and Ken Curtis all have small roles in the film. Arthur Kennedy deals his hand as Doc Holliday, Karl Malden appears as sadistic military officer and Ford stalwarts John Carradine, John Qualen, George O'Brien, Ben Johnson, Harry Carey, Jr. Silent screen star Dolores del Rio, Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland played leaders of the Cheyenne tribe, while Sal Mineo is a hot-headed young brave. Robinson, his star from The Whole Town's Talking (1935), stepped into the role and brought much-needed energy to the story's back room debating over the Cheyenne tribe's future.Īdding to the value of the film, the rich cast for Cheyenne Autumn nearly overwhelms the theater marquee. Ford's first choice to play Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz was Spencer Tracy but the actor didn't like the script, so he backed out, claiming illness. Given the uncommercial nature of the subject, a Western with an overt social message, Ford called in favors by casting big name stars whenever possible, including Richard Widmark as a sympathetic Army officer, James Stewart as Wyatt Earp, and Carroll Baker as a Quaker schoolteacher committed to helping the rebellious Cheyenne. Smith reasoned that Warner needed "a picture that has a guaranteed audience.", namely, a John Ford Western. Smith convinced Warner to pony up the cash as insurance against the studio's other big budget gamble, My Fair Lady (1964). Originally numbering more than 900, only 300 Cheyenne managed to survive starvation and debilitating health to even attempt to make the trek back home.įord had worked on a treatment of the book in 1957, but could not generate the funding until Bernard Smith, who had produced How the West Was Won (1962), coaxed four million out of Jack Warner for its ambitious budget. The plot follows a small band of Cheyenne Indians attempting to escape their infertile Oklahoma reservation to their own lush Wyoming homeland, from which they were transported after having surrendered to the U.S. Ford chose as the basis for his story, Cheyenne Autumn, a novel by Mari Sandoz. Ford felt, perhaps in his old age or perhaps because of his Irish Catholic guilt, that amends should be made to the Native Americans, a group that was routinely demonized in others' Westerns, or delegated to the mysterious 'Other' in his own films. John Ford, the director of Stagecoach (1939), Fort Apache (1948) and The Searchers (1956), wanted to try a different approach to the Western, the genre for which he still stands today as poet laureate. Let's face it, we've treated them very badly-it's a blot on our shield we've cheated and robbed, killed, murdered, massacred and everything else, but they kill one white man and, God, out come the troops." There are two sides to every story, but I wanted to show their point of view for a change. "I've killed more Indians than Custer, Beecher and Chivington put together, and people in Europe always want to know about the Indians. As peace is restored, Archer and Deborah decide to remain with the Indians who have survived the historic ordeal. Red Shirt is killed, and Little Wolf, having broken his vow never to kill another Cheyenne, goes into self-imposed exile. Once there, Red Shirt and Chief Little Wolf face each other with pistols to settle their dispute over the latter's wife. As they are trapped by troops prepared to massacre them, Archer arrives with the Secretary, who negotiates a treaty which permits the Cheyennes to return to their homeland. Before he can do so, the Indians revolt, kill Wessels, and flee into the snow. Upon learning that Wessels intends to march the Indians back to Oklahoma, Captain Archer goes to Washington to seek the help of the Secretary of the Interior. With the coming of winter, the Cheyennes split into two groups: half continue their journey half surrender to the brutal Captain Wessels at Fort Robinson. Earp, however, deliberately leads his drunken posse in the wrong direction and remains on the trail until public panic subsides. When the newspapers play up the incidents by depicting the Cheyennes as "marauding savages," Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are pressured into organizing a war party. But a young hotheaded Cheyenne brave named Red Shirt precipitates several skirmishes in which U. And pursuing them is a cavalry troop headed by Captain Thomas Archer, Deborah's betrothed, who hopes to resolve the dilemma without bloodshed. Accompanying them is Deborah Wright, a Quaker schoolteacher sympathetic to their plight. Desperate, the survivors decide to make a 1,500-mile trek to their former Yellowstone hunting grounds. After a year of waiting for Federal aid that never arrives, the original band of 1,000 has been reduced by disease and starvation to a mere 286. In the 1870's, the Cheyenne Indians are taken from their Wyoming homelands and moved to a barren Oklahoma reservation.
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