On Olive Films Signature Blu-ray: Ford, Wayne, and O'Hara United for the First Time in Rio Grande (1950)

Rio Grande (1950) marks an interesting point in the careers of both director John Ford and star John Wayne. It was a time when the men were maturing into their later careers, where they would both try variations on their well-established images. It’s the last film of Ford’s loosely arranged cavalry trilogy (including Fort Apache [1948] and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949]). It wasn’t a work of great consequence for Ford, and he felt the cavalry milieu was played out, but he couldn’t help lending his magic to even a tale as well-worn as this one. In a new features-packed Olive Signature Blu-ray release of the film, I had the opportunity to go a little deeper into the production of the film and appreciate its complexities. 

This was the first film of the legendary five film screen partnership between Wayne and Maureen O’Hara (they’d both already signed for The Quiet Man [1952], but hadn’t started production), and from the beginning their chemistry was profound. They play an estranged husband and wife: Wayne is Captain Kirby, who leads his men at an isolated cavalry outpost, O’Hara comes to him after a long separation, because her son (Claude Jarman Jr.) has enlisted after failing to make the grade in school and she worries for his safety. 

The family drama is the heart of the film, while the action comes from the threatened attack of hostile Apaches who force the soldiers to attempt to escort the women and children at the base to a safer location. Even understanding the different mindset at the time the film was made, I still struggle with the way the Native people here are portrayed as faceless and vicious. That said, my perception of these characters was forever changed when I interviewed former child actress Karolyn Grimes several years ago (she’s the one that says “Uncle Timmy” and rings the church bell). She remembered being fascinated by how indigenous actors loved playing cards and drinking soda pop between takes. 

As a sort of seasoning to these sequences, there are also several cowboy-tinged musical interludes by the Sons of Pioneers group, beautiful location shooting in the Moab, Utah setting in the Professor Valley, and an astonishing scene of stunt riding featuring Ford regulars Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr. The latter is a remarkable sequence in which the men leap up to stand on top of two horses, a foot on each, and ride them chariot style, even clearing a six foot jump (in an interview included in the special features, Johnson is nonchalant about the dangerous stunt, saying he had a great foothold). As a counterbalance to this athletic show stopping, Victor McLaglen is reliably cheerful and crusty as a sergeant who could probably be cut entirely out of the film, but what would a Ford western be without him? 

You can see how the film might have felt simultaneously lacking in story and a little busy at the time of its release, but it’s all done so well and with such remarkable people that it nevertheless stands as a classic. 

One of the most impressive things about Olive Signature releases is the careful curation of disc special features. The company always finds a perfect balance of addressing the elements of a film that need further exploration without overwhelming with too many features or including items that are of little value. There’s a typically satisfying array of offerings included in the Rio Grande release. 

Claude Jarman Jr. is one of the underrated storytellers of old Hollywood, and here in a brief interview he demonstrates his remarkable recall as he shares stories from his career overall and his role as Wayne’s son. Wayne’s real son and business associate Patrick Wayne offers a more personal perspective about his father’s experience on the set, in addition to his own memories about working on location. I was most appreciative to hear industry veteran and New Mexico-born Native Raoul Trujillo’s thoughts on the portrayal of Native Americans in the film; this feature helped me to unpack my still-conflicted feelings about the way they were depicted in this 70-year-old film. Other special features include a retrospective of the music in the film by Marc Wanamaker, a video essay by Tag Gallagher, an essay in the disc’s booklet by Paul Andrew Hutton, a theatrical trailer, and a vintage featurette about the film hosted by a very young Leonard Maltin which is valuable because it features interviews with several of the stars before they passed. 

Many thanks to Olive Films for providing a disc for review.

On Blu-ray: John Ford's Wagon Master (1950)

It says a lot about the kind of actors director John Ford cast when his supporting players are as good at carrying a film as stars like John Wayne. In the 1950 film Wagon Master, actors and stuntmen Ben Johnson and Harry Carey, Jr. shine at a different wattage than Wayne, but they are nevertheless charismatic, funny, and as delightful rising from the ranks to take the lead. I recently watched the film on a new Blu-ray from Warner Archive which beautifully displays its stunning Utah and Arizona valley locations.

Johnson and Carey, Jr. play the new wagon masters of a train of Mormons who have been previously led by another familiar Ford stock player Ward Bond. Over the course of their journey they pick up a bedraggled troupe of medicine show players dying of thirst. They begin to get acquainted, with friendships and romances blooming, until a band of violent thieves called the Cleggs, who were introduced in an at the time innovative opening credit sequence, force themselves into the group.

This familiar plot, which could easily be the bones for a mediocre film, becomes profound because of Ford’s touch. His knack for perfectly casting every part comes in handy here, where he is counting on the strength of the ensemble instead of star power to tell his story. In addition to his pleasantly familiar leads, he draws on the talents of reliable characters like Joanne Dru (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon), Alan Mowbray, and Jane Darwell, and emerging stars like future Gunsmoke lead James Arness. He then places them against that jaw dropping scenery, drinking in the majesty of it all with long, loving long shots which give weight and a sense of wonder to their journey.

There is not as much at stake here, or as strong a feeling of peril or loss as in Ford’s more celebrated classics like Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956). The gut-wrenching feeling those more emotionally resonant films evoked is replaced with a warmer feeling of camaraderie, which is helped along by the inclusion of four songs by the cowboy singers Sons of the Pioneers (they would also sing in Ford’s Rio Grande [1950]). This is not to say that Wagon Master is a less substantial film though, it has just as much to say about the mutual human need for community and connection as Ford's more celebrated works. Here he simply shares that message with a lighter touch.

