When I was eight years old, my father took me to see the John Ford/John Wayne film "The Searchers." I liked it, even though I was too young to fully appreciate a lot of it.
I liked it so much that in my large collection of "Cowboys and Indians" miniature toys that I had as a child I found one figure that seemed to fit John Wayne's character, Ethan. Unfortunately, my set of Cowboys and Indians got lost and I have not been able to find a similar figure on eBay. But that's how much of an impression the film made on me.
A few days after I saw the film with my father my Cub Scout den mother told us we would all go on an outing to see the film. I declined, saying "I have already seen it with my Dad." I don't know why I declined, as it would have been fun, but think I was bragging that I did this kind of thing with my father. None of the other kids went to movies regularly with their fathers. I knew, at a young age, that I had a special kind of relationship with mine. We did a lot together, just the two of us, in addition to going to westerns.
Fast forward several decades. The Searchers is now the top rated western film of all time by the American Film Institute, and number 12, overall, on the AFI's list of top films of all time. The difference between it and the remaining nine of the top ten westerns is large. It truly stands alone. It has received many other awards. The consensus among most film critics is that it is best western ever filmed. Roger Ebert's review is a good example.
It deserves its praise. It is an astounding film.
It is my personal all-time favorite western and favorite film, and has been since I was a boy. I have seen it more times than I can remember. I also have a very large, and nice, (and valuable) collection of The Searchers memorabilia.
And now Vicky has seen it several times with me, and it is one of her favorites.
SPOILER ALERT: If anyone (like who?) would be reading this and would rather watch the film than read my spoilers, then of course do that. I'm going to talk about it as if anybody reading this has already seen the film or thinks that if they haven't seen it that they probably never will. On the other hand, this is a film that is difficult to grasp with one viewing. One can easily miss the critical parts of the story that gives it its depth. It is a film that is appreciated more upon repeated viewings. One can easily see it as "just another western," and/or a viewer can also be captured by the beautiful cinematography and miss the details that make the film unique among westerns, or unique even among films in general.
And these days the film might even be offensive to some people, although the reason it might be offensive is because of how realistic it actually is, if one studies the history of the Comanches in Texas and the settlers' racist attitudes toward them. The Comanches were a brutal tribe that terrorized and drove many other tribes out of a territory that ranged from Colorado south into Mexico. They did to other Indian tribes what the settlers did to theirs, and they were just as effective. Included in their raids were the Apaches, for example, who they drove out of Texas into Arizona.
The Comanche-Settlers conflict lasted about 40 years. They held on longer than any tribe. In addition to their prowess with horses, they made effective use of living on the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plains, a very large area of western Texas and Eastern New Mexico where they could effectively disappear into.
The Comanches were natural horsemen. They were plopped on horses as toddlers. If you have seen western films with Indians on horses attacking wagon trains, you have not seen an accurate picture of horses and Indians. Other Indian tribes were not true cavalry. They were, instead, mounted infantry. They would ride their horses to battle, then dismount and fight.
The Comanches were unique among tribes that used horses. They fought on horseback, as a true cavalry, learning to shoot arrows while riding upright and under horses' necks, etc. If their horse was shot, they could dismount on the run. This is one reason they were so powerful, controlled such a large area, and could be so devastating to other tribes. They were like tanks against infantry.
The main reason The Searchers is such an astounding film is John Wayne's performance in it as Ethan Edwards. In some circles (maybe most circles) he gets little credit for how well he could actually act, especially if one has only seen him in his final few films (I mean, a 250-pound 61-year-old Green Beret in The Green Berets?).
In the Searchers, in contrast to other westerns of the era (and up to the present), he is not a traditional western "hero." He is, instead, an unpleasant, violent and uncivilized man, a loner and possibly even a criminal. This is brilliantly portrayed at the start of the film by showing how much tension there is in the home after he returns after several years away doing we never find out what. It doesn't knock you over the head. It's subtle. It is due to John Ford's direction and John Wayne's acting.
