Year: Day to Day Men: February 10
Bricks and Gecko
The tenth of February in 1939 marks the premiere of John Ford’s western film “Stagecoach” at the Lincoln Theatre in Miami Beach, Florida. The film was the first of many Westerns shot by director John Ford in Monument Valley, a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by its cluster of sandstone buttes. The site, considered sacred by its inhabitants, lies within the land of the Navajo Nation.
“Stagecoach” is Dudley Nichols’s adaptation of the 1937 short story,”The Stage to Lordsburg”, written by author Ernst Haycox, a prolific writer of Western fiction. The story follows a group of individuals, primarily strangers, who journey by stagecoach through dangerous territory ruled by Apache warriors. John Ford bought the rights to the story soon after its publication in Collier’s magazine. He presented the “Stagecoach” project to several studios in Hollywood. However, none were interested in a big-budget Western film or Ford’s placing B-film actor John Wayne in the lead role.
David O. Selznick, an independent producer with his own studio, Selznick International Pictures, agreed to finance the production of “Stagecoach”. However, he had doubts about the casting choices and was frustrated about Ford’s indecision on the initial date of shooting. Ford withdrew the film from Selznick and approached independent producer Walter Wanger about the project. Although he had reservations about the project, Wanger agreed to finance the project with a proviso. He would provide two hundred-fifty thousand dollars to finance the film. However, though Ford could still cast John Wayne in the film, he had to give the lead credit to Clair Trevor. an already established actress.
At the time of the filming, Clair Trevor had already starred in twenty-nine films, often in the lead role or the role of the heroine. After her role in “Stagecoach”, Trevor would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the 1937 “Dead End” and win that award for her role in the 1948 “Key Largo”. John Wayne, however, had played leading roles throughout the 1930s in numerous B-movies, mostly Westerns, without achieving stardom. His role as the Ringo Kid in “Stagecoach” became the breakthrough role that began Wayne’s career as a mainstream star. Over the course of his fifty year acting career, Wayne appeared in one hundred sixty-nine feature films and numerous documentary and television appearances.
The film’s supporting cast included such experienced actors as stage and screen actor John Carradine; radio and character actor Andy Devine; Thomas Mitchell, the first male actor to gain the Triple Crown of Acting- an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony Award; theatrical actress Louise Platt; stage and film actor Donald Meek; and established western film stars Tom Tyler and Tim Holt.
Ford’s “Stagecoach” was first released in Los Angeles on the second of February in 1939. It opened in Miami Beach on the tenth of February and had its nationwide release on the third of March in 1939. Met with immediate critical praise, the film is considered one of the most influential films ever made. The roles presented in “Stagecoach” have become archetypical characters for the Western film genre. In 1995, the United States Library of Congress considered “Stagecoach” to be culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant for preservation in the National Film Registry.