RIO GRANDE: Blu-ray (Republic Pictures, 1950) Olive Signature Series

 The final film in John Ford’s ‘unplanned’ cavalry trilogy, Rio Grande (1950) endures as one of the most emotionally satisfying westerns; a cornucopia for Ford’s beloved ‘stock’ company of players, to include Harry Carey Jr., Ben Johnson J. Carrol Naish and Victor McLaglan, situated around two formidable stars, John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara – each, at the peak of their powers. Ironically, Rio Grande would never have been made without Ford’s tenacity for another project looming large on the horizon. For nearly a year, Ford had shopped around his script idea for The Quiet Man. But even with his illustrious track record and cache as a proven money maker, and, with Wayne and O’Hara already committed as part of the package, the caustic Ford could not find a studio to back that picture. At RKO, the director had already made Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949), each - wildly successful. But by 1950, RKO was in steep decline, in possession of neither the funds nor the wherewithal to shoot a melodrama on location. So, they too balked at Ford’s pitch for The Quiet Man. Enter Herbert Yates, a kindred spirit at Republic Pictures…well, sort of. Yates had zero interest in The Quiet Man. But he did have immeasurable faith in Ford. If the two could agree on Ford to direct another western in B&W for his studio first, then Yates would agree to fund Ford’s passion project.

Aside: for Yates, Wayne had already appeared in The Sands of Iwo Jima the year before. Alas, the wily producer/mogul had since refused to stick to his part of an agreement with Wayne, affording the actor a percentage of the picture’s gross in addition to his salary. So, Wayne, after committing to Rio Grande, simply walked off the picture in protest. Believing he could stonewall Wayne into a corner, Yates then approached Ford, encouraging the director to ‘shoot around’ Wayne while the wrinkles to this bruhaha were ironed out. Instead, Ford dug in his heels and backed Wayne, shutting down production completely. Needless to say, Yates quickly reconsidered Wayne’s remuneration on ‘Sands’.  This was Yates hedging his bets. Republic, a ‘poverty row’ studio always on the edge of financial receivership, needed a sure-fire box office winner to keep their bottom line in the black. And what better assurance than a western – especially, one made by John Ford? The Hollywood western – at least in 1950, always made money.

Ford could so easily have phoned in the project, simply to get to the movie he really wanted to make. Instead, he set about to make one of the most heart-felt movies in his body of work. And if Rio Grande proved a winner with audiences, its success, in one of those grandly amusing Hollywood’s ironies that never fails to delight, paled to the monumental success of The Quiet Man – the picture that would eventually become the highest-grossing movie in Republic Pictures’ history. In addition to the aforementioned cast, Rio Grande would also prominently feature Claude Jarman Jr. in the pivotal role of Wayne’s character’s estranged son. At the tender age or 12, the Tennessee-born Jarman had made quite a splash in MGM’s The Yearling (1946), a performance to earn him a special juvenile Oscar for Most Outstanding Child Actor of the year. But by 1950, that promise had dwindled to a trickle, and with it, Jarman’s own interest in pursuing acting as a career. Kismet intervened, as Ford had become enamored of Jarman’s intuitive ‘quality’ and asked for an audience with the teenager. Jarman and his father boarded a plane from Tennessee to California, whereupon Ford spent exactly ten-minutes asking questions before nodding his approval and requesting Jarman reappear before him 4 months later to begin shooting on location in Utah. Ford also made one more demand of his diminutive co-star; Jarman would learn to ‘Roman ride’ (the art of straddling two horses at once, one foot on each horse), also expected of Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr. Initially, neither Johnson – who began his tenure in Hollywood as a stunt double - nor Carey – already a seasoned rider, believed ‘the boy’ would be able to master the ride; an opinion diffused when Jarman, with minimal encouragement and training, leapt atop his mounts and proceeded to tear off around the concourse as though to have been born in the saddle.   