Instead of being the "tough" western hero, it becomes clear upon close, and probably repeated, viewings that this toughness is a facade. His underlying vulnerability is shown, only briefly, in the tenderness he displays toward Martha and toward a young Debbie in the beautiful scene shown in the link above when he gives her his "gold locket." Those are the only times in the film where there is a real smile that goes to his eyes. To have accomplished this complex portrayal of Ethan is simply great acting.
Underneath all of that toughness, crudeness and violence there is a defective man who was broken by the fact that the woman he loved, Martha, chose his brother over him to marry. And it is clear why. Although Martha obviously loved Ethan, and still does all those years later when he unexpectedly returns to the family home, she knows him for who he really is. He would make a terrible husband and a terrible father. He is actually simply not someone you could ever live with.
Martha chose wisely, but not with her heart.
The beginning of the film sets up the entire film, with the Sons of the Pioneers singing Ride Away, a song written by Stan Jones (of Ghost Riders in the Sky fame.) The lines are:
"What makes a man to wander?
What makes a man to roam?
What makes a man leave bed and board
And turn his back on home?"
In essence, the entire film answers that question. A question that could be lost upon first viewing of the film because it was in the song over the introduction and credits, and those songs are usually ignored. But the song does, in fact, tie everything in the story together.
The feelings between Ethan and Martha are never stated directly, nor is the history that Martha chose his brother over him ever mentioned. All of this can only be inferred by tender glances and a few other indirect clues. For what appears on the surface to be only an action movie, just one more Cowboy and Indian movie, the motivations are quiet and subtle and deep.
The major clue is a really beautiful scene between Martha and Ethan as Ethan goes out with some other settlers to find cattle that the Comanches had stolen. Martha doesn't just get him his coat, but lightly caresses it before giving it to him. Ward Bond, as the Ranger Captain, tries to avert his eyes, but sees all of this and, in essence, "tells" the audience that they are witnessing Martha's deep love, a very private moment.
And then check out the look between them as Martha hands his coat to him, and how her arm stays fixed.
So, what "makes a man to wander and turn his back on home?"
The answer is complex. But the film shows it to be because he isn't suited for "home" and that because of that he has lost his Martha. That's what "makes a man to wander and turn his back on home."
Notice also the final shot of this sequence above. It is Debbie and Martha watching him "ride away." I'll come back to that shot later.
Several ranchers head out to find the cattle that have been stolen by the Comanches. To their horror, Ethan figures out and tells them that stealing the cattle was just a ruse. Stealing the cattle was done to pull the men out so the ranches would be defenseless--just women and children. The Comanches were on a killing raid. Historically accurate.
Ethan returns to find the ranch house burning and his only family, including Martha, his love, dead.....except for the two young girls who, as the Comanches were wont to do, were taken captive.
The book by Alan LeMay that the movie is taken from is probably based on the history of Cynthia Ann Parker, who was taken by the Comanches, raised by them, and then retrieved by her uncle. When Cynthia Ann Parker was rescued, she did not want to return with her uncle--she felt she was Comanche and belonged with the Comanches.
The scene of Ethan discovering the massacre of his family is painful to watch. It is far more brutal than any other western of its time, or even later. It isn't graphic. It is the reaction of John Wayne that shows the horror, in how he picks up and looks at Martha's blood-stained dress outside the house, clearly showing she had been raped. It is so ugly and awful that he won't even allow Martin to see inside the home. There is no gratuitous violence shown. It is not needed. It's all Wayne.
So if there is not already enough to make Ethan an anguished and bitter person, he probably now realizes that soon after his arrival back home, Martha has been slaughtered. It would be normal for both him and Martin to spend the rest of their lives wondering what might have been prevented if they had stayed at home and let the other ranchers search for the cattle. They could probably have protected their family. Can you imagine living with that guilt?
So, this lonely, violent man heads out on a quest to find the two girls, after exploding in anger and walking out on the family's funeral--another example of his inability to maintain social decency and another example of why Martha couldn't marry him even though she loved him.
One girl is soon found dead. The other, Debbie, is the object of the six-year quest....the search. Remember the scene in the clip earlier as Ethan leaves the ranch: Debbie and Martha watch him go. The last time Martha and Ethan will ever see each other, and now all that is left of his family is Debbie.
