Ford: "I still like that picture. It was really 'Boule-de-Suif', and I imagine the writer, Ernie Haycock, got his idea from there and turned it into a western story which he called 'Stage to Lordsbourg'." Maupassant's short story, from 1880, and first filmed in France in 1934, is about a cross-section of society fleeing the Prussians in a stagecoach; one of them is a prostitute. Dudley Nichols wrote the screenplay.
This is a definitive western, one of the classics, and the making of John Wayne. It's also the first Ford picture to feature Monument Valley. With lots of fast on-location action and great characterisations.
Wayne's relationship with tart with a heart Claire Trevor is great - he immediately says to Carradine 'Why don't we ask the opinion of the other lady?" Excuse me, that's John Carradine the gambler, Thomas Mitchell the drunken doctor, Donald Meek as a whisky salesman and lady Louise Platt. Driving are Andy Devine and George Bancroft. Chris Pin-Martin is the Mexican who's less worried about his wife running off than his horse she's run off on. (The Lucky Luke story, 'The Stage Coach' borrows shamelessly all these characters.)
Bert Glennon photographed, Otho Lovering and Dorothy Spencer edited. That's Yakima Canutt doubling for Wayne in that amazing stunt leaping across the horses.
An independent Walter Wanger production.
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