The Searchers
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John Ford
Produced by	Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney
Written by	Screenplay Frank S. Nugent Novel Alan Le May
Starring	John Wayne Jeffrey Hunter Natalie Wood Ward Bond Vera Miles
Music by	Max Steiner (score) Stan Jones (title song)
Cinematography	Winton C. Hoch
Editing by	Jack Murray
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	March 13, 1956
Running time	119 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Searchers is a 1956 epic Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May. It is the story of Ethan Edwards, a middle-aged Civil War veteran portrayed by John Wayne, who spends years looking for his abducted niece with Martin Pawley, his adoptive nephew, portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter.

While a commercial success upon its 1956 release, The Searchers received no Academy Award nominations. It was named the Greatest Western of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008. It also placed 12th on the American Film Institute's 2007 list of the Top 100 greatest movies of all time.^[1]

[edit] Plot

The year is 1868. Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) returns from the American Civil War, in which he fought for the Confederacy, to the home of his brother Aaron (Walter Coy) in rural northern Texas. Despite hints and supposition that Ethan has been up to no good, the film's early scenes never explicitly frame Ethan for wrongdoing. However, Ranger Captain Samuel Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond), who is also the local preacher, dourly observes, after Ethan refuses to take an oath of allegiance to the Texas Rangers ("no need to, wouldn't be legal anyway") "you fit a lot of [wanted poster] descriptions." Ethan has a medal that he gives to his niece Debbie (Lana Wood), which suggests he has been in Mexico during the period of the Emperor Maximilian. He also gives Aaron two pouches of freshly minted Double Eagle $20 dollar gold pieces to help with the ranch. Martha and Aaron wonder, but do not ask, where they came from. Shortly after his arrival, a Comanche raid leaves his brother and sister-in-law Martha (Dorothy Jordan), his nephew, Ben (Robert Lyden), all dead, and his two nieces, Lucy (Pippa Scott) and Debbie, abducted, and the family homestead burned down.

After the funeral, a group led by Captain Clayton goes in search of the raiding party. When they discover the location of the encampment, Ethan wants to attack immediately, before daylight. Clayton points out to Ethan that the Comanche generally kill their hostages at the first notice of a raid, which is something that Ethan already knows. This is the first sign that Ethan is willing not to bring the girls back alive. Captain Clayton gives the order that they will sneak in easy and scare off the band's horses. By the time they get to the encampment the Indians are gone. The Rangers are then caught in a pincer movement trap and have to make a run for the river. As they cross the river, one of the group, Nesby (William Steele), is wounded. The Rangers take up a defensive position using the river as a buffer, and they manage to repel the attack. The Indians retreat. When Ethan attempts to kill one more Comanche, Clayton stops him by knocking his rifle barrel down. This enrages Ethan who says that from now on he will do the job by himself. Captain Clayton decides that they are too few to continue and must get Nesby back home to treat his wound.

One of the group, Brad Jorgensen (Harry Carey, Jr.), also Lucy's fiancé, says that someone will have to kill him to make him stop looking for Lucy. Aaron's adopted son, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who is ¹⁄₈ Cherokee, feels the same way, and with the two of them, Ethan continues to pursue the Comanche. The three of them find where the main trail goes one way and four horses take off to the right, into a tight canyon pass. Ethan tells them that he will follow the small trail and that the two of them should stay on the main trail. When Ethan returns he is distracted and seemingly upset, but doesn't say anything. He also seems to have lost his Confederate Army long coat. Later Brad is out on scout duty on foot and returns to Ethan and Martin saying that he has found the Comanche camp, and has seen Lucy. At this point Ethan tells Brad and Martin that it wasn't Lucy, that he had already found the murdered body of Lucy in the canyon. He had wrapped her body in his coat, and buried her with his bare hands. Brad, enraged, mounts his horse and charges into the encampment alone, dying in a fruitless, suicidal attempt to avenge Lucy.