But his quest is not to rescue Debbie. Ethan wants to find her to kill her. He has gone crazy, and has become even more irrational and uncivilized. He makes statements about Debbie being "the leavings of a Comanche buck, sold time and again to the highest bidder." Wow. Cover your ears. This was actually a line in a 50s film? It's unbelievably ugly and graphic.
Debbie has been defiled, and he can't stand it.
His statements about the Comanches and Debbie are the most racist statements about Indians in any of the 1950s westerns (or maybe even any westerns to date). The dialogue was far ahead of its time in showing the attitudes toward Indians that actually were present in the 1860s. Along with the fact that Ethan is no hero, this is another way this film is powerful, and real, and very raw and ugly in places about depicting life on the prairie.
Why does he want to kill her? Told you he was no hero, no western savior in a white hat. It is because he saw in Debbie what had happened to Martha, his love, and he had to kill everything about it. He had no other way of dealing with Martha's rape and murder. Debbie was no longer "white," according to Ethan, but instead was a Comanche, and he hated the Comanches because they killed and defiled his Martha. It is not the motivation of a normal man, and Wayne plays the part better than any other actor then or now could. It truly is his tour de force.
All of these layers that are placed upon what seems to be nothing but an action movie, a typical 1950s Cowboys and Indians story, are due not only to Ford and Wayne, but also in large part to the author of the book, Alan Le May, and the screenwriter, Frank Nugent. Le May was a fine writer of western novels. I have an entire collection of them, including a signed First Edition of The Searchers, and the serialized version of the story (The Avenging Texans) that was in the Saturday Evening Post. Nugent wrote the screenplays for many of John Ford's best films, including my second best western of all time She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, which also had a fine performance by John Wayne.
Aside...Trivia about the film She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. One beautiful scene had the cavalry marching through Monument Valley, where The Searchers was filmed and where Vicky and I and Kathy and Bill have been several times. At the last minute a thunderstorm broke out, so the Cinematographer, Winston Hoch (also the cinematographer for The Searchers), said he shouldn't film it. John Ford, the director of this film also, said "Film it," so Hoch did, and submitted a formal protest.
Well, Hoch ended up winning an Academy Award for Cinematography for She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. And Ford got the last laugh on him. It was an awesome scene, real, no special effects. Ford liked to fill up the screen in his movies, so really knew how to film in Monument Valley where he could fill the screen with buttes.
Here it is, the march and the storm, in two parts.
Part 1: Cavalry march in the storm
Part 2: Cavalry march in the storm.
Continuing on with the first trivia note about Monument Valley. In addition to having been through there several times, Vicky and I have spent a total of about three weeks camping just down the road from Monument Valley, in a place called Valley of the Gods. In terms of the stunning buttes, it is identical to Monument Valley. We have five favorite places we have camped in all of our years of travels, and Valley of the Gods is one of those five. Here are a couple of photos so you can see how similar Valley of the Gods is to Monument Valley.
You have to look closely to see our camper. But doesn't it look like we are camping on the set of The Searchers?
Second trivia note: Ben Johnson, who later won an Academy Award in The Last Picture Show, was in his first John Ford film when he portrayed a member of the cavalry in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. He used no stunt man as he was a first class horseman (as an aside, John Wayne didn't use stunt doubles in The Searchers, as he was also an excellent horseman). Well, the trivia is that Ben Johnson lived, until he died, in Leisure World, just up the street from us. We cycle past his home frequently and usually say "Hi Ben!" when we do---something you can get away with and not seem utterly nutty when it is 3:00 in the morning and no one else is around....and when you are old so people think being old is the "real" reason you are nutty.
OK, back to The Searchers....
A very young boy/man, Martin, whose own family had been massacred by the Indians years earlier and who grew up in Debbie's family, accompanies Ethan on this six-year journey to find Debbie. Martin gives up six years of his life just to keep Ethan from killing Debbie. For him, she is his only family, as now two of this families had been massacred by Indians.
Other aspects of the film: The acting by several of the actors and actresses, in addition to Wayne, is great. The cinematography is awesome. The music by Max Steiner (a 20-time Academy Award nominee, including for Gone with the Wind, and a 3-time winner), based upon the Civil War song, Lorena, is beautiful. Coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, the song is from the same time period as the story in The Searchers.
