“Wagon Master” was perhaps the truest test of the concept of “star director” of John Ford’s career.
The iconic Irishman who came to America and made Westerns was finishing up his “cavalry trilogy (“Fort Apache,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” and “Rio Grande”) and was over a decade into the fame and studio leverage that “The Informer,” “Young Mr. Lincoln” and “Stagecoach” gave him. So he went back to the “Stagecoach” ensemble model for “Wagon Master,” an action comedy built around character actors, mostly from his repertory company.
There were “names” but no stars in this cast, mostly players who made their character actor reps in earlier Ford Westerns. And the leading men were two Ford creations, the great stunt-riders Ben Johnson and Harrey Carey Jr., the latter the son of a silent era Western star Ford began his Hollywood career with way back in 1917.
But the director, his style and his favorite setting (Monument Valley, Moab and environs) were the real stars.
“Wagon Master” is a corny, jokey, sagebrush saga filled with tropes and adorned with trail tunes sung by the Sons of the Pioneers all over the soundtrack. But realizing that, Ford, working from a story he conceived (and writer Frank S. Nugent and Ford son Patrick Ford scripted) didn’t pause for any over-familiar moments as he gave Western fans more of less everything they expected out of a movie.
This wagon train trek, with a couple of veteran horse traders (Johnson and Carey) leading a Conestoga Wagon-riding party of Mormon settlers to their new home, would have river crossings and Native (Navajo) encounters, a tangle with bad hombres and a tag-along by a literal “snake oil salesman” (Ford fave Alan Mowbray) and two blowsy female hustlers (Joanne Dru of of “Red River” And “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” and silent cinema vetran Ruth Clifford).
There is horse play and gun play, with Johnson and Carey simply dazzling as they perform their own dangerous stunts.
But there’ll no pause to underline the Stations of the Horse Opera Cross here. Every Western cliche is trotted out, but none are underlined. It’s a “give the fans what they want” but “don’t make a big deal out of it” production.
Ford lets us know this right from the start, with a simple, abrupt and violent prologue introducing the murderous Clegg clan, headed by Charles Kemper — nobody’s idea of Walter Brennan, and including the then-unknown James Arness (TV’s “Gunsmoke”) and Ford regular Hank Worden. The opening credits then roll, the singing starts and we know we’ll be seeing more of these thugs as our amusing cowpoke “types” show up, prank the local marshal and comically mix-it-up with Mormon horse traders (Russell Simpson and Ford’s older brother, actor Francis Ford).
The one Mormon who won’t be hustled is Elder Wiggs, played at full bluster by Ford rep company member Ward Bond.
“Now look here, don’t you be ‘grandpa-ing’ me, you young whippersnapper! I’ll bull you off that fence and fan your britches for you! Goddarn…”
Elder Wiggs is a good Mormon, minding his language. But that’s done nothing for his temper.
Wiggs talks the horse dealers into leading his colony of settles to the San Juan River Valley. Travis (Johnson) and Sandy (Carey) have been there, and have an idea of the best route — with water, and wagon-tolerating terrain — to get them there. A big cash offer and a few pretty women in the retinue convince them to sign on. Well, Sandy is the first convinced. It isn’t until the more sober-minded Travis meets the stranded snake out trio that he is smitten enough to see a future named Denver (Dru) in this trek.
The cry “Wagon’s West!” prompts a song (sometimes the cast carries the tune).
Ford plays up the fractious nature of this congregation by convenience, mostly for comic effect. Here’s Jane Darwell (“The Grapes of Wrath”), a Mormon summoned to “blow your horn” to get everybody back on task. There are hotheads in the ranks, reminding viewers that Mormons were discriminated against, with Elder Wiggs joking that he has “more wives than King Solomon” and wears a hit “to hide my horns.“
The Navajo encounter is rendered peaceful by a heaping helping of pacifist common sense with jokes about how all “white men are thieves,” but Mormons not-so-much, in the eyes of the natives. Look for sports legend Jim Thorpe at the “Squaw Dance” that meeting inspires.
Johnson is dry and funny, with Ford treating him like a John Wayne in-the-making. He never really was. Carey is rambunctious and quicker with a punch line. No Mormon’s going to tell Sandy he can’t cuss.
“‘Hell’ ain’t cussin’! It’s GEOGRAPHY!”
The whole riding, river-crossing, armed desperado-confronting shooting match just ambles along, a picture with just enough pace and wit, confidently and almost effortlessly delivered to RKO and to cinemas by a master filmmaker at his peak, with Ford barely breaking a sweat.
“Wagon Master” inspired the Western TV series “Wagon Train” (1957-61), a rolling, rotating ensemble saga built around Ward Bond and a legion of mostly-unknowns.
Some careers glimpsed here were winding down, and other players never would transcend their association with Ford, with Johnson the lone member of this cast to go on to win an Oscar (“The Last Picture Show”).
In five years, Ford would set off for these same locations to make his Western masterpiece, “The Searchers,” with John Wayne, Bond, Carey, Worden and an on-set accordion player in tow.
But one reason Ford always referred to “Wagon Master” as one of his personal favorites had to be the working experience, a surehanded director, a familiar setting, a cast and crew who knew what they were doing, on foot and on horseback, an ease and comfort by one and all that shows up in every frame of this, one of the corniest but most comforting of the greatest Western director’s great Westerns.
Rating: TV-PG, violence
Cast: Ben Johson, Ward Bond, Joanne Dru, Harrey Carey, Jr., Alan Mowbray, Jane Darwell, James Arness, Hank Worden, Ruth Clifford and Charles Kemper
Credits: Directed by John Ford, scripted by Frank S. Nugent and Patrick Ford. An RKO release on Tubi, et al.
Running time: 1:40
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