Rio Grande (1950)

Film: Rio Grande (1950)

Stars: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Ben Johnson, Claude Jarman, Jr., Harry Carey, Jr., Chill Wills, J. Carrol Naish, Victor McLaglen

Director: John Ford

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Maureen O'Hara-click here to learn more about Ms. O'Hara (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are halfway through the month, and I'm going to confess something here.  While I am enjoying getting a Maureen O'Hara retrospective onto the blog (she had good taste in scripts, and occasionally made a big impression onscreen), she might have been a mistake for this kind of format (for two reasons).  The first is that Maureen O'Hara's career was too long to fit into four Saturday's, and I'm going to miss too many chapters with the actress.  After her work with Hunchback, she languished with abysmal parts at RKO, and only after she took on a key role in Fox's smash success How Green Was My Valley, did American films finally start using her properly.  The other problem, though, with O'Hara is that many of her biggest classics I've already seen, and the "rules" of this series are that I can only profile movies I've never seen, so I'm "discovering" the star along with you.  This means that we're going to skip How Green Was My Valley, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Quiet Man, all some of O'Hara's best work & the three films which she's most associated.  Today, though, we are going to look into a chapter of O'Hara's life that would come to define her career throughout the 1950's & 60's with a film I haven't seen-Rio Grande, her first film with director John Ford and actor John Wayne, both of whom she would work with consistently for the next twenty years.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is the third of Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" and is about a troupe of US Cavalry who are stationed on the Texas frontier to guard against Apaches.  They are led by Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke (Wayne), whose son Jeff (Jarman) has been kicked out of West Point but still joins up as a private, and is assigned to his father's regimen.  While initially Jeff is mocked by his fellow soldiers (with them assuming he gets special treatment from his father), he is instead held to a higher standard, and they start to respect him.  Things become more tense when Kirby's estranged wife Kathleen (O'Hara) joins them, trying to convince Jeff to get out of the army as she fears for his safety, but she can convince neither father nor son, and she stays on, growing back in love with her husband.  The film's climax involves the Apaches stealing a number of children from the troupes, and them having to get back, with Jeff risking his life on the mission & Kirby being wounded, though not killed, during battle.  The film ends with Jeff receiving accommodation for his efforts (finally making his parents proud), and Kathleen & Kirby happily in love again.

The movie starred Wayne & O'Hara together for the first time, one of five times they'd make a movie together (they would later be remembered as one of the most beloved pairs in Classic Hollywood) and one of three films they made with director Ford.  While it has auspicious beginnings, the movie wasn't one that Ford really cared about.  The studio forced him to make the movie in order for him to secure the funding for The Quiet Man, which the studio (incorrectly) assumed would be a dud & they wanted the western as an insurance policy.  As a result, this is oftentimes the "odd man out" in Ford's Cavalry Trilogy, as the other two films (Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) are generally considered some of his masterpieces, a reputation Rio Grande doesn't enjoy.

Upon viewing, while there are elements to lend itself, this is correct & the movie doesn't number amongst the best of Ford's career.  The film's finest elements are its moody cinematography from Bert Glennon (making good use of Ford's obsession with Monument Valley, particularly in nighttime scenes), as well as the overuse of old songs; some criticized this at the time, but I quite liked the constant musical interludes where the troupes will sing army songs & love ballads to Kathleen.  The film's chemistry between Kirby & Kathleen is good, but underwritten.  While they have a tense backstory (Kathleen, a Southerner, watched as her husband burned down her plantation when he joined the North in the war), it's not particularly explored, and there are a lot of inconsistencies in their relationship.  It's one of those movies where you thank heavens for the chemistry as this could have been a clunker with actors who didn't work together.  But they do, and next week we'll see how well they interact as we explore one final chapter in O'Hara's epic career.