Film Stories From The Book:
Hollywood of the Rockies
By: Frederic B. Wildfang
Cheyenne Autumn
1964 — Warner — produced by Bernard Smith — written by James R. Webb (based on the novel by Mari Sandoz), directed by John Ford, photography by William H. Clothier, music by Alex North, art directed by Richard Day, film edited by Otho Lovering — starring Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Delores del Rio, Sal Mineo, Edward G. Robinson, James Stewart, Ricardo Montalban, Gilbert Roland, Arthur Kennedy, Patrick Wayne, Elizabeth Allen, Victor Jory, John Carradine, Mike Mazurki, George O’Brien, Ben Johnson, and Harry Carey, Jr.
Academy Award Nomination: Cinematography
Cheyenne Autumn was John Ford’s last Western. As Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times, “it is a beautiful and powerful motion picture that stunningly combines a profound and passionate story of mis-treatment of American Indians with some of the most magnificent and energetic lore ever put on the screen.”
With its cast of thousands, including hundreds of Navajos hired to play the part of the uprooted Cheyenne Indians, Ford chronicles the 1500-mile trek of the Cheyenne back to their Yellowstone homeland. Again, the location for this movie is “John Ford Country” — the dazzling red desert spires and buttes of Monument Valley.
Though Harry Carey, Jr. plays only a minor role in this epic (a soldier named Smith under Richard Widmark’s command), he recounts an amusing incident he was involved in with another John Ford veteran — fellow actor and legendary stuntman, Ben Johnson:
Ben’s own steer-roping horse was injured on the first day of shooting...so Ben was forced to ride an inferior one.... So now I had a faster horse than Ben — a first in our history of making movies together.... We were shooting this day at a place called Mexican Hat in Utah, just north of Monument Valley. The San Juan river flows right by....
Now, Ol’ Ben knew he was going to get beat crossing the river, but he has always been a foxy guy under duress. We had our horses near the bank and were dismounted to adjust our
cinches.... Ben, with a very concerned expression on his face, gave me some instructions prior to mounting....
‘Now Dobe,’ he said, while looking at the ground at the river’s edge, ‘see that mud right there in front of you?’
‘Yes, Ben,’ I said, very concerned, ‘I see it. It’s kinda blue.’
‘Yeah — yeah. Well, when ya’ git to that there muddy place, kinda take a good hold of your horse, because if he’s a goin’ fast an’ hits that mud there he could sure as hell fall with you, ‘cause he can’t get his feet under him fast enough....’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘that does look kind of dangerous. Thanks, Ben. I’ll sure do that.’
We mounted up and rode back to the willows to await the order from Uncle Jack. It wasn’t long before we heard, ‘Come ahead...come ahead...ride like hell!’
We were side by side when we started, but in no time, l was a good two lengths in front. In no time at all, I came to the ‘mud spot.’ I did as I’d been told — I pulled Jimmy in a little so he wouldn’t get caught up in that thick slime and when I did, Mr. Johnson went by me so fast he was just a blur.
“Cheyenne Autumn”, says Dobe, “reminded me of Woody Guthrie’s great song, ‘So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You.’ That’s what John Ford was saying to Monument Valley. The happiest times of his life had been spent there.”
When asked just why she liked Durango, Harry Carey’s wife Marilyn replied, “because it’s so different than Sherman Oaks — smaller and friendlier.” “We’ve never regretted moving here,” she added. Dobe agreed, but as he writes in his book:
When I sit out on the deck of my home here in Durango, Colorado, I can see the white, billowy clouds that John Ford loved so much, drifting southwest toward Monument Valley. I know everything that’s under those clouds. I watched and heard things only a handful of other actors have experienced.
“I know film history was made under clouds like those,” says Dobe, “and I was part of it.”
