
the Lieutenant. Yes, George Bancroft was curly. But anyway, so

(49:36):
much talent crammed into that impossibly large stage coach. It's
like the interior that stage coach is kind of like
getting into the wardrobe from the line The Witch and
the Wardrobe. The outside is so small and then you
can have room for nine people or something.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Yet now and John Kerodine, I think he was also
in I think he was in Jesse James that year
as well. But I think he's really good in this.
I mean really, I don't think there's necessarily a week
week link in the cast. I think they're all not
at all pretty good for sure.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
Yeah, Oh, nineteen thirty nine for for Carrodane, Yeah, Jesse James,
Mister Moto's Last Warning, Three Musketeers, Hound of the Baskervilles,
Captain Fury five came back, Frontier Marshall and drums along
the Mohawk. So along the Mohawk? Did I say? Among anyway,

(50:43):
just it's hard to convey what a momentous year this was.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, you know, one thing with nineteen thirty nine I
wanted to talk about that goes across I think quite
a few movies is the Hayes code seemed to have
lightened up quite a bit this year, and I don't
really know of a reason why, But in particular, I
think with Gone with the Wind and Stage Coach and

(51:11):
maybe even Destrie Rides Again to some extent. I know
Deustrie Rides Again had some racy lines that had to
be censored, but I think they managed to slip some
things by. But I I know Dudley Nichols and John
Ford talked about this a little bit. In regards to
Stage Coach. Nichols said that Stage Coach violated all sensorial

(51:34):
cannons and and fortunately there's not a single respectable character.
The leading man has killed three people and then and
Nichols follow that up saying that the leading woman is
a prostitute, and so it does seem intentional on their
part to push the envelope. And With the Wind also
has a character that is a prostitute, and and in

(51:55):
both movies, like the characters do have a poor reputation
like in the movie, but I think both characters are
ones that you sympathize with, Like I think RTT Butler
talking about Belle Watson and Gone with the Wind has
a line where he says that she's one of the
finest people he knows, and it's a completely sincere line.

(52:17):
And with Dallas Claire Trevor and stagecoach, I think you
really care about her and her romance between her and Ringo,
which doesn't seem that seems like a hard thing to
get past the Hayes code at that time.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
Yeah, they rejected the treatment completely because of the sympathy
sympathetic portrayal of a drunk and a prostitute. But they
dialed it back, called her a saloon girl. It's heavily implied. Yeah,
I mean implied might not might be too soft a word,

(52:56):
especially once they once they get Lordsburg. Yeah, but but
it seems, you know, by uh, implying rather than than
saying it outright, that seemed to satisfied the censors, making

(53:19):
Doc a little more comedic and adding some some exposition
to indicate that Ringo was not just out for revenge.
But this is about retribution, right that the that these
guys deserve to die because their cold. Not only are

(53:40):
they cobleted murderers, but they killed Ringo's family, Right, that
kind of violence is okay?

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Oh, definitely anyone would support that.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Yeah, And you know, I haven't found anything more detailed
than that, just that they dial back the script a
little bit, and that that got them through with gone
with the Wind. You know, there's always levels of application

(54:14):
of the code. You know, the big spectacle movies, the
huge the mill pictures, they get away with stuff that
that smaller films just can't, you know, with regards to
sensuality and violence. And I think that was the case

(54:35):
with Gone with the Wind for sure.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. There are a couple more things
I want to touch on that I think sets Stagecoach
apart from other Westerns from nineteen thirty nine. Now, one
is the chase scene. I think it is truly spectacular.
I think I think it's the early like non comedic

(55:02):
or basically non buster Keaton like action scene that I
think is genuinely like kinetic and exciting. You're seeing the
stunts happening like in a single take and it and
it makes them, you know, all the more impressive. And
it's a pretty extended scene. I think it's around eight minutes.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Long, and the build up too.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Yeah wait for it. Yeah, now, I think, like dot,
I mentioned Dodge City's saloon brawl, which I do think
is probably my second favorite action scene from that year,
but I don't think it comes close to reaching the
heights of this scene. But but can you talk about
the action and how Ford shoots this scene.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
Yeah, I mean it's it's quite kinetic, and a lot
of the a lot of the action is conveyed by
Ford breaking the rules. The one hundred and eighty degree
rule is tossed out the window right this this the

