The Searchers is a 1956 epic Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, which tells the story of Ethan Edwards, a bitter, middle-aged loner and Civil War veteran played by John Wayne, who spends years looking for his abducted niece.
While a modest commercial success upon its 1956 release, The Searchers received no Academy Award nominations and was certainly not regarded by then-contemporary reviewers as a potential classic. In recent years, however, the film’s prestige has risen and it is now widely acknowledged as one of the best Westerns ever made, being 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.
In 1989, the United States National Film Registry’s first year of selecting films for preservation, The Searchers was one of the twenty-five films to be deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Now a highly influential film, it has inspired other Westerns as well as dramas, and science fiction films.
Production
The Searchers was originally produced by C.V. Whitney, directed by John Ford, and distributed by Warner Brothers. The film starred John Wayne, who was the only actor Ford ever considered for the lead in the movie.
Ford from the onset strove to make a movie unlike any made before it in Hollywood. Wayne had played outlaw characters before (the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach), but never one as driven and borderline psychotic as Ethan Edwards – indeed, Edwards is played as hovering on the verge of a complete breakdown. Jonathan Lethem said of Wayne’s portrayal of Edwards that he was “tormented and tormenting … his fury is righteous and ugly, at once, resentment branded as a fetish.” His racism and hatred are blatant and open, and Ford’s comments suggest that he intended it so. His remarks make clear he is seeking to portray the racism of white America that led to the genocide practiced against Native Americans. Lethem also writes of his first look at The Searchers, “Weren’t Westerns meant to be simple? The film on the screen is lush, portentous.”.
While the movie 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. 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.
Cast
- John Wayne – Ethan Edwards; Wayne played his most difficult role as the racist Civil War veteran who hates practically everyone – but Indians in particular. After he discovers that his niece Debbie has mated with an Indian, he intends to kill her.
- Jeffrey Hunter – Martin Pawley; the adopted son of Ethan’s brother, he is part Indian, and undertakes the search with Edwards to save his adoptive sister from the Comanche and, later, from Ethan.
- Vera Miles – Laurie Jorgensen; Pawley’s sweetheart, she gets just one letter in five years from him.
- Ward Bond – Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton; preacher and Texas Ranger captain.
- Natalie Wood – Debbie Edwards (older); Ethan Edwards’s niece, carried off by Comanches when she is a child, she married Chief Scar when she grows up. Natalie Wood’s younger sister, Lana Wood, plays Debbie as a child.
- John Qualen – Lars Jorgensen; a Scandinavian immigrant, and father of Laurie.
- Olive Carey – Mrs. Jorgensen; American-born wife of Lars and mother of Laurie.
- Henry Brandon – Chief Cicatrice (Scar); chief of the Nawyecka band of Comanche; the abductor of the girls.
- Ken Curtis – Charlie McCorry; a hayseed cowboy who intends to marry Laurie Jorgensen.
- Harry Carey, Jr. – Brad Jorgensen; engaged to the older Edwards sister.
- Antonio Moreno – Emilio Figueroa; a Comanchero, he leads Ethan Edwards at last to Scar.
- Hank Worden – Mose Harper; half-mad cowhand who helps locate Debbie.
- Beulah Archuletta – Wild Goose Flying in the Night Sky (Look); Indian woman married to Martin through his misunderstanding.