After searching for years, they finally come across the Comanche chief, Scar, who took Debbie.
And this scene of their confrontation shows that John Ford was not merely showing how awful the Comanches were in order to justify an action movie where the Comanche tribe is attacked.
Instead, in this confrontation with Scar, it becomes clear that Ethan was actually just like Scar. Both were vicious and violent as ways of dealing with their own pain of loss of family. They both kill for revenge. In other words, Ethan finds that his arch enemy is actually himself, metaphorically. He is his own villain, just as he was the villain who cost himself his love, Martha, and just as he may be his own villain who left the ranch unguarded. It's brilliant.
In other words, the Comanches are not presented as "bad" and the white settlers as "good" in this film, in contrast to most other films of the 1950s. This isn't one of those hundreds of 1950s westerns where good (white hat) and bad (black hat) are clearly differentiated. Instead, the confrontation between Ethan and Scar shows that they are both simply human--defective in their willingness to kill others for revenge, for sure, but operating under the same perception of their moral imperative.
Later, Ethan finally finds Debbie and, as he said he would do, tries to kill her. But she is protected by Martin and escapes.
And then, still later, he finds her again, after scalping Scar (for real, another example of his lack of fit in normal society and something never portrayed in any other Western).
She flees because she knows he wants to kill her. But he runs her down and captures her.
But when he picks her up, instead of killing her, he looks in her eyes, and probably saw Martha's eyes, or maybe saw the little girl he gave the locket to (on the soundtrack is the same music there was when he gave her the locket--another detail that could be lost unless the film is viewed multiple times).
And he can't do it. Instead of killing her, he wraps her in his arms and says, tenderly, "Let's go home, Debbie." The same tenderness that there was toward her years earlier.
"Let's go home, Debbie." That's all. His last line in the film, although not the end of the film.
The final scene of the film is very powerful. The "searchers" return Debbie home, and everybody walks through the doorway into the home, after a six-year search. Debbie and Martin are home again.
But not Ethan. Ethan, turns and walks out onto the prairie. He doesn't belong at home. He has no home. He belongs away from civilization.
Here is a photo of the very first scene in the film (on the left), and the last one (on the right). In the first one, Martha opens the door to see Ethan appearing in the distance. Where he has been is never known. The one on the right is the final scene. In both, the placement of the camera inside the home makes it clear that Ethan belongs outside the home, outside of civilization. The Sons of the Pioneers sing "Ride Away," which is what Ethan needs to do because he doesn't belong. What brilliant film making.
"His peace of mind he hopes he'll find but where oh Lord, Lord where......Ride Away."
He'll never find peace of mind. He's never had it.
Although Debbie is returned, Ethan belongs by himself. It is a sad ending, especially for a 1950s western.
As I said, John Wayne's performance is towering. He should have won an Academy Award for it but, in fact, the film received no Academy Award nominations of any kind. It is only through the years that people have come to really appreciate the film and Wayne's performance.
John Wayne himself liked it so much that he named one of his sons Ethan.
One other part of the film that was different from other westerns was the fact that in most westerns the "good guy" and "bad guy" meet up and have a showdown. The AFI's second-rated western was High Noon, and third-rated western was Shane. Both of those films featured showdowns of this nature--a good guy having a shootout on the street at the end of the film with a bad guy.
So people going to The Searchers would naturally expect a similar type of showdown between Ethan and Scar. But there was none. In fact, it was Martin, while rescuing Debbie, who killed Scar, and that was because Scar merely showed up at the wrong time. Martin was just trying to quietly get Debbie to safety.
John Ford clearly wanted the "showdown" to be the one within Ethan--the showdown between his uncivilized nature and his actual, but buried, love of Debbie. And the ending does that, as well has having Martin have to kill Scar even though he had no plan or desire to do this.
Really powerful and excellent film making.
Another trivia alert!
In the making of this film, John Wayne shows that he is no Ethan. An Indian woman in the film was played by Beulah Archuletta. One day Wayne found her crying. He asked what was going on. She said she was missing her son's graduation. So, Wayne stopped production for three days so she could attend it.
