The Horse Soldiers

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The Horse Soldiers
1959 movie poster
Directed by	John Ford
Produced by	John Lee Mahin Marrtin Rackin
Written by	screenplay by John Lee Mahin Marrtin Rackin from the novel by Harold Sinclair
Starring	John Wayne William Holden Constance Towers Althea Gibson
Music by	David Buttolph
Cinematography	William H. Clothier
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	June 12, 1959
Running time	115 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
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The Horse Soldiers is a 1959 film, set in the American Civil War, directed by John Ford, and filmed on location in Louisiana.

This is a film about a Union cavalry raid, led by Colonel John Marlowe (John Wayne). His regiment is sent behind the Confederate lines to destroy a railroad and supply depot at Newton Station, Mississippi. Col. Marlowe was a railroad designer before the war, so who better to capture one? Destroying what he has built is one of the tensions that Marlowe shows in the film.

With the troop is a new regimental surgeon, Major Henry Kendall (William Holden) who seems to be constantly at odds with Col. Marlowe. Maj. Kendall is torn between the “duty of war” and the “horror of war”, and the moral questions that war brings with it. He does not see any glory from his operating table. This internal stress spills over into conflicts that Col. Marlowe must try to deal with, while at the same time worrying about his men and their assignment. Then to complicate matters even more, after the unit stops at the Greenbriar Plantation, Miss Hannah Hunter (Constance Towers), the plantation's “southern belle” overhears details of the pending raid. So to protect the mission Col. Marlowe drags her along with the troop for the rest of the movie. This of course gives Col. Marlowe and Maj. Kendall one more thing to fight about, Miss Hannah’s affections.

Sadly John Ford cut the film's climactic battle scene ending short when Fred Kennedy, a veteran stuntman and bit player, was killed in a horse fall. Ford was so upset he closed the set and had to film the rest of the scene later in the San Fernando Valley. The scene with the fall remains in the film.

The movie is based on the true story of Grierson's Raid led by Colonel Benjamin Grierson who, along with 1700 men, was sent from northern Mississippi, and went several hundred miles behind enemy lines in April of 1863 to cut the railroad between Newton Station and Vicksburg, Mississippi. Grierson's raid is part of the Union's larger plan in the Battle of Vicksburg. The raid was as successful as it was daring, and remarkably bloodless. By attacking the Confederate-controlled railroad it upset the plans and troop deployments of Confederate General John C. Pemberton.