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Attention U.S. TCM Subscribers: John Ford's most expressively emotional western is Top Ten Western #2 and is as likely as any film to provide one with a truly unforgettable, rich and rewarding movie watching experience. It has been reviewed in 'Opening Up a Treasure' and will commence on TCM Monday, March 20 at 11am PST. Any comments on the film, my appreciation or preferably both would be most welcomed. http://thecinemacafe.com/the-cinema-treasure-hunter/2014/4/14/opening-up-a-treasure-the-searchers
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Posted: |
Mar 18, 2017 - 1:19 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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THE SEARCHERS was based on Alan Le May's best-selling novel, which was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post from 6 November to 3 December 1954, under the title "The Avenging Texans." The story was based on a an actual Comanche kidnapping of Cynthia Ann Parker, a young white girl in Texas in 1836.
THE SEARCHERS was the first film produced by C. V. Whitney Pictures. Whitney, a well-known sportsman and millionaire, had previously been a partner with David O. Selznick in Pioneer Pictures and other ventures, including the production of GONE WITH THE WIND and the formation of the Technicolor company. Whitney also had a long association with producer Merian C. Cooper, one of director John Ford's partners in Argosy Pictures. Cooper wanted Selznick to release the film, but Selznick sneered at the idea of a John Wayne western.
Fess Parker was offered the part of "Martin Pawley," but Walt Disney refused to loan him out. Jeffrey Hunter got the role instead. Hunter was nearly 29 at the time of filming, although his character was supposed to be a teenager. Soon after, Parker and Hunter would star together in Disney's THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE (1956). Disney never told Parker, his "Davy Crockett" star, that he was in demand by the great John Ford. Parker was horrified when he later discovered what an opportunity he had been denied.
Like many of Ford's films, the production was a family affair. Ford's son Patrick acted as the associate producer and his son-in-law, Ken Curtis, played "Charlie McCorry"; John Wayne's son Pat played "Lt. Greenhill"; and Lana Wood, who played "Debbie" as a young girl, was actress Natalie Wood's sister. Natalie Wood was still a student in high school when the film was being made, and on several occasions both John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter had to pick her up at school on days when she was required on the set. This caused a good deal of excitement among Wood's female classmates.
Olive Carey ("Mrs. Jorgensen") and Harry Carey, Jr. ("Brad Jorgensen") were the widow and son of the late western actor Harry Carey, who was a longtime friend of and major influence on both Ford and Wayne. Many modern film critics have pointed out that in the final shots of THE SEARCHERS, when Wayne is seen in the doorway, he paid tribute to Carey by grasping his right elbow with his left hand, a gesture that Carey often made in his pictures. Considering the part of "Ethan Edwards" to be the best character that he ever portrayed on-screen, and THE SEARCHERS to be his favorite film role, John Wayne named his youngest son Ethan Wayne (born February 22, 1962) in homage.
The majority of location shooting was done in Monument Valley, UT, where temperatures were frequently in excess of 120 degrees. Additional location shooting took place in Canada, Colorado, and Bronson Canyon in Los Angeles' Griffith Park. Studio sequences were shot at RKO-Pathé.
THE SEARCHERS received mostly positive reviews and was a financial success, tying with REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) as 1956's 11th top box-office attraction. But the film did not receive any Academy Award nominations. In 1972, a Sight and Sound poll of international film critics included it on a list of the twenty best films of all time, and 40 years later it was voted as the seventh greatest film of all time in Sight and Sound's 2012 critic's poll. A number of modern directors, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Jean-Luc Godard, John Milius and Paul Schrader, have cited the picture as an influence on their work. David Lean watched the film repeatedly while preparing for LAWRENCE OF ARABIA to help give him a sense of how to shoot a landscape.
In 2007, THE SEARCHERS was ranked 12th on the American Film Institute's "100 Years…100 Movies--10th Anniversary Edition" list of the greatest American films, moving up from the 96th position it held on AFI's 1997 list. It was among the first 25 movies to be selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in The National Film Registry in 1989.
Reportedly this film was seen in a theater in Texas by Buddy Holly and his friends in the summer of 1956. They were so impressed with Ethan's (John Wayne's) repeated use of the phrase "That'll be the day" that they used it as the title for their now standard rock song, which they composed soon after. The Merseybeat band The Searchers took their name from this film. They are most famous for their cover of "Needles and Pins". Max Steiner's score for the film was most recently released by Brigham Young Film Music Archives in 2015.
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