(56:11):
chase is shot from all directions, all perspectives. It's and
quite dangerous too, you know. So Yakima Canutt had had
worked with Wayne since nineteen thirty two as a double,

(56:38):
and Wayne himself had learned a lot of stunt technique
how to fall off a horse, for example, from canutting.
Canutt did the stunt riding in stage coach, the most
famous one being jumping on from the stage coach onto

(56:59):
the horse train, dropping from the horse trains onto the ground,
and then allowing the stage coach to pass over him
at full speed, which, as you mentioned, the Buster Heaton
type of stunt. This was the ultimate example. Ford dug
divots so that he could put the cameras under you know,

(57:22):
in the ground and get some under undercarriage shots of
horses in the in the stage coach just so. And
of course the technology had improved over the last decades,
so having a speedier camera cars and trucks made things,

(57:46):
made a lot more things possible. Wayne himself contributed to
some of the very similitude of the scenes, especially some
of the quieter scenes, in pointing out that a lot
of times the rains looked slack in Andy Devine's hands,

(58:09):
and he recommended some elastic that held the reins taught
even even when the stage coach was still. And little
touches like that I think add as much to the

(58:29):
excitement as the stunts themselves. Yeah, just to and I
think also there's a psychological impact to the Indigenous characters
being you know, held off screen for so long, and
they're represented by just that you know, uh, what's the

(58:51):
word metanem of drama dramamo m h. We just keep
hearing drawn dramamo over and over, and then when the
attack finally comes, it's this faceless horde and you know,
no surprise here the It's it's well known that the

(59:11):
indigenous characters are portrayed as as savages and they're barely
on the screen at all, which might be merciful in
a way. Of course, Forward, probably more than any other
director of his generation, was sympathetic to Indigenous people. And

(59:32):
and and employed indigenous actors as much as possible, and
that was the case here. But yeah, they're they're whooping
and hollering savages in this film, and there's no way
around that. But the build up and the fact that
we don't see them until this climactic chase adds to

(59:53):
the tension for sure. The heat you can kind of
feel it, as as the case characters kind of sip
on the canteen right before. I don't know, I'm I
have no like unified description of the action, just a
couple of snapshots of things that I think are really

(01:00:16):
cool about it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
Yeah, No, it's very well done. I think you could
show this to people who don't even who aren't familiar
with classic movies at all and are only familiar with
kind of what's being released now, and I think that
they would still find it exciting even compared to modern action,

(01:00:39):
because I think I was. When we talked the other day,
I had referenced that, like I felt like Fury Road
the chase must have been influenced by by this scene.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
Oh for sure, Yeah, how could it not? So I've
seen this movie at least a dozen times in my life,
but this was the first time in about a decade,
and while I still found myself really riveted by the
action sequences, this time I was much more taken with

(01:01:11):
the long sequence in the middle act of the birth
of the baby. And there were just some amazing compositions,
these long hallway shots with shadows and the interaction of
the men, the change in Donald Meek's peacock character from

(01:01:36):
being well meek to asserting himself more because if there's
one thing he knows, it's children. He's had five himself.
And of course the moment where Doc has to drink
a pot of coffee, get his act together and deliver
the baby Dallas, you know, breaks the social barrier and

(01:02:05):
you know there's no there's no stopping her because they
need her. None of the men can can do what
she can do. The the scenes of the men kind
of gathered around the fire having coffee and talking quietly
with each other. These these moments, these these character development moments,

(01:02:29):
were so compelling to me this time around. And one
detail that I noticed that I hadn't noticed before was
in conversation between Curly and Ringo, where Curly is kind
of interrogating Ringo about his marriage proposal to Dallas, because

(01:02:56):
it's it's clear that Ringo may not know that Dallas
is a sex worker, right in, a prostitute, right, And
I thought this was a great bit of dialogue. Curly
asks Ringo how old were you when you went to prison?
And Ringo says seventeen, and Curly goes, oh, right, right,

(01:03:22):
And that look tells the audience, Oh, Ringo is a virgin,
has no idea about relations between men and women. He's
idealized Dallas, right, and now he's setting himself up for
disaster because as soon as he finds out what she is,
he's going to reject her. He's gonna turn violent, you know,

