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030 AUGUST 2017
had been published in
Collier's magazine. For a
year he hawked it around
the major Hollywood
studios in the hope of
one of them financing
the project. Due to the
uncertain market for the
genre all of them turned
it down stating, "Jack,
it's just a western". Ford
had directed many silent
westerns during his early
career, but had not made
one for well over a decade.
Nonetheless, he continued
to believe that a motion
picture based on Haycox's tale
could be a solid commercial
hit. Finally in July 1938 his
perseverance paid off when he managed to sell
it to independent producer, Walter Wanger, who
had a financing and distribution deal with United
Artists.
Ford and his frequent screenwriter
collaborator, Dudley Nichols, now went to
work on the screenplay adding complementary
characters, situations and themes to the original
story. Their final film script borrowed more than
a little from Guy de Maupassant's celebrated
short story Boule de Suif in which a prostitute
shares a carriage with a number of snobbish
bourgeoisie fleeing the Franco-Prussian War.
The now re-titled Stagecoach related the story
of nine disparate characters who take a stage
from Tonto, Arizona to Lordsburg, New Mexico
across empty terrain infested with Geronimo's
raiding Apache Indians.
The composition of the group, a cross
section of frontier and Eastern people all
with contrasting personalities, stresses the
class differences between the characters.
On board riding shotgun is a gallant and
incorruptible marshal and his comic side-kick
driver. The passengers include a whore with
a compassionate heart and a philosophising,
alcoholic doctor (who have both been run out
of town by the Ladies Law and Order league);
a virtuously self righteous pregnant wife of a
cavalry officer; a larcenous banker; a whiskey
Early Hollywood
western movies were
basically simple in
plot and characterisation.
Practically all of them
featured the four then
standard scenes for
westerns - a bar, a hold-
up, a chase and a shoot-
out. These so called
"horse operas" remained
popular with family
audiences throughout
the 1920s and into the
early 1930s. But by the
end of the decade the
genre was firmly in
the doldrums and out
of favour with both
cinemagoers and the
major Hollywood studios. "B" status westerns
however, were still regularly churned out by the
Poverty Row studios, Republic and Monogram,
primarily as serials or the bottom half of double-
bill programs; all of them utterly forgettable. But
a motion picture released in 1939 revitalised
the genre and redefined the many myths of
the west. John Ford's Stagecoach presented a
sweeping and powerful drama of the American
frontier that would change the way audiences
and critics viewed western movies.
Ford had purchased the rights to "Stage to
Lordsburg", a short story by Ernest Haycox, that
visit EXTRAS FEATURE
Stagecoach (1939)
Directed by John Ford
John Ford's Stagecoach
presented a sweeping
and powerful drama of the
American frontier...
MOVIES THAT
INFLUENCED
FILM GENRES
John Ford on location with Navajo extras setting
up the scenes of the Apache attacking the
stagecoach.
st154_030-032_BobJ.indd 1 21/7/17 12:15 pm