STAGECOACH: Two-Disc Special Edition
Warner Home Video, $26.98
John Wayne has been called many things, but “beautiful” isn’t often one of them. In Stagecoach, he was beautiful: a young California Adonis with cascading brown hair, piercing, yet vulnerable, blue eyes, and a listing swagger that bordered on ballet-like. John Ford, already a veteran director in 1938, noticed the future star when, moonlighting as a prop man, Wayne inadvertently wandered into a master shot, ruining the take. Instead of pulling one of his trademark tirades, Ford sat transfixed, recognizing primal star power when he saw it through the camera lens. The kid was no actor – that would come much later – but he did have undeniable charisma. (Wayne had already labored as a B-movie actor for 10 years, appearing in no fewer than 80 films by the time he became an A-list star with Stagecoach.) When Ford decided to film a short story called “Stage to Lordsburg,” he resolved to cast the young would-be star in the pivotal role of the Ringo Kid. The studio and producers lobbied for Gary Cooper, but Ford was adamant, and rightly so. From the swooning introductory tracking shot zooming in on Wayne’s face as he spins a Winchester rifle, the seeds of a new American icon took root. Ford knew how to exploit Wayne’s awkward line readings, giving him minimal dialogue, but plenty of silent, telling reaction shots. “I’m not really an actor,” Wayne once admitted in a moment of candor and insight. “I’m a re-actor.” Stagecoach has been called the first adult Western, a facile description. First and foremost, it’s crackerjack entertainment. With its diverse set of genre archetypes, lyrical lighting and depth-of-field, spectacular scenery (the first time Ford used Monument Valley), and heart-pounding action sequences, it laid the foundations for every Western that followed in its hoofsteps. This essential two-disc set offers a bounty of extras, including a feature-length PBS American Masters episode on Ford and Wayne, which casts unflinching light on one of the most complex collaborations in American film – by turns contentious and cooperative, supportive and sadistic, manipulative and majestic. Both men would go on to tackle deeper, more unsettling themes, but neither ever made a more all-encompassingly entertaining film.
ALSO OUT NOW
The Searchers: 50th Anniversary Edition (Warner Home Video, $26.98): The Ford-Wayne collaboration reached its zenith with Ford’s most mature and unsettling work, an odyssey of obsession, racism, and revenge. As embittered outsider Ethan Edwards, Wayne gave his most layered performance – God’s angriest man, both avenging angel and racist villain.
Studio One: The Defender (Video Service, $19.95): Fifty years before he was mad-cow-disease-addled legal eagle Denny Crane, William Shatner co-starred as a wet-behind-the-ears defense lawyer in this live courtroom drama from TV’s Golden Age. Co-starring Steve McQueen and Ralph Bellamy.
This article appears in June 16 • 2006.