(01:03:43):
et cetera, et cetera. And that's really what we're set
up for, is that there'll be this disappointment. But I
also was really interested in it because, you know, this
is a film about men and manhood, and especially the
sort of developing manhood of of Ringo. So too, to

(01:04:10):
indicate that he is still truly a kid in so
many ways out on this vendetta that is likely to
get him killed just raises the stakes even more. And
you I found myself, even though I'd seen the movie
so many times, I found myself looking for indications that

(01:04:32):
in John Wayne's performance that Ringo might actually know the
score with with Dallas or when he does eventually find
out if he's if he's disappointed. But I found that he,
you know, maintained his and I guess that's the that's
the whole happy ending conceit, right, that he maintains his

(01:04:56):
interest in her and doesn't seem to care that she
is older, more experienced in every way, and you know,
has that that stigma attached to her as as Doc says,
we're the victims of a foul disease called social prejudice

(01:05:17):
my child, you know, So that those little details meant
a lot more to me this time than they had
in previous views.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Yeah. One line that stood out to me this time around,
uh that John Wayne says to Ringo, says to Dallas,
is she says something along the lines of you know,
you don't even know about me, and he says, like,
I know all I need to know, isn't it. Yeah,

(01:05:51):
based on the way that she held the baby or
something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Yeah, yeah, which you know it might be setting up
Dallas for some disappointment. Yeah, Like this guy really doesn't
know what what's what does he There's a lot more
to it than just holding the baby. But but but
her tenderness, right, and her her capability of being steely

(01:06:18):
and tough and also tender. Going back to the the
chasing this the the attack. Boy, oh boy, I don't
I don't know how she kept that baby from getting shaken.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
To Yeah that was something, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
Suspension of disbelief there. But you know, if you can
protect a baby during an Indian attack, then you're probably
a good wife material in that era.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
Oh absolutely, yeah, that that was probably essential for finding
a mate.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
So that, Yeah, those little moments Gatewood's amazing monologue where
and it's such a perfect monologue coming out of the
Great Depression. You know, he's pissed off and saying, you know,
they're even talking about having bank examiners, as if we

(01:07:19):
bankers don't know how to run our own banks, you know,
And he says America, for Americans, the government must not
interfere with business. Reduced taxes. Our national debt is something shocking.
What this country needs is a businessman for president. This
is nineteen thirty nine. I was like, oh boy, this
guy must have written a certain someone's campaign narrative, but

(01:07:47):
it reminds us that these issues have been with us
from the beginning. And I love gay would also creates
an interesting owner point to the Ringo kid. Right, there
are two types of men, right. Ringo is this idealistic

(01:08:08):
violent also but but idealistic, you know, avatar of what
would become the American dream, right, going out taming the
land and building a ranch and you know a place
where a man could live. Right. And Gatewood is this

(01:08:28):
eastern relic of you know, proto Gilded Age greed and
the fact that he is has robbed his own bank
and is fleeing west is to escape his awful wife,
right who's head and pecking him to death? Right, creating

(01:08:52):
a counterpart right against Ringo and and Dallas. And it does.
It's such a subtle in retrospect parallel, but it contrasts, right,
these two views of the American myth.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
Yeah, now you had mentioned the way that they shoot,
like some of the compositions during the childbirth scene. Oh yeah,
isn't there shots in this that are kind of down
a hallway where characters are framed at through a door. Yeah, yeah, which,
of course that shows up in the searchers and I
just watched Straight Shooting, Ford's movie from nineteen I think

(01:09:41):
it's nineteen seventeen, and that happens I think twice in
that movie. It's just something, it's like a visual motif
that he had always sort of had.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
Yeah, that threshold and the shot that I'm thinking of
in Stagecoach. I mean it's almost I mean a youngion
or some or it, and might think of it as
womb like, right, because it's this soft, darkened passage with
a light at the end and a door that's kind

(01:10:09):
of to the side, right, and instead of the door
being straight on, you have to turn into it, and
the lighting is almost noir ish.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
It is, right. It's this, it's this transition into the
realm of childbirth, birth and motherhood. This this sort of
a future, right that that all of the men are
toiling to protect, right, and and in this in that sequence,

