| The Searchers | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | John Ford |
| Produced by | Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney |
| Screenplay by | Frank S. Nugent |
| Based on | The Searchers by Alan Le May |
| Starring | John Wayne Jeffrey Hunter Vera Miles Ward Bond Natalie Wood |
| Music by | Max Steiner (score) Stan Jones (title song) |
| Cinematography | Winton C. Hoch |
| Editing by | Jack Murray |
| Studio | C. V. Whitney Pictures |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | March 13, 1956 |
| Running time | 119 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars. The picture stars John Wayne as a middle-aged Civil War veteran who spends years looking for his abducted niece (Natalie Wood), along with Jeffrey Hunter as his adoptive nephew, who accompanies him.
The film was a commercial success, although it received no Academy Award nominations. It was named the Greatest American Western of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008, and it placed 12th on the American Film Institute's 2007 list of the Top 100 greatest movies of all time.[1]
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In 1868, Ethan Edwards (Wayne) returns from the American Civil War, in which he fought for the Confederacy, to the home of his brother Aaron (Walter Coy) in the wilderness of west Texas. Wrong-doing or legal trouble in Ethan's past is suggested by his three-year absence, a large quantity of gold coins in his possession, a Mexican revolutionary war medal that he gives to his young niece Debbie (played as a child by Natalie Wood's sister {Lana Wood), and his refusal to take an oath of allegiance to the Texas Rangers.
Shortly after Ethan's arrival, cattle belonging to his neighbor Lars Jorgensen (John Qualen) are stolen, and when Captain Samuel Clayton (Ward Bond) leads Ethan and a group of Rangers to follow the trail, they discover that the theft was a ploy by Comanche to draw the men away from their families. When they return home, they find the Edwards homestead in flames; Aaron, his wife Martha (Dorothy Jordan), and their son Ben (Robert Lyden) dead; and Debbie and her older sister Lucy (Pippa Scott) abducted.
After a brief funeral, the men return to pursuing the Comanches. When they find their camp, Ethan recommends an open attack, in which the girls would be killed, but Clayton insists on sneaking in. The Rangers find the camp deserted, and when they continue their pursuit, the Indians almost catch them in a trap. The Rangers fend off the Indian attack, but with too few men to ensure victory, Clayton and the posse return home, leaving Ethan to continue his search for the girls with Lucy's fiancé Brad Jorgensen (Harry Carey, Jr.) and Debbie's adopted brother Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter). However, after Ethan finds Lucy brutally murdered and presumably raped in a canyon near the Comanche camp, Brad becomes enraged, rides wildly into the camp, and is killed.
Ethan and Martin search until winter, when they lose the trail. When they return to the Jorgensen ranch, Martin is enthusiastically welcomed by the Jorgensens' daughter Laurie (Vera Miles), and Ethan finds a letter waiting for him from a man named Futterman, who has information about Debbie. Ethan, who would rather travel alone, leaves without Martin the next morning, but Laurie provides Martin with a horse to catch up. At Futterman's (Peter Mamakos) trading post, Ethan and Martin learn that Debbie has been taken by Scar (Henry Brandon), the chief of the Nawyecka band of Comanches. A year or more later, Laurie receives a letter from Martin describing the ongoing search. In reading the letter aloud, Laurie narrates the next few scenes, in which Ethan kills Futterman for trying to steal his money, Martin accidentally buys a Comanche wife, and the two men find part of Scar's tribe killed by soldiers.
After looking for Debbie at a military fort, Ethan and Martin go to New Mexico, where a Mexican man leads them to Scar. They find Debbie, now an adolescent (Natalie Wood), living as one of Scar's wives. When she meets with the men outside the camp, she says she has become a Comanche and asks them to leave without her. However, Ethan would rather see her dead than living as an Indian. He tries to shoot her, but Martin shields her with his body and a Comanche shoots Ethan with an arrow. Ethan and Martin escape to safety, where Martin saves Ethan by tending to his wound. Martin is furious at Ethan for attempting to kill Debbie and wishes him dead. "That'll be the day," Ethan replies. The men then return home.
Meanwhile, Charlie McCorry (Ken Curtis) has been courting Laurie in Martin's absence. Ethan and Martin arrive home just as Charlie and Laurie's wedding is about to begin. After a fistfight between Martin and Charlie, a nervous "Yankee" soldier, Lt. Greenhill (Patrick Wayne), arrives with news that Ethan's half-crazy friend Mose Harper (Hank Worden) knows where Scar is. Clayton leads his men to the Comanche camp, this time for a direct attack, but Martin is allowed to sneak in and rescue Debbie, who welcomes him. During the attack, Martin kills Scar and Ethan scalps him. When Ethan sees Debbie, Martin is unable to stop him from chasing her, but instead of killing her, Ethan carries her home. Once Debbie is safely with her family, and Martin is reunited with Laurie, Ethan walks away, alone, the cabin door closing on his receding image.
