STACK #166 Aug 2018

EXTRAS FEATURE

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relationship with the Edwards children, Lucy, Ben and nine-year-old Debbie. But he demonstrates his deep-rooted racism when he snarls at the

THE SEARCHERS (1956) Directed by John Ford

“Still got my sabre, Reverend.” John Wayne with Ward Bond

Edwards' adopted son Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), who is one-eighth part Cherokee: “A fella could mistake you for a half breed”. The following morning a local posse of Texas Rangers, led by the Reverend Captain Samuel Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond), arrives at the Edwards homestead to swear in deputies to pursue thieves who have run off a neighbour’s livestock. When Clayton meets Ethan they

H ollywood westerns made during the 1950s often featured former Confederate characters invariably depicted as recalcitrant loners carrying various levels of resentment and bitterness over the South losing the Civil War. Among such Southern movie characters were Stonewall Torrey in Shane (1953), Benjamin Trane in Vera Cruz (1954), Colonel Ben Allison in The Tall Men (1955), and O’Meara in Run of the Arrow (1957). But the darkest and most memorable of these ex-Confederate

immediately square off. Clayton then says, “Well, the prodigal brother. Ain’t seen you since the surrender. Come to think of it, I didn’t see you at the surrender”. Ethan replies, “Don’t believe in surrender. Nope, I’ve still got my sabre, Reverend. Didn’t beat into no ploughshare, neither”. Where Ethan had been for three years following the Confederacy

surrender remains a mystery. But he is not just a returning veteran, he is a bitter veteran of the losing side of a war that he

characters is Ethan Edwards in John Ford’s cinematic masterpiece The Searchers (1956). Both Ford and John Wayne – in the role of the vengeful and bigoted Ethan – took a lot of risks at the time, as their film exposed America’s deeply embedded racism. Today however, it is considered by most film historians and critics to be the director and actor’s greatest joint achievement, and Wayne’s finest portrayal of his long and outstanding career. By the mid-1950s the western had become Hollywood’s most popular and reliable money- making genre. Consequently, John Ford and his producer, Merian C. Cooper, had no problem

location shooting in his beloved Monument Valley on the Arizona/Utah border in June 1955. Ford set his story in Texas, 1868, and opens with the solitary figure of Ethan Edwards returning to his brother’s homestead three years after the end of the American Civil War. Ethan, wearing a Confederate greatcoat and carrying a sabre, slowly dismounts as he is greeted by his brother’s wife, Martha. Ethan hesitantly holds out his hand to his brother, Aaron, as if unsure whether he will accept it. There is a feeling of tension and although never verbalised, it later becomes obvious that Ethan is in love with Martha and she with him. Ethan has an avuncular

...it is considered... to be the director and actor’s greatest joint achievement

has not yet conceded. For him, his war has not ended. Ethan takes the place of his brother in the posse, stating, “Stay close Aaron, maybe they’re rustlers but maybe they’re Kiowa or Comanche”. Ethan is right, as while he and Martin are away with the posse, Comanches – under their war chief, Scar (Henry Brandon) – attack the Edwards homestead. They burn it to the ground, kill Aaron and his son Ben, rape and kill Martha, and kidnap Lucy and her young sister Debbie. Ethan vows to find the

in selling a western movie script to Warner Bros. With John Wayne also hitched to the project, the studio provided Ford with a generous $2.5 million budget. Ford, with Frank S. Nugent, had developed the screenplay based on Alan LeMay’s novel The Searchers, which had its roots in the true story of the kidnapping of nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker by Comanches in 1836. Filling the rest of the cast with his “Stock Company Regulars”, Ford began

The arrival of Ethan

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AUGUST 2018

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