From Frank Nugenfs screenplay:
"The camera frames and moves with a lone horseman.
He is Ethan Edwards.
A man as hard as the country he is crossing.
Ethan is in his 40s with a three-day stubble of beard.
Dust is caked in the lines of his face and powders his clothing.
His saddle is Mexican...
...and across it he carries a folded serape in place of the Texas poncho.
Strapped onto his saddle roll is a saber and scabbard...
...with a gray silk sash wrapped around it.
Rider and horse have come a long way.“
John Milius.
In 1954, The Saturday Evening Post ran a serial by Alan Le May...
...called “The Avenging Texans."
It centered on an obsessive, 10-year quest...
...to find a girl taken hostage in a Comanche raid.
Later published in book form as The Searchers...
...it was optioned by producer Merian C. Cooper.
Working in conjunction with Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney...
...a millionaire industrialist...
...who had backed the fledgling Technicolor company...
...the two men envisioned the project as an ideal way...
...to reunite John Ford and John Wayne in a Western setting.
Ford hired Frank Nugent to draft a script.
With a budget of two and a half million dollars...
...Ford divided the production into two parts.
While John Wayne was still completing Blood Alley for Warners...
...Ford sent a company in care of his son Patrick...
...with stand-ins for Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter, to Alberta, Canada...
...and Gunnison, Colorado in early 1955 for filming of the snow scenes.
Gunnison was chosen for its exceptional cold.
Temperatures in the region had been known...
...to fall more than 30 degrees below zero.
Essential in story terms to delineate the grueling nature of the search.
On May 31st, 1955, construction began in Monument Valley.
The mythic landscape that became...
...John Ford's specific geography of the West.
Ford, Wayne and the key cast members bunked at Goulding's Trading Post.
The remainder were billeted in the tent city that was set up on the valley floor...
...to house and feed the nearly 300 people involved in the picture.
Even by the 1950s, the 20th century had not imposed on the area.
There were no roads, no phones and little water.
The almost daily windstorms would whip the valley's red dust...
...into suffocating clouds.
Monument Valley was the farthest spot from a railroad...
...in the entire United States.
There's a truth to The Searchers. There's a sense of the West.
You feel, somehow, the loneliness of the Texan out there on a limb...
...living year after year in the vast grandeur of the unconquered prairie.
It rings true.
The stark landscape and the house at the beginning...
...the unremitting power of nature's indifference...
...is absolutely at the heart of our American experience.
The characters are harsh and wonderful.
They speak to us of who we are.
Maybe not the good side always, but I don't think that's necessary.
The great Westerns have always had that honesty about them...
...that other movies don't have.
The Searchers is also based on an incident from Western history.
On December 18th, 1860...
...a band of Texas Rangers and civilian volunteers...
...attacked the Pease River camp of the Comanche leader Peta Nocona.
Nocona and his warriors were away hunting...
...so all of the Indian victims were women.
One woman, however, was spared because her eyes were blue.
Through an interpreter, she revealed that she was in fact white...
...and her name was Cynthia Ann Parker.
She had been kidnapped at the age of 9, almost 25 years earlier.
Her family had never stopped looking for her...
...but she had become the wife of Peta Nocona...
...and refused to leave her tribe.
One of her sons grew up to become one of the most famous figures...
...in frontier history:
The feared Comanche war chief Quanah Parker.
John Milius.
Harry Goulding, a trader...
...had first set eyes on Monument Valley in 1921 when he was rounding up sheep.
Two years later, he and his wife laid claim...
“in 640 acres at the base oi Tsay~Kissi Mesa...
...and began trading with the Navajo indigenous to the reservation.
The Navajo families eked out a meager living...
...predominantly from sheep and horses.
Wool weaving and other crafts were sold to the outside world.
For them, Ford would become a benefactor...
...bringing employment and investment into the area.
In time, they would refer to him as Natani Nez, “Tall Leader.“
My dad always said that he introduced Ford to Monument Valley...
...after he had worked on a picture there in the '20s.
But Ford had other ideas.