The Searchers was the first production from "distinguished turfman"[2] C.V. Whitney; it was directed by John Ford, and distributed by Warner Brothers. While the film was primarily set in the staked plains (Llano Estacado) of Northwest Texas, it was actually filmed in Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah. Additional scenes were filmed in Mexican Hat, Utah, in Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, and in Alberta, Canada.[3] The film was shot in the VistaVision widescreen process. Ford originally wanted to cast Fess Parker, whose performance as Davy Crockett on television had helped spark a national craze, in the Jeffrey Hunter role, but Walt Disney, to whom Parker was under contract, refused to allow it, according to Parker's videotaped interview for the Archive of American Television. Parker notes that this was by far his single worst career reversal.[4]
The Searchers is the first of only three films produced by Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney's C. V. Whitney Pictures; the second being The Missouri Traveler in 1958 with Brandon De Wilde and Lee Marvin, the last being The Young Land in 1959 with Patrick Wayne and Dennis Hopper.
Several film critics have suggested that The Searchers was inspired by the 1836 kidnapping of nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker by Comanche warriors who raided her family's home at Fort Parker, Texas.[5][6] She spent 24 years with the Comanches, married a war chief, and had three children, only to be rescued against her will by Texas Rangers. James W. Parker, Cynthia Ann's uncle, spent much of his life and fortune in what became an obsessive search for his niece, like Ethan Edwards in the film. In addition, the rescue of Cynthia Ann, during a Texas Ranger attack known as the Battle of Pease River, resembles the rescue of Debbie Edwards when the Texas Rangers attack Scar's village. Parker's story was only one of 64 real-life cases of 19th-century child abductions in Texas that author Alan Le May studied while researching the novel on which the film was based. Moreover, his surviving research notes indicate that the two characters who go in search of a missing girl were inspired by Brit Johnson, an African-American teamster who ransomed his captured wife and children from the Comanches in 1865.[7] Afterward, he made at least three trips to Indian Territory and Kansas relentlessly searching for another kidnapped girl, Millie Durgan (or Durkin), until Kiowa raiders killed him in 1871.[8]
In the 1868 report of the Indian Peace Commission an attack in 1866 on a rancher "James Box" in Texas is noted:[9]
The testimony satisfies us that since October 1865, the Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches have substantially complied with their treaty stipulations entered into at that time at the mouth of the Little Arkansas. The only flagrant violation we were able to discover consisted in the killing of James Box and the capture of his family in western Texas about the 15th of August 1866. The alleged excuse for this act is, that they supposed an attack on Texas people would be no violation of a treaty with the United States; that as we ourselves had been at war with the people of Texas, an act of hostility on their part would not be disagreeable to us.
The ending of Le May's novel contrasts to the film's, with Debbie, called Dry-Grass-Hair by the Comanches, running from the white men and from the Indians. Marty, in one final leg of his search, finds her days later, only after she has fainted from exhaustion.
In the film, Scar's Comanche group is referred to as the Nawyecka. The more common names for this Comanche division (with whom Cynthia Ann Parker lived) are Nokoni or Nocona. Some film critics have speculated that the historical model for the cavalry attack on a Comanche village, resulting in Look's death and the taking of Comanche prisoners to a military post, was the well-known Battle of Washita River, November 27, 1868, when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's Cheyenne camp on the Washita River (near present day Cheyenne, Oklahoma). The sequence also resembles the 1872 Battle of the North Fork of the Red River, in which the 4th Cavalry captured 124 Comanche women and children and imprisoned them at Fort Concho.
