Stagecoach is a 1939 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring Claire Trevor and John Wayne in his breakthrough role. The screenplay by Dudley Nichols is an adaptation of "The Stage to Lordsburg", a 1937 short story by Ernest Haycox. The film follows a group primarily composed of strangers riding on a stagecoach through dangerous Apache territory.
Charles Bronson was an American actor. He was known for his roles in action films and his "granite features and brawny physique". Bronson was born into extreme poverty in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, a coal mining town in the Allegheny Mountains. Bronson's father, a miner, died when Bronson was young. Bronson himself worked in the mines as well until joining the United States Army Air Forces in 1943 to fight in World War II. After his service, he joined a theatrical troupe and studied acting. During the 1950s, he played various supporting roles in motion pictures and television, including anthology drama TV series in which he would appear as the main character. Near the end of the decade, he had his first cinematic leading role in Machine-Gun Kelly (1958).
Rio Grande is a 1950 American romantic Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. It is the third installment of Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", following two RKO Pictures releases: Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). Wayne plays the lead in all three films, as Captain Kirby York in Fort Apache, then as Captain Nathan Brittles in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and finally as a promoted Lieutenant Colonel Kirby Yorke in Rio Grande. Rio Grande's supporting cast features Ben Johnson, Claude Jarman Jr., Harry Carey Jr., Chill Wills, J. Carrol Naish, Victor McLaglen, Grant Withers, the Western singing group the Sons of the Pioneers and Stan Jones.
Broken Arrow is a 1950 American Western film directed by Delmer Daves and starring James Stewart, Jeff Chandler and Debra Paget. The film is based on historical figures, but fictionalizes their story in dramatized form. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Film Promoting International Understanding. Film historians have said that the film was one of the first major Westerns since the Second World War to portray the Indians sympathetically.
Lee Patrick was an American actress whose career began in 1922 on the New York stage with her role in The Bunch and Judy which headlined Adele Astaire and featured Adele's brother Fred Astaire.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is a 1949 American Technicolor Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. It is the second film in Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", along with Fort Apache (1948) and Rio Grande (1950). With a budget of $1.6 million, the film was one of the most expensive Westerns made up to that time. It was a major hit for RKO. The film is named after "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon", a song popular with the US military.
Fort Apache is a 1948 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Henry Fonda. The film was the first of the director's "Cavalry Trilogy" and was followed by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950), both also starring Wayne. The screenplay was inspired by James Warner Bellah's short story "Massacre" (1947). The historical sources for "Massacre" have been attributed both to George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn and to the Fetterman Fight.
Hondo is a 1953 Warnercolor 3D Western film directed by John Farrow and starring John Wayne and Geraldine Page. The screenplay is based on the 1952 Collier's short story "The Gift of Cochise" by Louis L'Amour. The book Hondo was a novelization of the film also written by L'Amour, and published by Gold Medal Books in 1953. The supporting cast features Ward Bond, James Arness and Leo Gordon.
The Plainsman is a 1936 American Western film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. The film presents a highly fictionalized account of the adventures and relationships between Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill Cody, and General George Custer, with a gun-runner named Lattimer as the main villain. The film is notorious for mixing timelines and even has an opening scene with Abraham Lincoln setting the stage for Hickok's adventures. Anthony Quinn has an early acting role as an Indian. A remake using the same title was released in 1966.
Sergeant Rutledge is a 1960 American Technicolor Western film directed by John Ford and starring Jeffrey Hunter, Constance Towers, Woody Strode and Billie Burke. The title was also used for the novelization published in the same year. 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. In 2017, film 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."
Orphans of the Storm is a 1921 American silent drama film by D. W. Griffith set in late-18th-century France, before and during the French Revolution.
Ray Danton was a radio, film, stage, and television actor, director, and producer whose most famous roles were in the screen biographies The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) and The George Raft Story (1962). He was married to actress Julie Adams from 1954 to 1981.
Ambush is a 1950 American Western film starring Robert Taylor, John Hodiak and Arlene Dahl. Directed by Sam Wood, the film is based on the serial story Ambush by Luke Short in The Saturday Evening Post.
40 Guns to Apache Pass is a 1967 American Western film directed by William Witney and starring Audie Murphy.
Bob Woodward was an American actor of film and television. Best known for his role in The Range Rider (1951–1953).
American actor Bob Steele, and his twin brother Bill were the sons of film director Robert N. Bradbury. The twins began their acting career in the silent film The Adventures of Bill and Bob, directed by their father, and continued in a series of Bradbury Sr.'s film shorts. Bill later pursued a career in medicine. Bob continued to act under his real name, until The Mojave Kid when he was billed as Bob Steele. During his career of more than 100 films and television shows between 1920 and 1974, he was known primarily for his work in Westerns. Steele appeared as the recurring character of Tucson Smith in 20 of the Three Mesquiteers serials produced by Republic Pictures. He became familiar to America's television audiences for his recurring role as Trooper Duffy in the comedy series F Troop.
Arizona Terror is a 1931 American pre-Code Western film directed by Phil Rosen and starring Ken Maynard, Lina Basquette and Hooper Atchley.
Jodie Copelan was an American film editor who worked on dozens of B movies and TV shows from the late 1940s through the 1970s.
Johnny Firecloud is a 1975 American exploitation horror thriller film directed by William Castleman and starring Victor Mohica, Ralph Meeker, and David Canary. Its plot follows a Native American who, after serving in the Vietnam War, returns to his New Mexico desert hometown to find it victimized by a domineering white rancher, and enacts revenge.
Hom Wing Gim, known professionally as H.W. Gim, was a Chinese-American film and television character actor who had a career from 1937 to 1972. While most of his parts were smaller, often-uncredited roles, Gim was occasionally given a more substantial supporting roles such as in many John Wayne films such as In Old California (1942) and McLintock! (1963).
