1939 was the year for John Ford. He directed three films that year – this one, Young Mr. Lincoln (a courtroom drama about a trial that Abraham Lincoln defended before he became president), and Drums Along the Mohawk (a Revolutionary War-era film about settlers encroaching on Indian territory in the Northeast). Of the three, Stagecoach is the probably the most enjoyable (though they’re all good films) and the most important. Stagecoach did more for the Western genre than any other film. It imbued John Ford with his love for wide shots in Monument Valley, it made John Wayne a superstar lead actor (through Ford’s stubbornness; his producer wanted Wayne replaced with Gary Cooper since Wayne, at the time, was a nobody), and it brought the Western out of B-Movie Hell and brought it to a place of prominence and prestige. After Stagecoach, Westerns became critically-acclaimed high art after nearly 40 years.

You’ve probably seen some variation of this movie before: A group of strangers meet on a stagecoach as they make their way from Arizona to New Mexico. They have a multitude of reasons to make the trip – a fresh start, meeting family, vengeance – and they have to brave through Apache territory to get there. Along the way, John Wayne’s Ringo Kid, who has busted out of jail to kill the men who murdered his father and brother, falls in love with Dallas (Claire Trevor), a prostitute that has been kicked out of town and must now find somewhere she’s accepted. In the end, Ringo Kid takes his revenge and the law, having spent time with him and realizing he’s not such a bad guy, lets him ride off into the sunset with his new gal.

Action, romance, and great characters – this movie has it all. While not the film’s climax, one of the most thrilling scenes in the film is when the Apaches charge and attack the stagecoach. The people on the stagecoach have to protect themselves and the Ringo Kid must leap from the coach to yolk to yolk to yolk to get to the front of the horse team. It’s an exciting piece of cinema, but I bring it up to bring up Yakima Canutt. Yakima Canutt did all the stunts in the film, including this one, and he deserves for his name to be known. He did these fantastic stunts, some of which had yet to be repeated, while stunt work in films was still in its infancy and was much more primitive and therefore much more dangerous. Canutt’s work has been imitated and referenced in numerous action films and Westerns. In fact, the aforementioned stunt on Stagecoach was given a nod in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Harrison Ford jumps from the top of a German truck to the front of it, then falls underneath and is dragged by it.

Bonus Review: The Gunfighter

Gregory Peck is Jimmy Ringo, the Gunfighter. Weary of his gunslinging lifestyle and tired of being viewed as an outcast or some kid’s ticket to fame as “the man who shot Ringo”, he decides it’s time to retire and become a respectable member of society. He returns to Cayenne, the town where his wife he hasn’t seen in eight years and the son he’s never met live. Through mutual friends, Ringo is given the chance to plead to his wife to join him in California, but she asks for a year to consider it and see whether he stays out of trouble. At the urging of the marshal, Ringo decides to leave town, but it’s too late. The brothers of a young man Ringo shot and killed in self-defense have arrived and are waiting to ambush Ringo. This film’s conclusion is a meditation on the price of fame and the circular perpetuation of an eye-for-an-eye mentality.

Hopefully you have or will watch The Gunfighter, but if you’ve never seen it and are a John Wayne purist, it’s very similar to The Shootist – Wayne’s swan song and the last film he made before his death. However, where The Shootist is a little bloated and dragged out, The Gunfighter is a tight hour-and-a-half. It’s a good thing, too, with such a simple plot, but the movie does not drag, and it really fits Gregory Peck’s personality as the deep-voiced, stoic, one-man powerhouse. It’s ironic, though, as John Wayne was originally wanted for the role of Jimmy Ringo before Peck was chosen. When the film failed to explode at the box office, two things were blamed for its bomb: the lack of John Wayne, and Gregory Peck’s era-authentic mustache.