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.