John Ford’s movie Stagecoach has a claim to be the Western. It was the first effort of the director into the genre since his first and to be taken against the scenery of Monument Valley. Ford was the counterpart to Zane Grey, the ex-dentist turned. As Grey’s blend of piety and lyricism inspired a feeling of awe in his readers, the movie Stagecoach guaranteed that Westerns on the big screen would once more be taken seriously. They had fallen from grace. As opposed to making energetic tales about leaders heading hold, Hollywood made a complacent collection of unstipulated B-pictures, many starring John Wayne, whose standing with the studios was considerably reduced because his first important role in Raoul Walsh’s epic, The Big Trail. This was the age of Hopalong Cassidy, The Three Mesquiteers, and the singing cowboy Gene Autry, to be followed a generation later by Roy Rogers.
The movie Stagecoach was loosely based on Ernest Haycox’s The Stage to Lordsburg, a short story published in Collier’s Magazine, but Ford later claimed that the actual inspiration was the Guy de Maupassant story, Boule de Suif, a cutting story about a coach travel across Prussian-occupied France. Dudley Nichols accommodated the novella, and with this test script Ford attempted to convince various studios in making it into a movie. But nobody was interested Westerns are not made by anybody anymore and it was a Western. Ford’s friend Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy, was curious at first but the manager of RKO Radio Pictures decided to withdraw at the last minute. He maintained that there was no interest in Westerns with the general public. Other than this, his advisers believed the storyline was feeble for a movie. Producer Walter Wanger, who had been dedicated to libertyland United Artists for creating one final movie, eventually accepted the movie Stagecoach since he believed he could turn it into a cheap ‘star movie’ with Gary Cooper as Ringo Kid and Marlene Dietrich as Dallas. John Ford persuaded by stating that they were too pricey Wanger to refrain from Cooper and Dietrich. He said that you must create such a Western for peanuts, a quickie with a minimum quantity of money.
Wanger did not interfere with the job giving the liberty to Ford. Ford organized the casting, and went to work. The attack and the pursuit of the Indians were shot in two days in Monument Valley. The movie Stagecoach was filmed efficient and fast, almost like a B-picture. The movie was edited by ford as it were from the camera and the camera was attached to the cars that drove alongside the horses and the coach, and sometimes between Indians’ hordes. Ford the Indians not killed the horses to shorten the pursuit was asked by film journalists. Ford responded that the Indians were not interested in the pale-faces but at the horses.
