Trailer
Plot summary
Settlers and Apaches are at war in 1870s Arizona. Scout Tom Jeffords finds a wounded Apache boy and treats his wounds until the boy recovers; when the boy's people appear, the boy speaks for him, and they let him go. Apaches then attack a group of prospectors and warn him off their land. In Tucson, Ben Slade cannot see why Jeffords spared the boy, and Jeffords turns down the army's offer to scout Apache country. He learns the Apache language instead; raids keep his friend Milt's mail from arriving, and he means to seek out Cochise and talk.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Broken Arrow (1950)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Debra Paget was only 16 years old when she played the love interest to James Stewart, who was 42 at the time.
- Producer Julian Blaustein said finding an actor with the right voice and stature for Cochise was so hard that, before Jeff Chandler was cast, the filmmakers considered the opera singer Ezio Pinza.
- Broken Arrow is counted among the first post-war Westerns to give a more balanced portrayal of Indians, and it helped bring about the era of the revisionist Western genre.
- At a screening of the film for 450 civic leaders at New York's Museum of Modern Art, the president of the Association on American Indian Affairs decried Hollywood's traditional portrayal of Indians and condemned a 14-year prison sentence given to four Nez Perce and Coeur d'Alene boys in Idaho for the theft of a sheep.
