The Searchers ***** (1956, John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Natalie Wood, Ward Bond) – Classic Movie Review 349

With a fine screenplay by Frank S Nugent based on the factually based novel by Alan Le May, this 1956 all-time great John Ford movie The Searchers is simply one of the best Westerns ever.

John Wayne lands one of his finest and least typical roles as Ethan Edwards, a Civil War veteran and quintessential loner who is obsessed with his relentless search for his niece Debbie (Natalie Wood), snatched as a child by Chief Scar’s Comanches, who also killed her parents.

So Ethan sets out, along with his eighth-Indian nephew Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), on a years-long journey to find her. The years roll by but Wayne refuses to give up looking for her, only to discover a decade on that she’s become an adult as a Native American.

Feeling betrayed, angry and full of hate, he attacks the Comanches’ settlement, hell bent on killing her. In a superb, astonishing performance, Wayne hides his usual sympathetic hero persona under the mantle of a chilly cruelty.

Meanwhile Ford is on commanding form, deploying all his usual ingredients at the highest level, including a stupendous support cast, splendid scenery, Max Steiner’s lovely score and Winton C Hoch’s gloriously beautiful Technicolor VistaVision cinematography. Ford shows an audacious brilliance in turning the genre he helped to create on its head, depicting the central manhunt as less heroic quest than a dark obsession, fired by deep-seated racism.

Ford establishes a quasi-family atmosphere on the production, with him as the patriarch of course. Also among the cast, Ford employs many of his trusted regulars and friends – Vera Miles (Laurie Jorgensen), Ward Bond (the Rev Captain Samuel Johnston Clayton), John Qualen (Mr Jorgensen), Henry Brandon (Chief Scar), Harry Carey Jr (Brad Jorgensen), Olive Carey (Mrs Jorgensen), Hank Worden, Lana Wood, Dorothy Jordan, Pat Wayne [Patrick Wayne], Dan Borzage, Mae Marsh, Ken Curtis and Antonio Moreno.

Patrick Wayne, the second son of John Wayne, playing Lieutenant Greenhill, won the Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer – Male. Big Jake (1971) was the ninth and last of his co-starring roles with his father.

The ultimate tribute is that The Searchers has been copied countless times, but it has never been bettered.

The Searchers is directed by John Ford, runs 119 minutes, is made by Whitney Productions [C V Whitney Pictures], produced by Warner Bros, is written by Frank S Nugent, based on the novel by Alan LeMay, is shot in Technicolor and VistaVision by Winton C Hoch, is produced by Merian C Cooper, C V Whitney and Patrick Ford, is scored by Max Steiner, and is designed by James Basev and Frank Hotaling.

Also in the cast are Beulah Archuletta, Walter Coy, Pippa Scott, Smile White Sheep, Pipe Line Begishe, Pete Grey Eyes, Exactly Sonnie Betsuie, Ruth Clifford, Tommy Doss, Feather Hat Jr, Nacho Galindo, Jack Tin Horn, Harry Black Horse, Away Luna, Robert Lyden, Cliff Lyons, Peter Mamakos, Bob Many Mules, Jack Pennick, Lloyd Perryman, Chuck Roberson, Many Mules Son, Percy Shooting Star, William Steele, Chief Thundercloud and Billy Yellow.

Ford said: ‘The audience likes seeing the Indians get killed. They don’t consider them as human beings with a great culture of their own quite different to ours. But they are a very dignified people even when they were being defeated.’

Nugent adapted Alan Le May’s 1954 novel first serialised as a short story in autumn 1954 issues of the Saturday Evening Post, then titled The Avenging Texans. The story is based on the Comanche kidnapping in 1836 Texas of Cynthia Ann Parker, who became the mother of Comanche chief Quanah Parker

Hunter (already 30 but looking much younger) deservedly got excellent reviews, holding his own against the veteran Wayne and going on to star in two more John Ford movies, The Last Hurrah (1958) and Sergeant Rutledge (1960).

He said: ‘I was told I had arrived when, during the shooting of The Searchers, they gave me almost as much ammunition as they gave John Wayne.’

Hunter’s real name was Henry Herman McKinnies Jr. His career went into a downward spiral after King of Kings in 1961, known derisively as ‘I Was a Teenage Jesus’. After being injured in an on-set explosion, he died of a stroke in 1969, aged only 42.

The 5ft tall Wood (real name Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko), a movie veteran since she was nine in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), is aged 18 here but playing 15. She also died young, aged only 43, in an infamous drowning accident after a lifetime fear of drowning following an accident when she was a little girl, during the filming of The Green Promise (1949). Her career also dipped in her last decade.

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© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 349 derekwinnert.com

John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter in The Searchers (1956).