When one thinks of the classic Western film, one has to inevitably think of director John Ford as its greatest practitioner. Films such as Stagecoach and The Searchers are not only great westerns, but iconic films which transcend the genre. Ford was, more than any other filmmaker, the man responsible for making John Wayne’s career as an actor. Because of the many films he made with Ford, Wayne became the personification of the American West, a sort of mythic figure.

John Ford was most famous for making films about the US Cavalry of the late 19th Century. More than any other film maker, he was able to depict the personalities and the culture of these small units scattered across the American West which attempted to keep to peace between White and Indian, not all the time successfully. In the pre Dances with Wolves era, Ford’s movies were not apologetic about the winning of the west. However, unlike many movies of the era, he endowed the American Indian with a certain dignity and honor that made one respect them, not as hapless victims, but as fierce warriors, worthy opponents who fought hard to maintain their way of life, even though that fight was doomed to fail.

Fort Apache

Fort Apache is a retelling of Custer’s Last Stand, only substituting Apache for the Sioux, and one Colonel Owen Thursday, played very sternly by Henry Fonda. The movie, as well as being a portrait of life in a US Cavalry regiment on the American frontier, is a meditation of how heroes are made. Colonel Thursday, a competent enough soldier, is also a martinet. He is unimaginative, resents being assigned such an out of the way post, and has nothing but contempt for the American Indians whom he is obliged to fight. This last failing will be his and many of regiment’s undoing.

Colonel Thursday comes into conflict with Captain Kirby York, played by John Wayne. York is an experienced officer and knows something about dealing with the Indians, for whom he has a measure of grudging respect (This is often a surprise to many who have an image of Wayne as a remorseless and relentless killer of Indians in his movies.) Another cause of conflict comes from the Colonel’s beautiful daughter, Philadelphia Thursday, played by an adult Shirley Temple as she causes her father’s wrath to he incurred by Lt. Michael Shannon O’Rourke, played by her then husband John Agar.

The film provides a charming portrait of life on the cavalry post, showing the concerns of the wives and officers who live there. There are various vignettes that stand out, including a training session of new recruits that turns into a comedy of galloping horses with the recruits falling off of them.

It soon becomes apparent that the local Apache reservation is run by a corrupt, government Indian agent, who sells the Indians horrible whisky and cheapo, shoddy goods. The Apache war chief, Cochise, played with steady dignity by Miguel Inclan, would seem to be well justified in leading his people off the reservation and away from that degradation. Nevertheless, the regiment is obliged to force Cochise and his people back onto the reservation. Instead, Colonel Thursday leads most of his command into a disastrous charge, thus becoming a hero to the newspapers. The last scene with Wayne, now in command of the regiment, trying to answer the reporters’ ill informed questions about Thursday and his “heroic charge” is a classic about how heroes can be made.

The film has some marvelous performances by supporting actors, including Ward Bond as Sergeant Major Mickey O’Rourke (the father of the same Lt. O’Rourke), George O’Brian as Captain Collinwood, and Victor McLaglen as Sergeant Festus Mulcahy.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

John Wayne in one of his finest performances at Captain Nathan Brittles, soon to be retired, who must take a detachment out on one last mission to evacuate some of the women from the fort and to put down an Indian uprising in the wake of the Little Big Horn. Great supporting performances are turned in by Joanne Dru, who seems unable to decide whom she’s wearing the yellow ribbon for between Lt. Cahill, played by John Agar, and Lt. Penell, played by Harry Carey Jr. Victor McLaglen is superb comedy relief as the hard drinking Sergeant Quincannon. Ben Johnson is the stolid Sergeant Tyree, the ex Confederate whose answer to almost everything is, “Aint my department.”

The story is a bit thinner than that of Ford Apache, but is filled with wonderful scenes. These include the scene in which Quincannon stomps off to the suttler’s for a drink, while Wayne orders several of the other cavalrymen to place him under arrest, so that he could spend his last days in the army out of trouble so as to retire on a Sergeant’s pension. Five men do not suffice to take him down. It takes one woman, Abby Allshard, the commanding officer’s wife, played by Mildred Natwick, to quick march the hapless Sergeant to the stockade.

Wayne solves the problem of the Indian uprising, first by trying to negotiate reason with tone of the older chiefs, with whom he is an old friend, and then by raiding their camp at night and running off their Indians’ horses. Bereft of their mounts, the Indians have no choice but to return to the reservation. The uprising is put down with no bloodshed.

The original cut of the movie had Wayne riding off into the sunset in the classic western manner. But this ending depressed test audiences so much that a sequence was added in which Sergeant Tyree is sent after him to recall him to the colors as Colonel of Scouts.

