island of Guadalcanal, it ultimately uses the histor-
ical setting as a very personal backdrop for a med-
itation on war and its horrors.
Looking at Narrative: John Ford’s Stagecoach
To better understand how these foundations and
elements of narrative work together in a single
movie, let’s consider how they’re used in John
Ford’s Stagecoach (1939; screenwriter: Dudley
Nichols). This movie is regarded by many as the
classic Western, not only for its great entertain-
ment value, but also for its mastery of the subjects
discussed in this chapter.
Story, Screenwriter, and Screenplay
The story of Stagecoachis based on a familiar con-
vention (sometimes called the “ship of fools”) in
which a diverse group of people—perhaps passen-
gers traveling to a common destination or resi-
dents of a hotel—must confront a common danger
and, through that experience, confront themselves,
both as individuals and as members of a group.
These people (male and female; weak and
strong; from different places, backgrounds, and
professions; and with dissimilar temperaments)
have either been living in, or are passing through,
the frontier town of Tonto. Despite a warning from
the U.S. Cavalry that Apache warriors, under the
command of the dreaded Geronimo, have cut the
telegraph wires and threatened the settlers’
safety, this group boards a stagecoach to Lords-
burg. In charge of the coach is Buck Rickabaugh
(Andy Devine), the driver, and Marshal Curly
Wilcox (George Bancroft), who is on the lookout for
an escaped prisoner called the Ringo Kid (John
Wayne). The seven passengers include (1) Lucy
Mallory (Louise Platt), the aloof, Southern-born,
and (as we later learn) pregnant wife of a cavalry
officer whom she has come west to join; (2) Samuel
Peacock (Donald Meek), a liquor salesman; (3) Dr.
Josiah Boone (Thomas Mitchell), a doctor who still
carries his bag of equipment, even though he has
been kicked out of the profession for malpractice
and now is being driven out of Tonto for drunken-
ness; (4) Mr. Hatfield (John Carradine), a Southern
gambler, who is proud of the fact that he served
in Lucy’s father’s regiment in the Civil War and
leaves Tonto to serve as her protector on the trip;
(5) Henry Gatewood (Berton Churchill), the Tonto
bank president, who is leaving town with a myste-
rious satchel that we later learn contains money he
stole from his bank; and (6) Dallas (Claire Trevor),
a good-hearted prostitute, who has been driven out
of town by a group of Tonto’s righteous women.
The seventh passenger, Ringo, has been heading for
Lordsburg to avenge his father’s murder, but when
his horse becomes lame outside Tonto, he stops the
stagecoach and is arrested by the marshal before
he boards. Each passenger has personal reasons
for leaving Tonto (or, in Ringo’s case, prison) and
making the perilous journey. Lucy, Hatfield, Gate-
wood, and Peacock all have specific purposes for
traveling to Lordsburg; Dallas and Dr. Boone are
being forced to leave town; and the Ringo Kid has a
grudge to settle.
The screenwriter Dudley Nichols, a veteran of
working with Ford, based the screenplay on the
story “Stage to Lordsburg,” written by Ernest Hay-
cox, who specialized in fiction based on Western
themes.^6 Although this story is fiction, Ford usually
sought to anchor his Western movies in historical
reality by giving them a date; he does not do that in
Stagecoach. Since Geronimo and his Apaches wereScopeBernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor(1987;
screenwriters: Mark Peploe and Bertolucci) recounts the
comparatively small story of the title character, China’s Pu Yi
(John Lone), against the political changes enveloping China
as it moved from monarchy to communism from 1908 to
- Even though the two stories occur simultaneously and
are related causally, the expansive scope of the historical
epic takes precedence over the story of the emperor’s life.
LOOKING AT NARRATIVE: JOHN FORD’S STAGECOACH 157