(01:10:45):
all of their bullshit right comes to an end because
everything is for the next generation.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
It's kind of kind of a amazing the way the
movie quiets down in this moment.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
Now, one thing we haven't touched on yet is Monument Valley. Right,
So this is Ford's first time shooting there and he
would return six more times. And Ford he said that
it was his favorite location to shoot in, and I

(01:11:27):
think he says that it had everything land had to offer.
It was most and it was the most beautiful place
on earth. And he also said something He said that
he thinks the real star of his Westerns is the land.
Now I'm not crazy about the city is a character
in the movie type of commentary. I think I've just

(01:11:50):
heard it so much that it's become kind of a
joke to me. But I think you can't deny that
Ford's Westerns, and I think westerns in general, since so
many of them are are shot on location, the more
unique it is, the more it's going to add to

(01:12:12):
the experience of watching the movie. And Monument Valley now
it's a Navajo Nation reservation alongah the Utah and Arizona border,
and stage Coach was not the first movie shot on there.
In nineteen twenty five, there was a movie based on
a Zane Gray novel called The Vanishing American that was

(01:12:34):
shot there, and then another Zane Gray adaptation, The Lone
Star Ranger, was shot there in nineteen thirty and they
didn't use Monument Valley in stage coach as much as
they do in later Ford movies. And none of the
stars of the movie were on We're at Monument Valley
to shoot. It was just Doubles and the cavalrymen and

(01:12:57):
Native Americans and then the the big action set piece
was shot in the Mahave Desert. But will did you
have any other background on Monument Valley?

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
So and this is a perfect you know, when the
legend becomes fact print the legend story, because there are
competing versions of how Ford came to No Monument Valley.
He told Peter Bogdanovich that he found it himself while

(01:13:30):
driving through Arizona on his way to Santa Fe. John
Wayne said that he told Ford about the valley after
working on a film nearby, and the actor Georgia O'Brien
claimed that he was the one who first told Ford
about it. So already, right, there's this shroud of mystery.
Willa Cathere had written about Monument Valley and called it

(01:13:53):
one of God's unfinished construction sites and referred to it
as symbolic of the incompleteness of the West right, that
God has not quite finished creating this land which is
perfect for the type of mythology that we're looking at.

(01:14:17):
The story that Glenn Frankel, author of The Searchers Making
of an American Legend, says as most plausible is a
story from Harry Golding, who was a sheepherder son from
Colorado who first encounter Monument Valley in nineteen twenty one

(01:14:39):
and ran a trading post out there and sold goods
to the Navajos. And Harry eventually got connected with a
Hollywood moving company around nineteen thirty eight and went to
Los Angeles and somehow got into Ford's office to show

(01:15:05):
him a set of photographs that the German photographer Joseph
Munch had taken of the valley, and that when pat
Ford saw the photos, he immediately took them to his father,
and that that is how things got going. So you

(01:15:29):
know in a way that the truth is kind of
the boring right of reality, right, Like for Ford's story
is I just drove and came upon it. But the
reality is most likely this guy who had been toiling
there for years, got some pictures taken and went to
Los Angeles and said, hey, wouldn't this be a great location.

(01:15:53):
But that's not a good legend.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
Right, right, Yeah. Now, Now, Georgia O'Brien, he said he
told h Ford about it, and he's actually in the
Lone Star Ranger, which you know was shot there. And
also Ward Bond is an uncredited role in Lone Star
Ranger as well.

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):
Yeah, so that could be that could be it as well.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
Yeah, you know this is this.

Speaker 3 (01:16:22):
Is one of those Yeah again, this is one of
those man who shot Liberty Balance moments. We aren't exactly
sure how Ford got connected with Monument Valley, but certainly
once he did, he made the most of it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
Yeah. And I think in our Ford v. Nichols series
will present it in both ways or or multiple ways,
just just just for the fun of it. Sure, Yeah,
but did now? I think that's all I've really God,
but do you have anything else to add?