Another little fact: In the final scene in the link (see above) an old woman is shown crying when she sees they have brought Debbie home. That woman was played by Olive Carey, whose deceased husband, Harry Carey, had been an old-time cowboy star. Unscripted, in the final scene (see above photo on the right), Wayne put his hand on his elbow the way that Harry Carey used to do in his films. All of the other actors and actresses, including Olive Carey, were behind the camera watching him. He did this just for her, to express his feelings for her and for her husband who he had known well. What a sweet gesture.
Now, instead of rewinding 65 years to when The Searchers was filmed, or 140 years to when the story occurred, let's rewind 100 years before that--to the mid 1700s.
But before I do that, a digression (or two....or three). Be patient---I'll eventually get to the point. :)
My father had two father figures. One was an uncle, Walt, and one was a brother-in-law, my Uncle Wayne. His own father was an alcoholic. Starting about age 14, until my grandmother finally divorced him, my father had to sleep in his mother's room to protect her from him.
One of the goals of my father's life was to not be the father his own father was. And he succeeded. Boy did he ever succeed. These two men (Uncle Walt and Uncle Wayne) were the role models for my father, and my father was my role model for being a father. In this way these two uncles had an important impact on me and on my children. And I never got to thank them. It has taken years for me to put this all together, and now both of them are gone and I can't thank them.
One little example. Shortly after I was born my father decided to quit smoking. There was no information about the harmful effects of cigarette smoke, like there is now, but my father just felt that "it didn't seem like it would be good for Danny." We still have the last ashtray he used on display up at our cabin. I look at it frequently and think about this commitment to me, and to my sister.
I know there were two occasions where I spent hours telling my parents how great of a childhood they gave to me and what good parents they were. I am so grateful. I wish I would have been able to record those conversations. I probably should have called them every week and just spit it out. In a way, both Kathy and I did tell them because we had a life-long relationship with both of our parents. And never any tension. They reaped what they sowed.
My Uncle Wayne, one of his father figures, was married to my dear Aunt Hope. They were special to me. To get an idea of what kind of people they were, and why I could become so attached to them, when my father boarded the train to go off to WWII, Aunt Hope and Uncle Wayne and my grandmother were the people to see him off on the train. His father didn't even bother. When my father returned, years later, ALIVE, Hope, Wayne, and my grandmother were there to greet him at the station, not his father. Can you imagine?
I only remember seeing my grandfather a couple of times. He was living in a small apartment in Council Bluffs when I was a very young child. I don't remember him interacting with me. Soon after one of our visits with him in Council Bluffs, when my family was visiting my grandmother, my father got word that he had died. I was 7. I actually remember where I was sitting when my father told my sister and me that grandpa died. I clearly remember how I thought and felt. I knew I should be feeling sad because he was my father's father, but I knew inside of me that there was nothing there. So I acted sad, for my father. I never told him.
Left to right: a friend of the family, my father, my father's Uncle Walt, the friend's wife, Grandma, Aunt Hope, Uncle Wayne, and the child is my cousin.
My Aunt Hope was always cheerful and happy. I loved her. And she had a hard life, as did many people back then. She lost one of a set of twins in childbirth, and both of her sons were seriously hard of hearing and had to attend special schools. The other twin, and his wife, also died young. She also lost a grandson shortly after he was born.
These photos show me with my Aunt Hope. I was a cute kid, wasn't I? Mom thought so, anyway. And so did Aunt Hope!
How could you not love Hope's smile? It was always there.
And oh how she loved my father. I visited her in a nursing home shortly before her death. She couldn't talk, having just had a stroke. What I remember most was that she still had that smiling countenance that I always remembered from her, and that she spent most of the time just looking at Dad adoringly. She loved him so.
She and Uncle Wayne were married over 76 years! That is not a misprint. 76 years.
I remember that they drove out from Iowa to Colorado to attend my high school graduation in 1966. I thanked Uncle Wayne for doing this, and he said something to the effect that it was a big deal because, after all, he only had an 8th grade education. Worked hard doing physical labor all of his life. I miss them both so much.