Viewed today, Rio Grande stands as an emotionally satisfying exemplar of how far Ford’s masterful impressions of the western mystique had matured. Beneath the veneer of austere cavalry life lies a base thread of human frailty to follow the film’s characters throughout the story. Each of these hand-picked thespians is provided with their moment to shine, frequently, employing Ford’s verve for creating inspired bits of comedy to counterbalance the otherwise stoic heroism in his western adventure. Of the lot, the most enjoyable bon vivant here is Victor McLaglen. Watching McLaglen’s Quincannon, the caustic, yet compassionate surrogate for Ford in the picture, it seems impossible to consider the actor as a diverse ‘intellectual’ who fluently spoke 5 languages, but had barely 9 years left to live, dying from a heart attack in 1959, age 72. In his youth, McLaglen developed a reputation as one tough hombre. Indeed, there is much to be said of a man who would leave home, age 14 to enlist in the British Army, and later, make a name as a pro-wrestler/heavyweight boxer while working as a constable in Manitoba, famously to last a full six rounds with the legendary heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson. The nomadic McLaglen then returned to Britain during WWI, serving as Capt. of the 10th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, even as he continued to box, wrapping up his professional career with 16 wins, 8 losses and 1 draw. Exactly how McLagen came to acting has been the subject of some debate. He was spotted by a producer while visiting a sportsman’s club and, without so much as an audition, was cast in The Call of the Road (1920). Within 5 short years, he had become a much prized ‘character actor’ in Hollywood, with a particular yen for playing Irish drunkards, despite his English heritage. One of the hardest working actors in the biz, McLaglen’s connection to Ford dated all the way back to 1934’s The Lost Patrol, the movie to convince Ford, McLaglen could star in The Informer (1935) – the picture for which McLaglen won his Best Actor Academy Award.

By the time Rio Grande went before the cameras, McLaglen was a beloved of Ford’s, appearing for him in Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. But for this, his swan song to the ‘cavalry’, Ford re-envisions heroism, uniquely against its sacrifices, if in no less heroic fashion. It is not the gallant stride of these ‘bigger than life’ figures astride their noble steeds that either satisfies or even greets the eye with resplendent imagery of proud men in saddles, best held captive in a Remington painting, but rather Ford’s desire to illustrate the solitary nature of military life. Indeed, his opening shots in Rio Grande are of the stark landscape, sparsely dotted in brittle foliage, the still-smolder of dust from the parched floor of baked earth, and world-weary men, their strength whittled down by the journey, estranged from their families, returning to them now, more threadbare and grateful for the women and children left behind. Honor and love of country precede them. But the stiffening wind, curling huge dust clouds, remains ever-present at their backs. These are just a sampling of some of the tough choices made by Wayne’s Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke and both Wayne and Ford are determined to show us the human cost between a man’s sense of honor-bound duty to country vs. the more intimate vein to be explored most directly with an estranged beloved, Kathleen (O’Hara). Kirby’s noblest sense of pride has deprived him of much more than he originally intended to give; Kathleen’s love, and getting to know his own son, newly enlisted and eager to prove his merits as a man, though not necessarily to gain his father’s approval. This alone is a very sobering and frankly unglamorous perspective of the oft romanticized western tapestry.

James Kevin McGuinness’ screenplay for Rio Grande (initially titled Rio Bravo) has its roots in James Warner Bellah’s short story ‘Mission With No Record’. Uncharacteristic for a western of its vintage, we begin, not at the beginning of a hero’s journey, but the end of a very solemn campaign to have spent good men and cost the Union Army several of its finest officers. In these initial scenes, John Ford fills his frame with a sort of tainted, yet magnificent pageantry of men on horseback; backs arched, shoulders slumped, as they trudge through a mesmerizing cloud of frontier dust. Ford lingers on the careworn faces of women, scanning the crowd like a broken chain of withering ghost flowers, clinging gently to a sparse parameter of windswept trees, barely to shade them from the intense heat. Understaffed in his ambitious assignment to maintain peace, Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke is determined to civilize this barren landscape. But the strain of battle has begun to show. It is 1879 and Kirby is not a young man anymore. He is, in fact, the last of a dying breed – rigidly, to adhere to the edicts of the army; a warrior, whose battle scars are not immediately apparent to the naked eye. But scarred he is and shall remain. Wayne and Ford play upon Kirby’s inner void, an impenetrable ache, as the festering wound in a great man’s physical decline. Even if we do not realize it yet, Kirby already knows his days as an officer are numbered. He will either die in battle or be forced into retirement.