He claimed that Harry Goulding camped out in his office...
...beseeching the director to visit this great Western location.
Eventually Ford agreed, in part just to get the guy off his doorstep.
Patrick Wayne.
Ford made Monument Valley the image of the West.
What's interesting about Ford...
...is that he was physically in love with the American continent.
Not just love of country like you're taught in school...
...but love of the earth, love of the dirt, the sky...
...and you can see it in all his films.
He loved Monument Valley and the American West...
...the prairie, more than anything.
There's nothing more beautiful in the world than that.
Nothing that's more dramatic.
He would always get a low angle, a low horizon, the wind blowing grass.
And if possible, it would be a lighter color than the sky.
These are images no one else could get on film.
He was genuinely having a love affair with the land.
John Milius.
Monument Valley in those days was quite primitive.
All of the women were installed at Goulding's...
...and all the men were on the valley floor...
...in this huge sort of tent city that glowed at night with campfires...
...and well, frankly, a certain amount of drinking and gambling and carousing.
Great fun.
Pippa Scott.
Ford was in his element...
...on his favorite location with a cast and crew...
...filled with long-time friends and family.
His son Patrick was associate producer.
Olive Carey and Harry Carey Jr. played mother and son.
Sisters Natalie and Lana Wood shared the role of Debbie.
What John Ford wanted from me...
...was terror at the thought of what was about to happen. A rape.
And a kind of savagery that everyone in this remote area knew about.
Dorothy Jordan, who played my mother, was a friend of Ford's.
He took her aside and told her to really slug me.
She hauled off with a roundhouse.
I had a bruise on my cheek for days after. Pippa Scott.
- Ma, I can't-- - Lucy!
For me, Pippa's scene was rather frightening.
I remember being very unnerved by it.
You know, she was a little bit too good.
Especially to the point of view of an 8-year-old child.
There was a real sense of gut-wrenching terror to it...
...that I know I reacted to very strongly.
I was well aware that it was all make-believe...
...but I was still just beginning to learn about acting...
...and I found all performers to be such interesting people.
I remember for some reason...
...it was very cold on the stage when we were shooting the window scene.
I was to run up the hill and then crouch down by the grave.
And John Ford told me to act very scared...
...but I remember looking up at Henry Brandon, who played Scar...
...and being really in awe of his appearance.
Here was this huge person with the feathers...
...and the paint and everything.
I was trying to tell myself that I was terrified.
I recall quite vividly looking up and thinking:
"Wow, isn't he an amazing sight."
Lana Wood.
If you're an Indian, you would want to be like Scar.
You'd want to blow that horn and slaughter white settlers relentlessly...
...take many scalps and have young wives.
You want to look like Scar.
Scar is wonderful because he's a predator.
The Comanche are not jackals, they are lions.
They're not beasts, they're kings.
And they're gonna get you.
Let's go!
Ethan Edwards respects Scar and Scar respects him back.
But they hate each other.
Ethan doesn't care if he dies here among the Comanche arrows and bullets...
...because he's gotta kill this guy and Scar knows that.
They have no fear of each other.
They're dogs just barely held by the chain.
I think John Ford is the best director who ever lived.
No one else even in his class.
He just knew it. He was a great artist.
He could speak to your heart and it meant something.
No artifice. Nothing between him and you.
He had conservation of line, as the Japanese say.
He could do it in two or three strokes...
...where it would take other good directors seven or eight...
...and they wouldn't get it as well.
He's a storyteller, like Homer.
And when Homer got through with a story...
...you had something you can read forever.
John Milius.
You know, Ford and Wayne were really close personal friends.
John Wayne once said, "John Ford directed my life."
I recently came across a letter dated just after The Searchers...
...when Wayne was in Japan making Barbarian and the Geisha.
It's a note from Ford to the Duke that says:
"I met Kurosawa some years ago and he's quite a fan of ours.
If you get some time, I know he'd love to meet you.“
I thought that was interesting.
A fan of ours, as opposed to a fan of mine or yours.
