After having fought in the Civil War, a morose and angry Ethan Edwards returns to the Texas prairie homestead of his brother Aaron and his family. He reconnects with the family from whom he has long been separated. Instead of finding peace, he is faced with even more trauma and fuel for his hatred of the Comanche Indians after he learns that a raiding party led by Chief Scar had massacred his brother and wife and nephew, burned the homestead and kidnapped Ethan’s two young nieces. Thus begins Ethan’s five-year search for his nieces and for the hated Chief Scar.
Today’s Reel Classic is considered to be one of the best Western movies ever made—The Searchers. It was released in 1956 and starred John Wayne as the testy Ethan Edwards. Also starring were Jeffrey Hunter as Martin Pawley (Ethan’s companion on the five-year search), Vera Miles as Laurie Jorgenson (Martin Pawley’s love interest), Ward Bond as Captain Clayton of the Texas Rangers, and Natalie Wood as the 15-year-old niece, Debbie Edwards. The younger Debbie that we meet before the kidnapping was played by Natalie Wood’s younger sister, Lana Wood.
A couple of other familiar faces in the cast are Harry Carey Jr. as Brad Jorgenson (the love interest of the older niece, Lucy) and Ken Curtis as Charlie McCorry. Many will remember Ken Curtis as Festus on the long-running TV show Gunsmoke. A face you may not recognize but is worthy of mention is that of the character Lt. Greenhill of the US Calvary. He is played by Patrick Wayne, John Wayne’s son.
The storyline follows the long and arduous search for the young girls by Ethan Edwards and his young companion Martin Pawley. They are initially accompanied by a posse of local residents as well as Captain Clayton. As the search wears on the locals decide to return to their own homesteads to protect and care for their own families. Eventually, it is just Edwards and Pawley left to carry on, and they are determined not to quit until they find the raiders and the nieces. As mentioned above, the search drags on for five years and takes them from the dry plains of the southwest to the snow-covered plains of the north country.
The relationship between Edwards and Pawley is not good initially—Edwards would rather be alone and is carrying a lot of emotional baggage from his life experiences from both the war and his life before the war.
The casual observer may miss an important clue as to why Ethan Edwards has such a hatred for the Comanches. During the attack on his brother’s home, we see young Debbie hiding outside at the grave site of her grandmother (Ethan’s mother). We see the marker that reads “Here lies Mary Jane Edwards killed by Comanches May 12, 1852. A good wife and mother in her 41st year.” Given his experiences, we may better understand Ethan’s anger and difficulty in his relationships with others. Today we would call that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
There is a line running through the story involving the tension between Ethan and Martin Pawley. Martin is very much aware of Ethan’s hatred, and Ethan talks about how as time has gone by, he believes that his niece Debbie will have been corrupted by her experiences living with the Comanches. He does not believe that when they find her she will be the Debbie they knew. Martin is determined not only to find her but then to protect her from the anger of Ethan—he fears that Ethan may do her harm.
Director John Ford filmed the location scenes in Monument Valley. It was a favorite location of his as he filmed seven Westerns utilizing that location. John Wayne was also a favorite of John Ford as Wayne starred in multiple Ford-directed films including She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, Stagecoach, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Another interesting note about John Ford is that he hired Native American Indians to play the roles of Indians in his films (with a few exceptions). The Comanches in this film were played by Navajo Indians (with the exception of Chief Scar). The Navajo called John Ford “Tall Leader” and were grateful for the employment opportunities that he brought to their people. The language, dress, and dances in the film are actually Navajo and not Comanche.
Though John Wayne comes off as gruff and tough and hardened in this film (and in many of his films) he did exhibit a softer side during the making of The Searchers. One example of his compassion was when a young Navajo child became very ill with pneumonia, he arranged for the child to be flown to a hospital in his personal plane. Another was when he came upon actress Beulah Archuletta (she played Look in the film) sitting alone and crying. He asked her what was wrong and she said that she was going to miss her son’s wedding because she was in the midst of filming her scenes. John Wayne arranged for production to be shut down for a few days and flew her back to California to attend her son’s wedding.
The Navajo called John Wayne “The Man With The Big Eagle.” One other example of kindness was that Natalie Wood was a teenager at this time and still attending high school. Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter would go pick her up at school. Needless to say, that created a great stir among her classmates.
Given these positive stories, we cannot forget the other side of John Wayne (or at least I can’t). He and his co-star in this film, Ward Bond, led an effort to destroy the Hollywood careers of a number of individuals whom they deemed to be Communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era (House Un-American Activities Committee). I have mentioned this in earlier Reel Classic reviews of films.
The Searchers was adapted from a novel by the same name. It was published in 1954 and originally had been serialized in the Saturday Evening Post under the title of “The Avenging Texans.” The story was based on an actual kidnapping of a young girl named Cynthia Ann Parker in 1836. She lived among the Comanches for 25 years before she was recaptured and was not able to readjust to her new life. She ended up starving herself to death.
The film served as an inspiration for a couple of well-known performers. Peter Fonda reportedly said that The Searchers was an inspiration for his iconic film Easy Rider (1969). He said that his movie would be about John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter looking for Natalie Wood. Except, in Easy Rider Peter Fonda would be John Wayne, Dennis Hopper would be his partner, and America would be Natalie Wood.
The second story of inspiration comes from musician Buddy Holly. Holly reportedly saw the film in a Lubbock, Texas theater and was taken by a line that John Wayne’s character says repeatedly throughout the film — “That’ll be the day.” He was inspired to write what would become his hit song of the same title.
At the time of its release, The Searchers was both a critical and commercial success. Though the subject matter is difficult and the lead character even more difficult, the movie has grown in stature over the years since it was first released. In 2008 the American Film Institute ranked The Searchers #1 on their list of Top Ten Greatest Westerns. In 1989 it was among the first twenty-five movies selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. In 2007 the American Film Institute identified it as the 12th Greatest Movie of All Time.
Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that the character Ethan Edwards was “one of the most compelling characters Ford and Wayne ever created.” He also wrote that “The Searchers indeed seems to be two films. The Ethan Edwards story is stark and lonely, a portrait of obsession....”
Martin Scorsese wrote about The Searchers, “Like all great works of art, it’s uncomfortable. The core of the movie is deeply painful. The character of Ethan Edwards is one of the most unsettling in American cinema.”
Film scholar Ed Lowry wrote in The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers “Never before in a Ford western has the wilderness seemed so brutal or settlements so tenuous and threatened. There are no towns—only outposts and isolated homesteads, remote and exposed between the awesome buttes of Ford’s mythic Monument Valley. And while the Comanches are depicted as utterly ruthless, Ford ascribes motivations for their actions and lends them a dignity befitting a proud civilization.”
Again from Roger Ebert: “The Searchers was made in the dying days of the classic Western, which faltered when Indians ceased to be typecast as savages. Revisionist Westerns...took a more enlightened view of Native Americans, but the Western audience didn’t want moral complexity...it wanted action with clear-cut bad guys.”
Yes, the days of “the good guys wore white hats” was coming to an end. This is definitely not the Western of Roy Rogers or Hopalong Cassidy.
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates The Searchers at 7.9 out of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a critics score of 94% and an audience score of 88%. In searching for free streaming sites I only found one site on my ROKU—Fawesome. The Clark County Public Library does have it on DVD.
Information for this Reel Classic review was gathered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.
In summary, this is a Western, but it is also a story with deep and complex characters and themes. There is a reason it is held in such high esteem by so many. I encourage you to seek it out if you have not yet seen it or revisit it once again. After all, that is why we call them Reel Classics.
Until next time, I leave you with the movie trailer below.