Kirby’s past catches up to him sooner than anticipated with the arrival of Trooper Jefferson Yorke, the son he has not seen in fifteen-years. Jeff’ is one of eighteen new recruits sent as backup to the fort. His arrival is both a joy and a disappointment to Kirby who initially deals more harshly to quash any hint of favoritism that might be rumored among the rest of the men. Although he has come to honor his country, in effect following in his father’s footsteps, Trooper Yorke is also a West Point drop out. Still, the boy possesses certain qualities to endear him, if not to his father, whose love and respect he reports not to be seeking at the outset, then most definitely among the men in his troop. In the meantime, Kirby’s estranged wife, Kathleen arrives to have Jeff released from the army by special decree. Alas, Jeff stubbornly refuses to go, reminding his mother he must also sign off on the decree in order for it to become a legal discharge. Thwarted in her efforts, Kathleen chooses to remain at the outpost to be near Jeff. Reluctantly, she becomes reacquainted with Kirby. Although brittle toward each other, it is nevertheless obvious Kirby and Kathleen are still very much in love. Kathleen resents a decision Kirby made earlier, to torch her ancestral home, ‘Bridesdale’ in the Shenandoah Valley to spare it from Indian attacks. She holds Kirby’s Sgt. Maj. Timothy Quincannon (Victor McLaglen) as responsible for obeying Kirby’s orders then. Yet, here too, Kathleen’s heart has not entirely hardened.  

Quincannon oversees a skirmish between Jeff and Trooper Heinze (Fred Kennedy), after Heinze accuses Jeff of being given special treatment, but also refers to him as the pet of a dumb ‘Mick’ sergeant. When the brawl is broken up, Jeff respectfully declines to tell his father the reasons for it in the first place. Told by Quincannon that it is a soldier’s fight, Kirby steps aside. But Heinze has reconsidered Jeff’s fidelity to the regiment. The two shake hands and are friendly toward each other. Jeff retires to his tent to lick his wounds. But Quincannon has not forgotten Heinze’s slight against him and knocks him unconscious as retribution. The next day, Jeff is afforded a period of recovery and allowed to sleep in. He awakens to find his fellow recruits, Travis Tyree (Ben Johnson) and Daniel ‘Sandy’ Boone (Harry Carey Jr.) at his side. Travis is on the run from the law for having killed a man in self-defense.  The U.S. Deputy Marshall (Grant Withers) arrives to take Travis into custody. But men loyal to Travis help him escape into the hills. In the meantime, Kirby is visited by his former Civil War commander, Philip Sheridan (J. Carrol Naish) who orders him to cross the Rio Grande into Mexico and engage the Apaches. The move is a bold and gutsy one in that it violates Mexico’s sovereignty and will likely lead to Kirby’s court-martial. Sheridan buffers Kirby’s decision by reinforcing that the members of the court will be comprised of the same soldiers who rode with them into battle down the Shenandoah, thereby affording Kirby some marked leeway if and when he is likely to plead his case. Kirby agrees to these terms and sets out to face the Indian threat.

