The Zacharys are a thriving and respected family on the Texas frontier. Father Will Zachary was killed by KiowaIndians, leaving his oldest son Ben (Burt Lancaster) head of the family. Ben and his mother Mattilda (Lillian Gish) are very protective of Rachel (Audrey Hepburn), who was adopted as an infant; she is doted on by the whole family, including her other brothers Cash (Audie Murphy) and Andy (Doug McClure). The family is supported by their neighbor and Ben's business partner, Zeb Rawlins (Charles Bickford); Zeb's shy son Charlie (Albert Salmi) wants to marry Rachel, which concerns Ben.
During preparations for a cattle drive to Wichita, Kansas, the family is unsettled by the appearance of Abe Kelsey (Joseph Wiseman), who claims that Rachel is Indian by birth. Believing this to be a lie, Ben and Cash engage in a gunfight with Kelsey, killing his horse. Kelsey then steals Rachel's beloved white stallion. Later, a group of Kiowa led by Lost Bird appears and offers Ben horses in exchange for handing over Rachel. Lost Bird claims that she is actually his sister, and that an old white man told him so.
Soon after, Charlie–to whom Ben has decided to give permission to court Rachel–is killed by the Kiowa. In her grief, Charlie's mother accuses Rachel of being a "dirty Injun". Ben leads the ranchers in tracking down Kelsey, and they bring him back to the Rawlins ranch to hang him as a horse thief.
With a noose around his neck, Kelsey tells the gathered ranchers that, on a retaliatory raid against the Kiowa that he led with Will Zachary, he found a baby girl and was about to kill her when Will intervened and took the baby as his own. Kelsey claims that his own son was captured by the Kiowa and ransomed for Rachel's return, but Will refused. Ben intervenes and tells the gathered group the story he knows, that Kelsey's son was actually killed in the fighting, and that Kelsey invented the story and followed them from town to town, poisoning peoples' minds wherever they moved.
Mattilda, driven to the edge by Kelsey's accusations, strikes the horse on which Kelsey is seated, so it runs out from under him, hanging him. Despite protestations that Kelsey was insane, her actions convince Zeb that Kelsey was telling the truth, and he tells Ben to give Rachel to the Kiowa or their partnership will be broken. Ben refuses, and all of the ranchers turn their backs on the Zacharys.
Back at their homestead, Mattilda admits to her family that Will took the Kiowa baby and brought her home to replace an infant daughter they had just lost. Cash, unable to accept an Indian as his sister, abandons the family and spends the night with Georgia Rawlins. The Kiowa return to the Zachary ranch in force, demanding Rachel, who tries to save her family by going over to the Kiowa. To stop her, Ben deliberately breaks the truce by ordering Andy to kill a Kiowa, which touches off a bloody siege. Facing down death, Ben expresses a desire to marry Rachel should they survive. During a break in the fighting, the Kiowa camped nearby play music on their pipes and drums, and the Zacharys play a Mozart composition on their piano. However, Kiowa riders attack and destroy the piano, resuming the fight.
When the Kiowa stampede cattle over the roof of the house, the family sets it on fire and takes shelter in the root cellar. Mattilda, who had been shot earlier, succumbs to her wounds and dies. Almost out of ammunition, Ben embraces Andy and Rachel, and Rachel and he passionately kiss. Just as the family is about to be overwhelmed, a penitent Cash returns and begins fighting the attacking Kiowa warriors. Ben joins him shortly thereafter and together they turn the tide by fighting off the remaining Kiowa. Rachel, protecting a wounded Andy, is confronted by Lost Bird, who enters the house. After a tense moment, she shoots and kills him. With the rest of the tribe gone, Rachel and her brothers exit the house together and watch a flock of geese fly through the sky.
Publicity photo of Lancaster and Hepburn during filming.
The Unforgiven was the final Hecht-Hill-Lancaster (HHL) production. It had a projected budget of $3 million, which expanded to $5.5 million. Original screenwriter JP Miller was replaced by Ben Maddow, original director Delbert Mann was replaced by John Huston, and plans for Richard Burton in the role that eventually went to Audie Murphy were stopped when Burton demanded equal billing with Burt Lancaster, which Lancaster refused.[2]
Production was suspended for several months in 1959 after Hepburn broke her back when she fell off a horse while rehearsing a scene. Although she eventually recovered, the accident was blamed for a subsequent miscarriage that Hepburn suffered. According to several published biographies of Hepburn, she blamed herself for the accident and all but disowned the film, although she did complete it when she was well enough to return to work. Hepburn stepped away from acting the next year to give birth to another child, returning to the screen with Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).[3]
Huston battled with HHL, the production company financing the film, because HHL wanted a more commercial and less controversial film, while Huston wanted to make a statement about racism in America.[4] The result was that neither side received exactly what it had wanted.[5]
Huston's cinematographer of choice, Oswald Morris, was unavailable, causing Huston to not talk to Morris for several years.[6]
John Saxon had signed a three-picture deal with HHL.[7] Scenes featuring Saxon were deleted without the director's consent.[8]
The name "Lost Bird" is applied by some Plains Indian tribes to native children adopted by whites. It was popularized by Zintkala Nuni, a HunkpapaLakotah survivor of the Wounded Knee Massacre, taken by Leonard Wright Colby and raised by his wife Clara Bewick Colby, whose widely circulated feminist newspaper The Woman's Tribune carried a column on Zintkala for many years. The Lost Bird Society helps to reunite these adopted children with their birth families.[9]
Reception
In 1968, Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic described the film as "ludicrous".[10] Bosley Crowther, in his review for The New York Times, stated that Huston "who made a "different" Western in his The Treasure of Sierra Madre, has obviously tried to make another in The Unforgiven," and "the gritty aspect of the ranching frontier, the tough, robust nature of its people, the touchiness of the mystery are all well and tensely brought together within Mr. Huston's crunching scenes," but that "Those who expect to see a settlement of the racial question will not be satisfied."[11]
Burton Stephen Lancaster was an American actor and film producer. Initially known for playing tough guys with a tender heart, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year career in films and television series. He was a four-time nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and he also won two BAFTA Awards and one Golden Globe Award for Best Lead Actor. The American Film Institute ranks Lancaster as #19 of the greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 and the BAFTA Fellowship in 1980.