And then look at this. They died within 6 weeks of each other. What a love story.
As mentioned, my father's other father figure was his Uncle Walt. Uncle Walt eked out a living by farming. In junior high and high school my father worked for him during the summers. They worked from sunup to sundown. No farm machinery. My father loved it. When Uncle Walt died he was still working that same farm.
I have two specific memories about my Uncle Walt. One is that when my sister Kathy and I were young children and would visit him, he would empty his pockets of coins and give them to us. Not a lot of money, but it registered. It's all he had to give, and he gave it. It's sweet. And I felt it at the time.
The other memory is that shortly after I went off to college I got word from my parents that Uncle Walt had died. My parents had just driven back to Colorado from Iowa to visit him. My parents got right back into the car and drove back out to Iowa so my father could perform the funeral. He said it would not be right for a minister who didn't know him to do this. That's how much Uncle Walt was loved by my father. He was never married, no children, but my father was the child he helped raise. My father never forgot it, and neither have I or my sister.
When we think about our legacies we probably don't think about the Uncle Walts or Uncle Waynes in our own histories--people who were good and decent and made an impact on someone who then had an impact on someone else who then had an impact on us. It's pretty mind-boggling to think about. Never once, in his life, did Uncle Walt or Uncle Wayne probably ever think about the effect that they had on my father or the effect my father would have on me, or then the effect I hopefully have had on my children, and then the effect my children are having on their own children. I need to sit down and process this. I think it shows that goodness and love travels far and long and deep--a very Christian (i.e., Christ-like) thought.
The Uncle Walts and the Uncle Waynes in our lives matter, even though at the time they can't imagine how much they matter. Wow. It makes you ask: "Who did I matter to?"
Well, this has been digression after digression.
My original point was to mention my Aunt Hope and how she relates to The Searchers.
The connection is that she compiled an amazing family history, going back to the 1700s. Where she got this information I have no idea. I wasn't even aware of the book of our history until after she died.
In this book Hope traces the Graybills back to the earliest days of the
Mormon Church, with pages and pages of names and dates, and back 100 years even before that. It is a treasure trove of history. Very powerful.
And buried in this history is a story about my great, great, great, great Grandmother Christena Graybill.
She was born in 1757, and in 1760 she was a for-real Debbie from The Searchers. As a young child of three she was kidnapped by Indians, the Delawares, along with her sister.
And there was a for-real search for her.
She lived with the Indians for 7 years, until she was 11, about the same age and length of time as a captive as Debbie. Several children were reclaimed at that time when the Delaware Indians apparently released them in a negotiation with the government.
So, Christena's mother, my great, great, great, great, great grandmother went to see if she was among the group of children who had been reclaimed, so she could bring her home if she was. According to family history, she could not recognize any of the children as Christena, until Christena started singing a lullaby over and over that her mother had taught her when she was a very young child. Can you imagine the joy her mother felt to be able to get her back? Can you imagine what she felt when she heard this lullaby? I can only try to grasp it, but know I can't.
What hardships everyone endured at that time.
Instead of it being her Uncle Ethan who found her, it was her mother, and her mother wasn’t searching for her to kill her, but to bring her home. The Sons of the Pioneers didn't sing “Ride Away” as her mother carried her back to her family like they did in The Searchers. Christena apparently had a long life, as we are all descended from her.
I am blown away by this story. Isn’t it just the most moving thing? What a hard life she must have had being taken from her family at that young of an age. Can you imagine how frightened she was all of those years? And the re-adjustment back with her family? And, like Debbie and Cynthia Ann Parker, Christena probably did not even want to return to her original family.
My favorite film, a story about a young girl captured by an Indian tribe and kept for 6 years, a film I saw with my father and remembered as an 8-year-old boy, a film that represents in a way all of the years my father and I spent so much time together when I was a young boy, a film that has stuck with me for 65 years and is my favorite, a film shot in a location right down the road from and similar to Monument Valley that is one of Vicky's and my favorite camping locations, and a film finally recognized as being the best western of all time.
And it was actually a real story in the Graybill family.
I don't know what to think of this. Truly I don't.
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