Stagecoach (1939)

Stagecoach (1939)*****

Produced by Walter Wanger

Distributed by United Artists

Director: John Ford

   When we left off last, we were looking at the build-up of the western through the 1930s and I had great plans for getting through the endless list of John Wayne B-movies. To get a fresh start let's jump right through the 30s and go straight to the big one. I am of course talking about Stagecoach. This was the standard for all westerns to come until the disgruntled westerns of the 1970s. John Ford's first western starring John Wayne with outdoor sequences shot against the backdrop of Monument Valley. Ford had made many westerns in the silent era but this was his first talkie western. John Wayne, as we know, had starred in The Big Trail in 1930 but expensive production and innovative technology in the midst of the Great Depression proved unsound and Wayne would spend the next 9 years making B-movies in Poverty Row. Stagecoach would lead both Ford and Wayne into the limelight during the golden-age of the western.

Stagecoach is set in the Arizona and New Mexico territories in the 1880s. For the younger viewers I would like to point out that this film is essentially The Breakfast Club except instead of teenagers you have a random assortment of townspeople and instead of detention they are all in a stagecoach bound for Lordsburg, New Mexico in Geronimo-led Apache territory. There are social misfits (drunk Doc Boone(Thomas Mitchell) a prostitute (Claire Trevor) a whiskey salesman(Donald Meek) and a well-to-do officer's wife (Louise Platt). Along the way they run into the Ringo Kid(John Wayne) who recently escaped from jail and is headed to Lordsburg to kill his father & brother's murderers. Throw in a double-dealing banker(Burton Churchill) and a southern gentleman (John Carradine – yep David's father) for good measure along with the Marshal(George Bancroft) and a comedic driver(Andy Devine) and you wonder how the heck so many people fit in a stagecoach. Sure westerns were around before this but after this the studios knew they could make money with them!