The only special feature on the disc is an enjoyable commentary from the 2009 DVD release by Harry Carey, Jr. and Peter Bogdanovich, which includes clips of John Ford from Bognanovich’s previous interviews with the director.

Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.

Book Review--The Legendary Partnership of Wayne and Ford

Wayne and Ford: The Films, The Friendship and The Forging of an American Hero
Nancy Schoenberger
Doubleday Books/Nan A. Talese, 2017

John Wayne and John Ford are legends of American cinema. Both together and apart they made some of the most magnetic films Hollywood had to offer, but it is unlikely they would have reached the heights they did if they hadn't found each other. In a new book Nancy Shoenberger explores the life, work and relationship of these complex, influential men, focusing attention on the way they interpreted and communicated masculinity.

I was drawn to Wayne and Ford because I liked the way Schoenberger handled dual biography in her 2011 tome Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century. Here she tackles a less tumultuous, but similarly layered relationship. There's less heat, but plenty of intrigue.

Of the 200 films Wayne made in his long career, only 69 would be westerns, but they were his most significant roles, and mostly due to his work with Ford. Likewise, the director, who even somewhat ironically referred to himself as a maker of westerns approached many genres successfully, but found his greatest success making fantasies of masculinity and honor in the Monument Valley with his greatest star.

Wayne and Ford charts the simultaneously abusive and familial nature of their relationship. Though Ford inspired loyalty in his actors, who felt he gave them the artistic success they craved, he was a harsh and sadistic taskmaster. The director saved the worst of his abuse for Wayne, who always took it without complaint, even when he reached the heights of his success. Nevertheless, their bond was lifelong and both could depend on each other for help throughout their careers, whether or not it was requested.

Schoenberger looks for insight into this unusual relationship by digging into their personal lives and films. As both men often had great control over the way their movies were made, they were often a reflection of who they were. Despite the differences in their personalities and relationships, in their cinematic explorations of love, duty and what it is to be a man, the two are found to have similar values.

While there was not much that was new to me here, having read individual biographies of Wayne and Ford, being able to focus on their bond and films helped me to better understand the influence they had on each other and their public. In Wayne, Ford saw much that he wanted to be, and in a way he resented his manly physicality. The actor may not have understood this, but he was always aware that the director had essentially made his career after a decade of making cowboy flicks for kids and it is possible he never thought to think past that reality.

In the end, John Ford and John Wayne are only two humans, who lived their lives and passed on, and yet it is endlessly compelling to speculate about these complex men. Wayne and Ford is to be relished because it takes great care and enjoyment in that pursuit.

Many thanks to Doubleday Books/Nan A. Talese for providing a copy of the book for review.

John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) on Blu-ray

I don't tend to gravitate towards westerns, but I'm always game for John Ford's take on the genre. In films like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), now available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive, he invests the grit and grime of the open country with a kind of poetry that gives the rough and tumble life of his characters great poignancy.

There needs to be a term for the particular spell that John Ford weaves as a director, something like the Lubitsch Touch, an appeal you can only partially describe, but essentially understand. He sets a particular tone in his films, and especially his westerns: an uncannily balanced mixture of light humor, feisty romance, gut-wrenching emotions and deathly serious tension. Even more astonishing is the way the director films this mash of moods with the grace of a man who is overwhelmed by the beauty he sees. On one hand, it's hard to believe this is the same guy who shared his sketches of penises with Maureen O'Hara; on the other it is perfectly plausible.

This Ford aura makes me question my own film preferences. He so clearly illuminates what makes the western loveable that he makes me want to dig deeper into the genre, and sometimes a viewing of one of his films does lead me to further exploration. Ford makes his landscapes breathe, so you feel the presence of the hills, the rumble of horses' hooves and the determination of his characters to conquer a wild territory. I felt this pull the most in his 1939 masterpiece Stagecoach, but it is also strong in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

Though years younger in reality (True Grit [1969] was two decades away), John Wayne is aged effectively to play a cavalry officer who is nearing retirement. He faces this life change reluctantly, uncertain of his future as the death of a family he still grieves leaves him adrift in the world. Though he seems weary in some respects, you get the impression he'd like to die in his boots.

Wayne throws himself into his last mission, forging forward with his men through the stunning Monument Valley, trying to negotiate with the Indians through a tribal elder instead of witnessing more bloodshed. He keeps himself busy with the personal aspects of outpost life as well, watching over his alcoholic first sergeant (played by the comfortingly reliable Victor McLaglen) and occasionally intervening in the rather uneven love triangle between the commanding officer's niece (Joanne Dru) and two soldiers (the hapless Harry Carey Jr. and the more viral John Agar).

These dramas and others, among a cast that also includes sturdy Ford regulars Ben Johnson and Mildred Natwick, are essentially approached with a sure pace and light spirit. When there is a moment of contrast: the tension of battle or the weary sadness of Wayne's grief, it is all the more heartbreaking because you know tragedy always lingers close by.

The look of the film is distinct enough to have its own powerful presence, with the bright, clear daytime shots of the valley and the softer, glowing orange and pink compositions of the quieter evening moments. Cinematographer Winton Hoch earned an Academy Award for his work, though he fought so frequently with Ford during filming that he was ready to quit. The beauty of his work is especially striking in this Blu-ray edition.

Special features on the disc include a trailer and a brief clip of John Ford's home movies around the time of the film's production in which he is traveling to scout for locations.

Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.

Quote of the Week

I like the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford and John Ford.

-Orson Welles

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Quote of the Week

John Ford once wrote to me, "You are the best fucking actress in Hollywood." Then, when later asked by a young film student at UCLA about me, in front of Merian C.Cooper, he replied to his audience, "Her? That bitch couldn't act her way out of a brick shithouse."

-Maureen O'Hara

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