But his mission is compromised when Kirby learns the wagon train of children being taken to Fort Bliss for protection has been ambushed by the Apaches in their absence.  Assigning Jeff, Boone and Travis (who has joined the officers after having hid out in the hills from the law) to take the remote town where the Apache are hold up with the children, Kirby takes his cavalry forces in a full-scale charge that ends with his being wounded. Victorious perhaps, but infinitely wiser about the more precious intangibles in life, Kirby is dragged back to the fort on a travois. For the picture’s finale, Ford recreates the film’s solemn opener almost verbatim, the weary cavalcade of men on horseback, trailing dust behind them, returning to the fort after their triumph. Only this time, we see Kathleen among the angst-ridden. In a moment of beautifully understated reflection, Kathleen eyes Kirby on his travois and reaches for his hand. “Our boy did well,” he tells her as the two go off, engulfed by that dusty cloud raised from the battalion’s horses. As the cavalry prepare to honor their own, Tyree is once more forced to flee capture from the local authorities, leaving a proud Kirby and Kathleen to bear witness to his escape.

Rio Grande is a perennially satisfying western on so many levels, one is almost dumbstruck to realize Ford considered it a sort of ‘necessary evil’ to secure the funds for his passion project – The Quiet Man. Nevertheless, Ford was determined Rio Grande should be as solid and exhilarating as any of his more high-profile sagas of yore. He held out for a $1 million budget – no chump change - even in 1950, and insisted shooting on location when, arguably, much of the picture could have been made more cheaply on soundstages and carefully lit backlot sets. That sort of attention to detail is one reason why Rio Grande endures today, as well-regarded among critics and fans of Ford’s formidable back-catalog as any of his mega hits. Another is the indestructible on-screen chemistry between stars John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. If ever there was a pair to typify the ideal frontier couple, full of mischief, desire, devotion and strife – it’s these two. And O’Hara, to have earlier starred with Wayne, and also later, to appear with him again, would forever treasure their friendship for decades to follow. Hence, as Wayne lay dying in 1979, O’Hara launched a formidable campaign to earn her co-star the Congressional Medal of Honor – no small feat, considering such an accolade is only given to enlisted men who distinguish themselves in battle - suggesting in her impassioned deposition to Congress, only one inscription would suffice: ‘John Wayne – American’.

Rio Grande, like Wayne’s enduring iconography, manages to typify that mythologized essence and grandeur of the Old West. Much has been written and even more contemplated about the validity of Ford’s romanticized view of the west; its celebration of manifest destiny at the expense of indigenous peoples, marginalized as the perennial blood-thirsty savages in need of a good conquering by the white man. Personally, I remain not a proponent of such contemporary readings of vintage Hollywood westerns.  Like any work of art, film history – however rewritten for entertainment’s sake – ages at its own rate of reflection. And like all art, if properly crafted, if finds a home perennially in our hearts, renewing itself like an old friend come to call with glowing reminders of a simpler – and, in many ways – more elegant time. Odd, I suppose to infer elegance in Ford’s perpetually dust-blown and isolated outposts. And yet, for Ford, who arguably never felt more at home than when re-crafting the western milieu, herein he extols at least some of the vices as well as all of the virtues made in service to sacrifice, ascribing no moral weight to his exercise, while nevertheless instilling his audience with a definite appreciation for the solemnity and stoicism of gallant men.

Already stated many times, though worth reiteration herein, the world will never again bear witness to the likes of a hero as hearty, robust or satisfying as John Wayne. Before Wayne there were expert stuntmen and ‘real life’ cowboys who appeared in B-grade western pulp. After Wayne, the genre would never again tip its hat to mediocrity. And Wayne – who, for the record – never fought in a war, yet went on to typify America’s fighting men abroad, appearing in an endless parade of top-notch WWII movies and a slew of westerns, yet to be rivaled in the annals of picture-making, though without ever actually firing a gun at the Hun, proves a Hollywood maxim, most aptly expressed in Ford’s own, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) - “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Perhaps it isn’t Wayne’s larger than life filmic persona, of even his private views as a public figure, we best remember today. It is the essence of a man – some strange and elusive quality that defies logic or even identification, except to say that once seen on the screen, John Wayne becomes indelibly etched into the consciousness as one of Tinsel Town’s irrefutable ‘untouchables.’  Such is star power in its most undiluted form, a veritable elixir missing from today’s vapid celebrity culture, mostly awash with cheap imitations incapable of walking, even in the shadow of Wayne’s legacy, much less to wear his boots.  John Wayne is at the very heart of what is conjured to mind when we think of ‘America’, not as a place, but a mindset – as in, ‘home of the free, land of the brave’.  And for this, Wayne is owed respect, the likes of which can never be repaid, except perhaps, in our renewed loyalty to his endless variations on the classic Hollywood hero of yore – a mythical unicorn, no more.