Ethan and Martin lose the trail when the winter blizzards come. They go to Fort Richardson, Fort Wingate (near Gallup, New Mexico), Fort Cobb and the Anadarko Agency both in Indian Territory, among other places trying to pick up the trail. After a year, they return to the Jorgensen ranch. When they arrive, Laurie Jorgensen (Vera Miles) has been pining and waiting for Martin, and Ethan has a letter waiting for him from a man who runs a trading post on the Salt Fork of the Brazos River, Jerem Futterman, saying that Futterman has information about Debbie. The next morning Martin learns that Ethan has left without him, but Laurie has stolen the letter to give to Martin. She also lets Martin take her horse. Laurie doesn't want Martin to go, but knows that he must. Ethan and Martin continue to search for Debbie, a search that goes on for five years. During that time, she grows into adolescence and is taken as mate by Scar (Henry Brandon), the chief of the Nawyecka band of Comanche. Scar is presented as the cultural mirror image of Ethan. He hates whites every bit as much as Ethan hates Indians. Once Ethan realizes that Debbie (now played by Natalie Wood) has been mated to Scar, he undergoes a change. He no longer wants to rescue Debbie; he wants her dead, believing that a white woman being a Comanche's "squaw" is worse than death. Martin follows in hopes of stopping Ethan from killing the girl. When Ethan and Martin are alone with Debbie the first time, Ethan draws his pistol to murder his niece but Martin shields her with his own body. Ethan fires the pistol to kill Martin in order to get a clear shot at Debbie but his aim is ruined when he is struck by an Indian's arrow just as he pulls the trigger. Ethan and Martin have to run for cover and Debbie escapes execution by her uncle.

Eventually Ethan, Martin, and the Texas Rangers find Debbie again after a man named Mose Harper who was Scar's captive escapes and lets them know where to go. Martin kills Scar and Ethan scalps the dead chief. Martin tries to prevent Ethan from killing Debbie, but it is Ethan himself who realizes how close he has come to destroying the last link to his family and how, in the act of scalping Scar, he himself has become what he hated so much. Instead of killing Debbie, he lifts her in his arms just as he did when she was a child. Ethan brings Debbie to the safety of friends and then walks away. The film, which opened with a near-identical shot of another doorway, slowly revealing the film's landscape, finishes with a reversal: the film's players enter the darkness within the doorway, and the door closes, just before the end title, leaving Ethan isolated outside where he turns and wanders away into the wilderness.

[edit] Cast

• John Wayne as Ethan Edwards
• Jeffrey Hunter as Martin Pawley
• Vera Miles as Laurie Jorgensen
• Ward Bond as Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton
• Natalie Wood as Debbie Edwards (older)
• John Qualen as Lars Jorgensen
• Olive Carey as Mrs. Jorgensen
• Henry Brandon as Chief Cicatrice (Scar)
• Ken Curtis as Charlie McCorry
• Harry Carey, Jr. as Brad Jorgensen
• Pippa Scott as Lucy Edwards
• Antonio Moreno as Emilio Figueroa
• Hank Worden as Mose Harper
• Beulah Archuletta as Wild Goose Flying in the Night Sky (Look)
• Walter Coy as Aaron Edwards
• Dorothy Jordan as Martha Edwards
• Patrick Wayne as Lt. Greenhill (as Pat Wayne)
• Lana Wood as Debbie Edwards (young)
• Pipe Line Begishe as Comanche (uncredited)
• Exactly Sonnie Betsuie as Comanche (uncredited)
• Danny Borzage as Accordionist at Funeral (uncredited)
• Ruth Clifford as Deranged Woman at Fort (uncredited)
• Tommy Doss as Wedding Musician (uncredited)
• Pete Grey Eyes as Comanche (uncredited)
• Feather Hat Jr. as Comanche (uncredited)
• Nacho Galindo as Mexican Bartender (uncredited)
• Chuck Hayward as Man at Wedding (uncredited)
• Jack Tin Horn as Comanche (uncredited)
• Harry Black Horse as Comanche (uncredited)
• Away Luna as Comanche (uncredited)
• Robert Lyden as Ben Edwards (uncredited)
• Cliff Lyons as Col. Greenhill (uncredited)
• Peter Mamakos as Jerem Futterman (uncredited)
• Mae Marshv Dark Cloaked Woman at Fort Guarding Deranged Woman (uncredited)
• Frank McGrath as (uncredited)
• Bob Many Mules as Comanche (uncredited)
• Jack Pennick as Sergeant at Fort (uncredited)
• Lloyd Perryman as Wedding Musician (uncredited)
• Chuck Roberson as Ranger at Wedding (uncredited)
• Smile White Sheep as Comanche (uncredited)
• Many Mules Son as Comanche (uncredited)
• Percy Shooting Star as Comanche (uncredited)
• William Steele as Nesby (uncredited)
• Chief Thundercloud as Comanche chief (uncredited)
• Terry Wilson as (uncredited)
• Billy Yellow as Comanche (uncredited)

