She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) on Netflix
Days from retirement, Captain Nathan Brittles leads a last patrol against the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Two women must be evacuated, and Olivia Dandridge's yellow ribbon keeps two officers guessing.
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Trailer
Plot summary
In August 1876, Captain Nathan Brittles is nearing retirement after forty years with the 2nd U.S. Cavalry at Fort Starke. His men give him a silver pocket watch. Lieutenants Flint Cohill and Ross Pennell both court Olivia Dandridge, the niece of the post commander, and she wears a yellow ribbon in her hair to show she has a Cavalry beau, though she will not say who he is. Word comes that the Cheyenne and Arapaho have left their reservation after the Sioux wiped out George Armstrong Custer's force at the Little Big Horn. Brittles is ordered to push the tribes back, and before that to carry Abby Allshard, the commander's wife, and Olivia to an eastbound stage.
Cast
- Michael Duganas Sgt. Hochbauer
Show all 20 cast
- George Sky Eagleas Chief Sky Eagle
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- John Ford did not want John Wayne as Captain Nathan Brittles, partly because the part was more than twenty years older than Wayne. Wayne's work in Red River changed his mind, and when shooting ended Ford handed him a cake reading "You're an actor now".
- One of the film's best-known images came out of a row. As the cavalry rode through Monument Valley a real thunderstorm blew in, cinematographer Winton Hoch warned the cameras could act as lightning rods, and Ford made him shoot anyway; Hoch filed a complaint against Ford with the American Society of Cinematographers.
- Harry Carey Jr., who was on the set, disputes the thunderstorm legend. He says Ford had already wrapped for the day and simply asked Hoch whether they could shoot in the failing light, with Hoch answering that it was awfully dark but that he would shoot it.
- Ford gave his older brother Francis a single scene as Connolly the barman and then kept him on the payroll for eight weeks, although the work could have been finished in under a week.
- Cast and crew roughed it in Monument Valley, most of them sleeping in dirt-floor cabins with shared cold-water drum showers. Even so, the picture came in ahead of schedule and under budget.
- Ford and cinematographer Winton C. Hoch modeled much of the film's look on the paintings and sculptures of Frederic Remington, and Hoch took the color cinematography Oscar at the 22nd Academy Awards for it.
- At $1.6 million, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon was one of the most expensive Westerns made up to that point, and it took its name from a song popular with the U.S. military.