It must also be stated, Maureen O’Hara remains the idyllic contemporary to Wayne’s celebrated masculinity. In every way, she triumphs as that conviciate figure of the proudly defiant, yet unerringly compassionate pioneer woman, forever striving, struggling, living and loving with a heart as big as the canyons that her western martyrs have frequently inhabited. It also helps, off camera, O’Hara remained the epitome of a very great lady. Ford’s admiration for O’Hara was firmly cemented by the time they made Rio Grande and, in viewing it today it’s easy to see why. O’Hara brings to Kathleen all of the conflicted disillusionment of a woman scorned, yet stubbornly refusing to succumb to mere bitterness in order to survive. The restrained depth in O’Hara’s performance offers wellsprings of sharp-eyed criticism for Kirby’s way of life with only a few sparsely parceled off moments of dialogue to recommend her.  In the final analysis, Rio Grande may not be John Ford’s most iconic, or even his best movie. But it remains one of his most tenderly heartfelt, largely due to the chemistry between Wayne and O’Hara. This movie would be nothing at all, or at the very least, greatly diminished in either star’s absence. So, long live the legends. And to hell with what history would offer us in their stead – the truth; yes, but so much less appealing than the artistry on tap herein.

Olive Film’s Signature Blu-ray is an improvement over their first bare bones offering from 2011. I’d almost written off Olive as having gone the way of the dodo. Indeed, their releases have been few and far between. But at least the company has managed its limited assets with pride. This hi-def reissue of Rio Grande still has its issues. For starters, there remains intermittent edge enhancement, extremely subtle, though nevertheless present in a few crucial scenes. Otherwise, the image here appears relatively sharp without dropping hints of having been artificially sharpened. Film grain looks a tad soft, but mercifully, not scrubbed. Contrast is lower than on the aforementioned 2011 disc. Several scenes shot day-for-night are processed at a level so as to partially – or completely obscure fine details. Black crush is present, though again, not to egregious levels. Finally, every now and then an errant age-related artifact (light dust speckle or scratch) briefly appears. None of these anomalies are a deal breaker, folks.  

The DTS 1.0 mono audio adequately offers us an accurate representation of vintage Westrex audio recordings, minus any age-related hiss and pop. Extras are mostly welcome. The best of the lot is a 13-min. interview with Claude Jarman Jr. – much too brief, but loaded with Mr. Jarman’s inciteful reflections on cast and crew. We also have a vintage jaunt down memory lane with John Wayne’s surviving son, Patrick. I could have done without Raoul Trujillo’s contemporary slant on how Rio Grande misrepresents Native peoples and their ‘place’ in the western tapestry. Trujillo spends a fair amount of his time debunking Ford’s premise here as quaintly out of touch while puffing out his own importance in more recent movies. Marc Wannamaker offers some interesting reflections on the songs in Rio Grande, from the celebrated Sons of the Pioneers. From 2005, we get a badly worn ‘making of’ hosted by film critic, Leonard Maltin, and also, a visual essay by Tag Gallagher. There’s also an ‘essay’ by Paul Andrew Hutton, and the movie’s original theatrical trailer – badly worn. Bottom line: Olive has done justice – mostly – to Ford’s masterpiece. Rio Grande belongs on everyone’s top shelf – a cinephile’s dream remembered, to be treasured for as long as motion pictures endure.  Very highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

4