Stagecoach to Stardom

Maureen O’Hara once nailed the appeal of her favorite leading man: “To the world, John Wayne is not just an actor. John Wayne is the United States of America.”

More than a movie star, Wayne still reigns as the ultimate cowboy on the international stage. But it “only” took 13 years of toiling in 82 low-budget films for “Duke” Wayne to finally gain fame in the 1939 classic, Stagecoach. And if it wasn’t for director John Ford’s belief in his former prop man’s talent, Duke might have continued grinding out B-pictures for the rest of his career.

You see, Stagecoach is not a Western. It’s the Western, a genre elevated by Ford’s vision of ditching cartoon cowpokes in favor of realistic characters and stories for adults. Yet by 1939, “Poverty Row” players like Republic and Monogram Pictures had flooded the market with so many cheap shoot-em-ups, major studios rarely released Westerns. Luckily, after a year of pitching the script all over Hollywood, Ford talked independent producer Walter Wanger into financing his pet project.

Stagecoach, dubbed “Grand Hotel on wheels,” takes nine strangers on a wild ride through Apache territory. At the time, Duke was the least famous and lowest-paid performer. Check the opening credits – Claire Trevor gets top billing, and the supporting cast is led by Thomas Mitchell, who won an Oscar for his performance as drunken Doc Boone.

Initially, Duke was intimidated about working alongside better-known actors, and the notoriously spiky Ford preyed on Duke’s insecurity by constantly picking on him. Happily, Ford’s bullying caused Trevor, Mitchell and the other castmates to rally around Duke, which boosted his confidence.

On the other hand, Ford did Duke one crucial favor: He delayed Duke’s entrance until 18 minutes into the story, after all the other characters have been introduced, and Ford did it with a dramatic push-in shot that visually tells the audience, “Pay attention to this guy. He’s a star!”

Naturally, Indian attacks were mandatory in Westerns back then. What sets Stagecoach apart is that for its 7-minute showdown, Ford hired a fearless stuntman named Yakima Canutt, whose eye-popping, death-defying antics are the stuff of legend. There were no CGI special effects in 1939, kids. The stunts were real and the results could’ve landed Canutt in a body bag. (Canutt later co-directed the iconic chariot race in Ben-Hur, which won 11 Oscars.)

Yet aside from pulse-pounding action, Stagecoach packs a lot of humor, suspense and heart into its tidy 96-minute running time. Duke’s romance with a prostitute named Dallas is tender and believable.

What also sets the plot apart is that the typical good guys (a banker, a Southern gentleman) are actually the bad guys, and the bad guys (a fugitive, a hooker, an alcoholic doctor) are the good guys. It’s a cool twist on old-timey tropes.

In the end, Stagecoach was a film nobody wanted to make, in a genre nobody liked, starring an actor nobody heard of that became the sleeper hit of 1939. It earned seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) and won two (for Best Supporting Actor and Best Music Score).

It marked the first of seven flicks John Ford shot in Monument Valley. And it established Duke and Ford as one of the greatest actor-director teams in screen history.

Watch their breakout Western here.