Speaker 3 (01:17:05):
I think that you know, the final shootout there, there's
a moment where the movie could go two different ways. Right,
There's a moment where Dallas asks Ringo to let it
go and just take her to his ranch. But much
much as a as in The Big Trail, right, he

(01:17:28):
can't do it. There's this thing called Frontier Justice, right, Yeah,
and the shootout is well, the build up to the
shootout is what makes it great, right, you know the moment,
the moment says the trio are gathering in the saloon,
getting ready to go against Ringo, and there's nerves, you know,

(01:17:52):
bottles getting dropped and knocked over. Doc comes in to
announce that the that Ringo will be here soon. Right,
there's there's a lot of great tension. And then the
shootout itself is like two seconds long, right yeah, Wayne
just dropping to the ground and you hear you hear
a bunch shots you don't really see. And this is

(01:18:14):
this is in keeping with the the original story where
you in the story you don't it doesn't describe the
the shootout. You just characters just hear the the the shots.
And that's that's pretty much. I mean, you you see
some of the shootout, you see, but you don't see
the bullets hitting anybody. So for a minute, you're not

(01:18:37):
sure if Ringo makes it or not. Right, and and
yet you know, while it's a satisfying shootout and it's
it's done well and it leads to, you know, a
great send off scene, it would have been such a well,
it would have been an unsatisfying move from audiences mostly

(01:19:00):
if Wayne and high tailed it out of there with
with uh with Claire Trevor and let the Outlaws live.
So I get that, but uh, it is interesting that
there's this moment where he wavers and and uh considers
just letting it go.

Speaker 2 (01:19:18):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, Yeah it is Yeah, yeah, I agree.
The build up is fantastic and uh yeah, the shootout
is yeah. I mean all you really see is him
fall to the ground shooting, and that's really it. But yeah,
overall though, I I do, I do think it's it's
it's a pretty pretty good ending.

Speaker 3 (01:19:40):
It's it's such a mcguffin in many ways because by
the end of the chase saying you almost forget about it. Yes,
it's it's it's almost like tacked on at the end.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
Yeah, it's funny. I had u recently. One of the
movies that I reviewed recently was Hang Them High. And
in that movie, there is a scene where Clint Eastwood
goes into this house. There's kind of a there's like

(01:20:20):
a standoff between him and three other characters who he's
you know, she's trying to get revenge, but he's also
like a lawman, and he ends up he takes out
two of the guys and then the final guy who's
like the head Hancho, he hangs himself and it feels

(01:20:43):
finished there. But there's actually three more people who were
part of this lynch mob that are still technically wanted
and he hasn't gotten them yet, and it and the
story felt so complete there that I didn't think it

(01:21:04):
needed to go on. And so I do agree. Like
at the end of the chase the movie, this movie
also sort of has that same feeling where it kind
of feels done. Yeah, now the last thing we need
to do? Now will I know you're not huge into
the socials if but where can people follow you? Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:21:26):
Right? Yeah? No, I'm going to get better about it.
I am at W. Dodson fifty two on Instagram, Twitter,
and Blue Sky. I mostly post on Instagram, but I
am going to increase my presence on the other two,
in particular around the at Mutant Family community of Joe

(01:21:55):
Bob Briggs fandom. I've been connecting with a couple folks
in there, and we have some projects coming along the
way later in twenty twenty five that I'll promote as
we get closer to it. So at W Dots and
fifty two Instagram, Blue Sky and X or Twitter.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
All Right, Will, Well, this was tremendous.

Speaker 3 (01:22:21):
Thank you, thank you. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:22:28):
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. I had a
great time talking with Will about Stage Coach and westerns
from the era in general, and hopefully was something a
little different than what you may have heard about Stage
Coach previously. Let me know what you thought of this
week's episode and let me know where you think Stage
Coach ranks in John Wayne's western filmography. You can reach
me by email at Tumbleweeds and Tvcowboys at gmail dot com.

(01:22:48):
You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and X. All
the links are in the show notes. Next week, I
have a new guest. Film historian Amanda Reyes is joining
me for a discussion on a Western made for TV
movie called The Devil and Miss Sarah. This is a
pretty obscure movie, and I've put the link to where
you can watch it in the show notes for anyone
who wants to check it out. Until then, if you're
looking for more film related podcasts, please check out other

(01:23:10):
shows on the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 4 (01:23:15):
Hey, this is Jason Kleeberg from the Force five Podcast
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Speaker 1 (01:23:52):
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