They were that much in synch.
The Searchers was the height of their relationship.
They not only had a tremendous fondness for each other...
...but they were totally in lock step in that phase of their careers.
Dan Ford.
I don't think there's a better acting performance...
...done by any actor in any movie ever.
John Wayne really understood the character of Ethan Edwards.
He got it.
For people to sit there and say John Wayne wasn't a good actor...
...is the stupidest thing in the world.
All you have to do is show The Searchers.
Yes, sh.
The character of Ethan is so compelling.
He's willing to be what he is. He's God's lonely man.
He feels as strongly as anybody...
...but he realizes he's gotta be the one that protects everybody.
His racism is interesting because he ain't white anymore.
He doesn't belong.
Somehow he knows he has to live outside with the wild things.
But he accepts that.
John Milius.
It's hard to believe they're white.
They ain't white...
...anymore.
They're Comanche.
Where are your casualties?
I'd never seen Duke Wayne so intensely professional on a picture...
was he was on that set.
I don't know how he'd molded that character.
Perhaps he'd known someone like Ethan Edwards as a kid.
When you looked up at him, it was into the meanest...
...coldest eyes I'd ever seen.
He seemed to live it all the while, even off the screen...
...and he didn't kid around as much.
I thought it was his best performance...
...but he would never talk about The Searchers...
...except to say that it was the best thing Ford ever did.
Harry Carey Jr.
What you saw was a buck...
...wearing Lucy's dress.
I found Lucy back in the canyon.
Wrapped her in my coat.
Buried her with my own hands.
Thought it best to keep it from you.
Did they...'?
- Was she...'.7 - What do you want me to do?
Draw you a picture? Spell it out'?
Don't ever ask me!
Long as you live, don't ever ask me more.
Ford hired the Navajo Indians to play the Comanche.
The Navajo were superb horsemen...
...and their expertise was a perfect complement...
...to Ford's regular pack of Hollywood stunt riders.
These stuntmen were all a part of Ford's extended family.
Ford used them constantly throughout the picture...
...and included them in the square-dance sequence...
...prompting the crew to nickname them "Ford's chorus girls.“
One of the stunt guys, Frank McGrath...
...had spent the previous eight months in a plaster cast after breaking his back.
In The Searchers...
...he performed three separate horse-fall and drag stunts.
The director relayed his instructions to the Navajo via loudspeaker...
...through Lee Bradley, a 54-year-old Navajo...
...who had worked on 57 pictures since 1925.
Eleven of them with Ford.
Wayne and Ford hung out together on weekends.
They were fishing and drinking and card-playing buddies.
At Goulding's in Monument Valley, where there was nothing to do...
...they'd play cards and reminisce about old times.
Dan Ford.
One of the most powerful themes in The Searchers is...
...the idea of this personal quest being played out...
...against stuff that's gone on forever.
The snow doesn't care. The seasons come and go.
The buffalo don't care.
The Indians don't care. The Army doesn't care.
It's just two men in the face of all this.
John Milius.
If she's alive, she's safe.
For a while. They'll keep her...
...to raise as one of their own until...
Till she's of an age to...
Well, do you think maybe there's a chance we still might find her?
Injun will chase a thing till he thinks he's chased it enough.
Then he quits.
Same way when he runs.
Seems like he never learns there's such a thing as...
...a critter who'll just keep coming on.
So we'll find them in the end, I promise you.
We'll find them.
Just as sure as the turning of the Earth.
I had made a few film appearances...
...and spoken a line or two before The Searchers...
...but this was really the first big mouthful of dialogue...
...that I had on camera.
It was unnerving with all those professionals standing around...
...most prominently my dad.
He was a large, looming figure.
He was a huge presence.
He commanded respect and you paid attention to him.
And the director was my godfather.
I wanted them to be proud of me.
I didn't want them to be ashamed or disappointed.
None of the interruptions were in the script.
Whenever Ward Bond or my dad broke in...
...all that stuff was ad-libbed.
But I just kept plowing through because I didn't know what else to do.
