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.
John Martin Feeney, known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and producer. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and was one of the first American directors to be recognized as an auteur. In a career of more than 50 years, he directed over 140 films between 1917 and 1965, and received six Academy Awards including a record four wins for Best Director for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952).
Wardell Edwin Bond was an American film character actor who appeared in more than 200 films and starred in the NBC television series Wagon Train from 1957 to 1960. Among his best-remembered roles are Bert the cop in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Captain Clayton in John Ford's The Searchers (1956). As a character actor, Bond frequently played cowboys, cops and soldiers.
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.
The Apache Wars were a series of armed conflicts between the United States Army and various Apache tribal confederations fought in the southwest between 1849 and 1886, though minor hostilities continued until as late as 1924. After the Mexican–American War in 1846, the United States annexed conflicted territory from Mexico which was the home of both settlers and Apache tribes. Conflicts continued as American settlers came into traditional Apache lands to raise livestock and crops and to mine minerals.
Benjamin Franklin "Frank" McGrath was an American television and film actor and stunt performer who played the comical, optimistic cook with the white beard, Charlie B. Wooster, on the western series Wagon Train for five seasons on NBC and then three seasons on ABC. McGrath appeared in all 272 episodes in the eight seasons of the series, which had ended its run only two years before his death. McGrath's Wooster character hence provided the meals and companionship for both fictional trail masters, Ward Bond as Seth Adams and John McIntire as Christopher "Chris" Hale.
Jesse Kenneth Tobey was an American actor active from the early 1940s into the 1990s, with over 200 credits in film, theatre, and television. He is best known for his role as a captain who takes charge of an Arctic military base when it is attacked by a plant-based alien in The Thing from Another World (1951), and a starring role in the 1957-1960 Desilu Productions TV series Whirlybirds.
Francis Ford was an American film actor, writer and director. He was the mentor and elder brother of film director John Ford. As an actor, director and producer, he was one of the first filmmakers in Hollywood.
Major Dundee is a 1965 American Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Jim Hutton, and James Coburn. Written by Harry Julian Fink, the film is about a Union cavalry officer who leads a contentious troop of Army regulars, Confederate prisoners, and Indian scouts on an expedition into Mexico during the American Civil War to destroy a band of Apaches who have been raiding United States bases and settlements in the New Mexico territory. Major Dundee was filmed in various locations in Mexico. The movie was filmed in Eastman Color by Pathécolor, print by Technicolor.
John Arthur Doucette was an American character actor who performed in more than 280 film and television productions between 1941 and 1987. A man of stocky build who possessed a deep, rich voice, he proved equally adept at portraying characters in Shakespearean plays, Westerns, and modern crime dramas. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for his villainous roles as a movie and television "tough guy".
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.
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.
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."
Duel at Diablo is a 1966 American Western film starring James Garner in his first Western after leaving the long-running tv series Maverick, as well as Sidney Poitier in his first ever Western. Based on Marvin H. Albert's 1957 novel Apache Rising, the film was co-written by Albert and Michael M. Grilikhes; it was directed by Ralph Nelson, who had directed Poitier in Lilies of the Field. The supporting cast includes Bibi Andersson, Bill Travers, Dennis Weaver and John Hoyt; Ralph Nelson has a cameo as an Army Major. The movie was shot on location amidst striking scenery in southern Utah; the musical score was composed by Neal Hefti.
James Warner Bellah was an American Western author from the 1930s to the 1950s. His pulp-fiction writings on cavalry and Indians were published in paperbacks or serialized in the Saturday Evening Post.
Escape from Fort Bravo is a 1953 American Anscocolor Western film set during the American Civil War. Directed by John Sturges it stars William Holden, Eleanor Parker, and John Forsythe.
Only the Valiant, also known as Fort Invincible, is a 1951 American Western film produced by William Cagney, directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Gregory Peck, Barbara Payton, and Ward Bond. The screenplay was written by Edmund H. North and Harry Brown, based on the 1943 novel of the same name by Charles Marquis Warren.
Indian Uprising is a 1952 American Western film directed by Ray Nazarro and starring George Montgomery, Audrey Long and Carl Benton Reid.
Harry Shannon was an American character actor. He often appeared in Western films.
The Last Outpost is a 1951 American Technicolor Western film directed by Lewis R. Foster, set in the American Civil War with brothers on opposite sides. This film is character actor Burt Mustin's film debut at the age of 67.
