While they both had storied and prolific careers on their own, John Ford and John Wayne are inseparable from each other. In over a dozen collaborations, Ford and Wayne defined the West and America as a whole on the big screen, with timeless classics such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Quiet Man. They were the ideal director-actor match, both of whom dutifully captured the beauty of the New Frontier and expressed wistful doubt about its past and future. In Ford’s most painterly film, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Wayne gives perhaps his finest performance as an aging cavalry officer in his last days of service. Due to Ford’s initial skepticism of Wayne’s abilities as an emotionally complex screen presence, this underrated but vital collaboration almost ceased to exist.
‘She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’ Is John Ford at His Most Reflective
Before adopting The Duke, John Ford had a variety of on-screen avatars, notably Harry Carey, who starred in most of Ford’s early silent pictures, and Henry Fonda, who gave Ford an all-American earnestness in The Grapes of Wrath and My Darling Clementine. However, all it took was one dolly zoom of the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach to cement John Wayne’s status as a bonafide movie star. Following his breakthrough performance in Ford’s revolutionary 1939 Western, Wayne only appeared in a handful of Ford’s films, and he was never the all-encompassing central figure, as he belongs to an ensemble in The Long Voyage Home, and played second fiddle to Robert Montgomery and Fonda in They Were Expendable and Fort Apache, respectively.
Set on the Navajo reservation following the Civil War, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (the second of Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy, which began with Fort Apache), follows Captain Nathan Brittles (Wayne), who, on the verge of retirement, is assigned one last mission: to lead his unit against an uprising by various Native American tribes and ultimately prevent a new frontier war in the aftermath of the Battle of Little Big Horn. Accompanying Brittles’ cavalry is the captain’s commanding officer’s wife, Olivia Dandridge (Joanne Dru), a striking woman who is to be transported to home base, as the soldiers vie for her affection.
From the beginning, Ford was an exceptional visual artist, crafting exquisite images of the American frontier in black and white. Give him a Technicolor camera, and he turns into a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, along with being his prettiest film, uses the natural wonder and overwhelming depth of Monument Valley to underscore Brittles’ honor as an officer, as well as to juxtapose the cavalry with the mammoth backdrop of the entire frontier and American history at large. You can’t help but sit there mouth agape, and stare at the film in awe, much like how the characters view Olivia.
John Ford Was Skeptical of John Wayne’s Acting Abilities Prior to ‘She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’
Ford’s elegiac film called for a lead actor who could take the typical war hero archetype and infuse it with restrained melancholy. One actor who was not in the director’s mind was John Wayne. Ford was known for his prickly attitude, and he was never afraid to hurl insults at people for their shoddy work, including Wayne, who once walked off the set of They Were Expendable in tears after receiving a tongue lashing from Ford.
Throughout the 1940s, Ford was skeptical of Wayne’s abilities as a dynamic actor, which is why the reticent Ford was taken aback by Wayne’s performance in the Howard Hawks Western, Red River. The Duke’s performance as Thomas Dunson, an authoritarian leader of a cattle drive who clashes with his adopted son, was a groundbreaking turn for Wayne, as he played the character with a hard edge whose motivations were ambiguous. Upon seeing Red River, Ford reportedly said about Wayne, “I didn’t know the big son of a bitch could act!” Filmed before She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Ford, as revealed in Searching for John Ford, immediately began giving Wayne more emotionally complex roles following Red River. As for Hawks, he consciously imitated Ford’s picturesque visual style when directing Red River.
1948, the year of Red River and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, proved to be the turning point in John Wayne’s career, as he demonstrated that he was more than just a brute force or unyielding symbol of heroism. Despite being in his 40s, Wayne seamlessly aged into the role of the 65-year-old Captain Brittles, bringing lived-in pathos and a weathered aura to this battle-tested soldier who longs for peace with the local Native American tribes. Wayne seemed grateful that She Wore a Yellow Ribbon challenged his screen image, and he called his work “the best acting job I’ve done.”