John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [35]
John Ford may have honed some of the rough edges around Wayne as a screen actor but, by 1939—after making sixty films in little more than ten years—John Wayne was a seasoned performer.
The fact that he outshone the rest of the ensemble cast was partly due to an accident in the writing that made Ringo, the smallest of the film’s principal parts, the pivotal role, and also to the star quality and convincing performance that came from John Wayne.
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Curiously, while the public liked Wayne as Ringo, neither the industry nor the critics seemed particularly impressed. Still under contract to Republic, Wayne returned there to make four more—and final—Mesquiteer movies in quick succession before Stagecoach was previewed at the Fox Westwood Theatre on 2 February 1939
with an audience mainly made up of students from nearby UCLA. It was a tough venue to preview a Western simply because the audience was made up mainly of academically inclined young people, but they loved it. Michael Wayne said, “My father gave two tickets to a couple of executives from Republic and, for some reason, they were not enthusiastic. Perhaps they feared they would lose their star.”
However, Canutt said, “I don’t think the Republic executives were afraid, because I don’t think they recognized what had been achieved.”
The film opened at Radio City Music Hall in New York on 2
March 1939 to reviews which had the highest praise for the director while the principal cast en masse was largely considered merely a support to Ford’s grand design—and little was said about someone they obviously considered a B Western star. Frank Nugent wrote in the New York Times, “Here, in a sentence, is a movie of the grand old 62
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school, a genuine rib-thumper, and a beautiful sight to see. . . . [The actors] have all done nobly by a noble horse opera, but none so nobly as its director.”
Life magazine said, “. . . its rhythm mounts from the slow, steady roll of stagecoach wheels to the accelerated fury of flight from Indians with all the accumulative majesty of a great symphony.”
And Variety thought, “Directorially, production is John Ford in peak form, sustaining interest and suspense throughout, and presenting exceptional characterizations. Picture is a display of photographic grandeur. . . . The running fight between the stagecoach passengers and the Apaches has been given thrilling and realistic presentation by Ford.”
Stagecoach was nominated for six Oscars—for Best Picture, Direction, Supporting Actor (Thomas Mitchell), Photography, Art Direction, and Editing. It received only one, for Thomas Mitchell.
The Best Picture that year was Gone with the Wind which won nine other awards, although, curiously, the Academy failed to nominate Thomas Mitchell for his supporting role in Gone with the Wind.
One gets the feeling that his Oscar for Stagecoach was, perhaps, a token award for a film that was smaller and less bombastic than Gone with the Wind and yet was, in every way, artistically as good (some would say it was better).
Curiously, according to author Phil Hardy in his The Western: The Aurum Film Encyclopedia, Variety’s list of All-Time Western Champs does not include Stagecoach. Hardy wrote, “It was impossible to arrive at an accurate figure for Stagecoach, but research indicates it was not quite as financially successful as its huge reputation suggests.”
In fact, according to the Motion Picture Herald’s Top Ten Moneymaking Western Stars poll of 1939, John Wayne came in at number nine, below the likes of Buck Jones, Roy Rogers, William Boyd and, at number one, Gene Autry. Even “The Three Mesquiteers” came in at six, suggesting that Stagecoach was not an immediate success. It seems that it has only gained classic status over the years. In fact, in 1936 Wayne had been listed