But that had been Ford's plan all along. Patrick Wayne.
My pa wants to know-- Colonel Greenhill wants to know...
-...how soon you can put a company-- - Turn around, sonny.
Yeah, he's a Yankee cavalryman.
Colonel Greenhill wants to know how soon you could--
- I resent that, sir. - Just funning, son, just funning.
He wants to know how soon you can put men in the field...
...for a joint punitive action against the Comanches.
- Joint what? - Joint punitive action.
We received information about a band of Comanches under a chief named Scar.
By July, the temperatures had soared to over 120 degrees.
Sunstroke and insect bites were taking their toll.
And even the heartiest members of the company were fainting in the heat.
Over the course of shooting...
“paychecks totaling $35,000 were paid to some 5000 Navajo...
...introducing many of them to the joys of income tax...
...and social security for the first time.
There was an accordion player named Danny Borzage.
He played his tunes and kept the atmosphere light.
He was one of the hallmarks of a Ford set.
A carryover from Ford's days in silent films.
At the end of the shoot...
...the Navajo families presented Ford with a deer hide...
...blessed by sacred Indian spirits, which was inscribed:
"In your travels, may there be beauty behind you...
...beauty on both sides of you, and beauty ahead of you."
Brethren, leave us go amongst them!
Bugler!
Let's go!
Oh, no, Ethan! No, Ethan!
No, Ethan!
In the end ifs all about duty and family...
...responsibility to your community, no matter how small.
Ethan is alone, but he's also part of a family...
...and his humanity comes through.
He may hate Debbie for being defiled as he himself was defiled.
But it doesn't matter. He forgives her.
He can forgive her anything.
John Milius.
Let's go home, Debbie.
My mom and Jack Ford had known each other...
...since they were both 18 years old.
My father was an idol of John Wayne's.
He loved my dad's gestures, his mannerisms and his style of acting.
So when it came to that final doorway scene...
...my mom didn't know what the Duke was gonna do.
Wayne had modeled his style on my dad...
...and he kind of wanted to pay tribute to him.
We didn't know it then...
...but it was going to become one of the most famous scenes...
...in movie history.
What happened was Duke suddenly caught sight of my mom...
...standing behind the camera in the doorway.
And he reached over with his left hand and grabbed at his right arm.
It was a mannerism my father had.
We were, all of us, standing inside that house there...
...and my mom was right in Duke's eye line.
She saw him do that and she fell apart.
Harry Carey Jr.
John Ford is a piece of the West.
He came out here, this Irish kid...
...and started making silent movies in the Old West...
...when there was nothing here.
The history of the movie business was like the Old West.
It was a place that was filled with promise, and Ford fulfilled it.
John Ford and John Wayne brought an authenticity...
...that you cannot find today.
Ford was Wayne's commanding officer, and Wayne would willingly follow.
Ford led from the front and instilled Wayne with confidence.
And, you know, leadership hardens and scars. It always does that.
The leader is ultimately cut off from everyone else.
Ford was even cut off from Hollywood.
He couldn't wait to go to war.
He called his wife and told her he was off to Washington...
...and didn't come back for three years.
Ford said that directing was a job of work.
He embodies the 20th-century American experience.
He became very successful...
...but he never lost touch with the Texican out there on a limb.
After I had seen The Searchers a few times...
...it was completely fixed in my mind.
The film was such a seminal and primal experience...
...that I was absolutely convinced I'd dreamed it...
...which was just right because that's in keeping with the movie.
It almost should be dreamed.
John Milius.
The first time I saw Monument Valley was in 1948.
We were making She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
I feel a tremendous amount of sentiment.
It's a stunning location and I still get lost.
It's huge and the light changes all the time.
One minute it's purple. The next, red.
Never the same thing twice in a row.
It's just magnificent. Ford loved it.
You know, I think his spirit is there...
...maybe hanging in the wind by John Ford Point.
He should've been buried there.
Duke Wayne too.
Matter of fact...
...they should be buried side by side right there in Monument Valley.
Harry Carey Jr.