Audrey Kathleen Hepburn was a British actress. Recognised as a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend from the Classical Hollywood cinema and was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List.
William Wyler was a German-born American film director and producer. Known for his work in numerous genres over five decades, he received numerous awards and accolades, including three Academy Awards. He holds the record of twelve nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director. For his oeuvre of work, Wyler was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award, and the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award.
Ingeborg Hermine Morath was an Austrian photographer. In 1953, she joined the Magnum Photos Agency, founded by top photographers in Paris, and became a full photographer with the agency in 1955. Morath was the third wife of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller; their daughter is screenwriter/director Rebecca Miller.
The year 1948 in film involved some significant events.
Audie Leon Murphy was an American soldier, actor, and songwriter. He was widely celebrated as the most decorated American combat soldier of World War II, and has been described as the most highly decorated soldier in U.S. history. He received every military combat award for valor available from the United States Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor that he demonstrated at the age of 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, before leading a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition.
John Saxon was an American actor who worked on more than 200 film and television projects during a span of 60 years. He was known for his work in Westerns and horror films, often playing police officers and detectives.
Frances Louise Fisher is an American actress. She began her career in theater and later starred as Detective Deborah Saxon in the CBS daytime soap opera The Edge of Night (1955). In film, she is known for her roles in Unforgiven (1992), Titanic (1997), True Crime (1999), House of Sand and Fog (2003), Laws of Attraction (2004), The Kingdom (2007), In the Valley of Elah (2007), Jolene (2008), The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), and The Host (2013). From 2014 to 2015, Fisher starred in the ABC drama series Resurrection. In 2019, she starred in the HBO television series Watchmen, a sequel to the graphic novel of the same name.
Charles Ambrose Bickford was an American actor known for supporting roles. He was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Song of Bernadette (1943), The Farmer's Daughter (1947) and Johnny Belinda (1948). His other roles include Whirlpool (1950), A Star Is Born (1954) and The Big Country (1958).
Albert Salmi was an American actor of stage, film, and television. Best known for his work as a character actor, he appeared in over 150 film and television productions.
Harold Adolphe Hecht was an American film producer, dance director and talent agent. He was also, though less noted for, a literary agent, a theatrical producer, a theatre director and a Broadway actor. He was a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and the Screen Producers Guild.
The Rainmaker is a play written by N. Richard Nash in the early 1950s. The play opened on October 28, 1954, at the Cort Theatre in New York City, and ran for 125 performances. It was directed by Joseph Anthony and produced by Ethel Linder Reiner.
Unforgiven is a 1992 Western film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood, Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman.
Alan Brown Le May was an American novelist and screenplay writer.
The Midnight Man is a 1974 American neo noir mystery film starring and co-directed by Burt Lancaster. The film also stars Susan Clark, Cameron Mitchell, Morgan Woodward, Harris Yulin, Robert Quarry, Joan Lorring, Lawrence Dobkin, Ed Lauter, Mills Watson, Charles Tyner and Catherine Bach.
Posse from Hell is a 1961 American Western film directed by Herbert Coleman and starring Audie Murphy and John Saxon.
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a 1959 Australian-British film directed by Leslie Norman and is based on the Ray Lawler play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. In the United States the film was released under the title Season of Passion.
Audie Murphy was a highly decorated American soldier and Medal of Honor recipient who turned actor. He portrayed himself in the film To Hell and Back, the account of his World War II experiences. During the 1950s and 1960s he was cast primarily in westerns. While often the hero, he proved his ability to portray a cold-blooded hired gun in No Name on the Bullet. A notable exception to the westerns was The Quiet American in which he co-starred with Michael Redgrave. Murphy made over 40 feature films and often worked with directors more than once. Jesse Hibbs who directed To Hell and Back worked with the star on six films, only half of which were westerns. When promoting his 1949 book To Hell and Back he appeared on the radio version of This Is Your Life. To promote the 1955 film of the same name, he appeared on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town. He was a celebrity guest on television shows such as What's My Line? and appeared in a handful of television dramas. Murphy's only television series Whispering Smith had a brief run in 1961. For his cooperation in appearing in the United States Army's Broken Bridge episode of The Big Picture television series he was awarded the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal.
Redface is the wearing of makeup to darken or redden skin tone, or feathers, warpaint, etc. by non-Natives to impersonate a Native American or Indigenous Canadian person, or to in some other way perpetuate stereotypes of Indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States. It is analogous to the wearing of Blackface. In the early twentieth century, it was often white performers, who wore blackface or redface when portraying Plains Indians in Hollywood Westerns. In the early days of television sitcoms, "non-Native sitcom characters donned headdresses, carried tomahawks, spoke broken English, played Squanto at Thanksgiving gatherings, received 'Indian' names, danced wildly, and exhibited other examples of representations of redface".
References
↑ "Rental Potentials of 1960", Variety, January 4, 1961, p 47.
↑ pp. 151–152 Larkins, Bob & Magers, Boyd The Films of Audie Murphy McFarland, August 19, 2009
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