Rio Grande

Rio Grande finds John Wayne as Lt. Colonel Kirby Yorke in command of a regiment along that same river, dealing with the Apaches and family problems. It seems that his son, played by Claude Jarman Jr., has washed out of West Point, but has decided to join the regiment as an ordinary trooper. His mother and Wayne’s estranged wife, Kathleen, played with passion by Maureen O’Hara, comes to fetch him back. It seems that Yorke and his wife were on opposite sides of the Civil War and that Wayne’s character, as a cavalry commander under Phil Sheridan, was obliged to set his wife’s plantation to the torch. That sort of thing would put the strain on any marriage. And Trooper Yorke is quite firm about his decision to join the cavalry, which reinforces the theme in the movie about honor and responsibility.

The film has the usual vignettes about cavalry life in the 19th Century that one expects from a work by John Ford. But the main plot concerns the slow, but inevitable reconciliation between Yorke and his wife. And it would not be a cavalry western were there not a battle with the Indians, in this case a band of Apaches who have captured some of the children from the post and are all set to do them hideous harm. This aspect has been criticized as being politically incorrect, but the Apache were historically very cruel to their captives. The children are rescued and the Apaches defeated. There are solid supporting performances by Ben Johnson, Victor McLaughlin, Harry Carrey Jr., and Chill Wills.

The Horse Soldiers

The Horse Soldiers finds John Wayne in the role of Colonel John Marlowe, in command of a cavalry brigade during the Civil War. He is sent on a mission behind enemy lines to destroy a Confederate supply depot, thus facilitating General Grant’s efforts to take the town of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. The story is loosely based on a real Civil War operation.

Wayne finds himself in conflict with several people, including one of his officers, an aspiring politician named Colonel Phil Secord, played by Willis Bouchey, and the brigade’s medical officer, Major Henry Kendall, played by William Holden. Marlowe and Kendall especially do not get along and at one point almost come to blows. It turns out that Marlowe had a bad experience with doctors and has distrusted them ever since.

Wayne’s problems really start when the brigade bivouacs at the Greenbriar Plantation, owned by Hannah Hunter, played with southern fire by Constance Towers. Hannah Hunter is able to play the ditzy southern belle to the hilt, while all along listening in on Marlowe and his officers planning the operation. Kendall is sharp eyed enough to catch her at it, so Hannah Hunter and her slave woman, Lukey, played by Althea Gibson, are obliged to accompany the brigade on their mission, lest they alert the Confederate Army.

Naturally, Hannah Hunter proves to be quite a handful, trying to escape at on one occasion, trying to call out to a nearby Confederate unit on another. Naturally, she and Marlowe start to become attracted to one another, despite themselves. There’s a hilarious scene when Marlow questions two Confederate deserters about Confederate troop dispositions and, having gotten the information he needs, puts them both on the ground for insulting Miss Hunter.

The brigade takes the Confederate supply depot and puts it to the torch, with the only depiction in cinema of railroad ties being turned into Sherman neckties. There’s a horrific battle as the Confederates counterattack, an even more horrific aftermath as Kendall, Hannah Hunter, and a local doctor try to save as many of the wounded as they can, and suspenseful sequence when the brigade tries to elude the pursing Confederates. The Confederates finally corner the brigade just short of reaching Union lines. There’s a comical sequence when the corps of cadets of a local boys’ military academy is turned out to slow the brigade down (based on a real life incident that took place in another place and time in the Civil War) and final, desperate charge to force a river crossing and bring the brigade to safety. All in all, a very enjoyable and underrated film.

Sergeant Rutledge

Sergeant Rutledge is the only cavalry film being discussed that does not star John Wayne. The story is about an African American Sergeant, Braxton Rutledge, played by Woody Strode, in one of the famed buffalo soldier regiments of black soldiers in the old, segregated army. Rutledge is accused, based on circumstantial by damning evidence, of the rape and murder of a white girl and the murder of his commanding officer. Rutledge then compounds the appearance of guilt by running.

The story, told in flash backs during Rutledge’s court martial, shows Lt. Tom Cantrell, played by Jeffery Hunter, who is sent with a detachment of buffalo soldiers to fetch Rutledge back. Rutledge encounters Mary Beecher at an empty train station, played by Constance Towers, and saves her from some marauding Apaches. Cantrell catches up with Rutledge, but is also obliged to escort Mary Beecher back to her father’s ranch. There are several battles with the Apache, who are depicting in the usual politically incorrect manner as savages. At one point, Rutledge makes a break for it, gets away, but then is obliged by duty and honor to come back and save Cantrell, Beecher, and the detachment of buffalo soldiers.

As the trial proceeds, the viewer slowly, but surely discovers what really happened on the night of the rape and the murder. Cantrell, who exerted so much effort bringing Rutledge end, now exerts even more effort as his defense counsel. The racism that Rutledge has to deal with is subtle rather than overt. The prosecutor is an obvious southerner who seems to regard his job with a little too much relish. The presiding officer, Colonel Otis Fosgate, played by Willis Bouchey, has a more condescending attitude toward the defendant. At one point he congratulates the court for not “calling attention to the color of the defendant’s skin”, thus calling attention to it.

Still, in the face of all that, Rutledge shows a dignified courage and honor that would d any soldier of any era credit. That makes the ending all the more satisfying.