Upon the film's release, Bosley Crowther called it a "ripsnorting Western" (in spite of the "excessive language in its ads"); he credits Ford's "familiar corps of actors, writers, etc., [who help] to give the gusto to this film. From Frank S. Nugent, whose screenplay from the novel of Alan LeMay is a pungent thing, right on through the cast and technicians, it is the honest achievement of a well-knit team."[2] Crowther noted "two faults of minor moment":[2]
Variety called it "handsomely mounted and in the tradition of Shane", yet "somewhat disappointing" due to its length and repetitiveness; "The John Ford directorial stamp is unmistakable. It concentrates on the characters and establishes a definite mood. It's not sufficient, however, to overcome many of the weaknesses of the story."[10]
In 1989, The Searchers was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in its National Film Registry. The Searchers has been cited as one of the greatest films of all time, such as in a Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films ever made. In 1972, The Searchers was ranked 18th; in 1992, fifth; in 2002, 11th. The 2007 American Film Institute 100 Greatest American Films list ranked The Searchers in 12th place. In 2008, the American Film Institute named The Searchers as the greatest Western of all time.[11] In 2010, Richard Corliss noted the film was "now widely regarded as the greatest western of the 1950s, the genre's greatest decade" and characterized it as a "darkly profound study of obsession, racism and heroic solitude."[12]
The film has been recognized multiple times by the American Film Institute:
Many critics maintain that Ethan Edwards is in love with his brother's wife Martha. In terms of the dramatic action of the film, it is by far the strongest initiator of behavior on the lead character's part. The most startling part of this plot undercurrent is that there is not one word of dialog alluding to the relationship and feelings between Ethan and Martha, despite the importance of those factors to the plot. Every reference to this relationship is visual.[13][14][15]
In addition, the unspoken but true passion between Ethan and Martha leads to a possible conclusion: that Debbie, who is a mere eight years old when the film begins, may be Ethan's daughter. Ethan left at the dawn of the Civil War, eight years before, and his obsessive quest to find Debbie and his refusal to let her live as an Indian, along with his gift to her of his medal, might bespeak more than mere racism and revenge and his desire to save a niece; it might depict an absentee and guilt-ridden father's attempt to save the daughter he never raised and shamefully made by cuckolding his brother.[16]
A major theme remains the examination of the issues of racism and genocide towards Native Americans. Ford's was not the first film to attempt this, but it was startling (particularly for later generations) in the harshness of its approach toward that racism. Ford's examination of racism starts with Edwards and his openly virulent hatred of Native Americans, opening the door for the film to examine racism as an excuse for the genocide of the Indians. Ebert says: "In The Searchers I think Ford was trying, imperfectly, even nervously, to depict racism that justified genocide."[17] However, Ford shows in several scenes that Ethan's racist hatred for the Indians is primarily motivated by the atrocities committed by them. Thus he is driven far more by an obsessive need for vengeance than pure unmotivated racism. Perhaps significantly, Ethan, despite his hatred of the Comanches, appears to be very learned in their language and culture. When Ethan finally encounters Scar, Ford indicates that Scar's cruelty too is motivated by revenge ("Two sons killed by white men. For each son, I take many... scalps.").[18]
The theme of miscegenation also runs through this film. Early in the film Martin earns a sour look from Ethan when he admits to being part Cherokee. Ethan says repeatedly that he will kill his niece rather than have her live "with a buck", that "living with the Comanche ain't living". Even one of the film's gentler characters, Vera Miles's Laurie, tells Martin when he explains he must protect his adoptive sister, that "Ethan will put a bullet in her brain. I tell you Martha would want him to." This outburst made clear that even the supposedly gentler characters were thoroughly tainted by racism and the fear of miscegenation.[18] In a 1964 interview with Cosmopolitan magazine, Ford said:
The Searchers has influenced many films. David Lean watched the film repeatedly while preparing for Lawrence of Arabia to help him get a sense of how to shoot a landscape.[19] The entrance of Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, across a vast prairie, is echoed clearly in the across-the-desert entrance of Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia. Sam Peckinpah referenced the aftermath of the massacre and the funeral scene in Major Dundee[20] and, according to a 1974 review by Jay Cocks, Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia contains dialogue with "direct tributes to such classics as John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and John Ford's The Searchers."[21]
Martin Scorsese's Who's That Knocking at My Door features an extended sequence in which the two leading characters discuss the film.[22]
Scott McGee, writing for Turner Classic Movies, notes "Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, Jean-Luc Goddard, and George Lucas have all been influenced and paid some form of homage to The Searchers in their work.[23] Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan pays a shot-specific homage to the famous doorway shot when the Army brings the news of the death of Private Ryan's three brothers to their mother.
Alex Cox's Searchers 2.0, while not a sequel or a remake as the title may suggest, is named for the John Ford classic. The main characters discuss films, especially westerns, including The Searchers throughout the film.
"That'll Be the Day," a song written by Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison, and recorded by various artists, was inspired by their viewing of this film in June 1956. John Wayne's frequently-used, world-weary catchphrase, "That'll be the day" inspired the young musicians. The film served as the inspiration for the name of the British band The Searchers.[24][25]
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