[edit] Production

The film stressed the incredible vastness of the fabled Comancheria, including the Staked Plains, Llano Estacado

The Searchers was originally produced by C.V. Whitney, 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, and in Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park, Los Angeles.^[2] 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.^[3]

[edit] Background

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.^[4] She spent twenty-four years with the Comanches, married a war chief, and had three children, only to be rescued against her will by the 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.^[5] 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.^[6]

In the 1868 report of the Indian Peace Commission an attack in 1866 on a rancher "James Box" in Texas is noted:

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.^[7]

Near the end of the film's story, Debbie's apparent willingness to leave Scar's household with Marty represents a significant departure from most historical models. In real life, abducted children who spent more than a year with the Comanches typically became highly assimilated and did not want to leave their adoptive people. This phenomenon was somewhat similar to the Stockholm syndrome, except that the former captives' affection for their Native American friends and affinity for their culture lasted long after they had been rescued and restored to their families. 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.

[edit] Critical interpretations

[edit] Plot

The unspoken love between Wayne's Ethan and his brother's wife Martha and his obsession with avenging her drives the film.

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.^[8][9][10]

[edit] Themes

Ford made an effort in this film to examine 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 the racism of his hero, and it is this openly virulent hatred of Native Americans by the lead character which opens the door for the film to examine racism as an excuse for the genocide of the Indians. Roger Ebert says: "In The Searchers I think Ford was trying, imperfectly, even nervously, to depict racism that justified genocide."^[11] 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. 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.").^[12]

Natalie Wood as Debbie

The theme of miscegenation also runs through this film. Ethan says repeatedly that he will kill his niece rather than have her live "with a buck." He says "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.^[12] In a 1964 interview with Cosmopolitan magazine, Ford said:

"There's some merit to the charge that the Indian hasn't been portrayed accurately or fairly in the Western, but again, this charge has been a broad generalization and often unfair. The Indian didn't welcome the white man... and he wasn't diplomatic... If he has been treated unfairly by whites in films, that, unfortunately, was often the case in real life. There was much racial prejudice in the West.^[12]

[edit] Reception

Although the film was set in Texas it was filmed in Monument Valley, Utah.

In 1989, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry. The Searchers is often cited as a candidate for the greatest film of all time, such as the Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films ever made. In 1972, The Searchers was voted in eighteenth place then fifth place in 1992 and in 2002 it was in eleventh place. The 2007 American Film Institute 100 Greatest American Films list included The Searchers in twelfth place. In 2008, the American Film Institute named The Searchers as the greatest Western of all time.^[13]

American Film Institute recognition

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #96
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #12
• AFI's 10 Top 10 #1 Western

[edit] Influence

The Searchers has influenced many films. David Lean watched the film repeatedly while preparing for Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to help him get a sense of how to shoot a landscape. 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 his cavalry Western Major Dundee (1965). Martin Scorsese's film Who's That Knocking At My Door features an extended sequence in which the two leading characters discuss The Searchers. Sergio Leone mentioned The Searchers as one of his favorite films and referenced it in a key scene of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). It was also referenced in a similar scene in the Bollywood film Sholay. In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the burning of Luke Skywalker's home parallels visually and narratively the burning of the homestead in The Searchers; also the framing of the shots through the opening of the cave where R2-D2 is hiding, when Obi-Wan Kenobi first appears, directly matches the framing of the screen shots of Ethan Edwards' reunion with his niece, Debbie. Another direct quote comes in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones when Anakin Skywalker approaches the Tusken Raider settlement to rescue his mother, a scene which is framed in the exact same manner as Ethan Edwards surveying the Comanche camp before rescuing Debbie.

John Wayne's catchphrase in the film, "That'll be the day", inspired Buddy Holly to write his hit song of the same name. The film inspired the choice of name of the British Liverpool beat boom band, The Searchers.^[14][15][16]

The soundtrack from Korean director Chan-wook Park's Oldboy contains tracks named after famous westerns and noirs. One of these tracks is titled "The Searchers" in honor of this film.

[edit] Bibliography

• The Searchers: Screenplay, by Frank S Nugent, Alan Le May, John Ford. Published by Warner Bros, 1956. Online Version

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Searchers (film 1956)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Searchers

• The Searchers at the Internet Movie Database
• The Searchers at the TCM Movie Database
• The Searchers at Allmovie
• Roger Ebert review
• Tim Dirks, The Searchers (1956), review on filmsite.org