The Fighting Kentuckian (1949) on Netflix
John Breen, a Kentucky militiaman home from the War of 1812, falls for Fleurette de Marchand, a French exile. A plot threatens the Alabama land her fellow exiles mean to settle.
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Trailer
Plot summary
The War of 1812 has ended, and John Breen, a Kentucky militiaman, meets Fleurette de Marchand, who lives among a colony of French exiles in Alabama. The exiles left France after Napoleon's defeat, and they intend to settle land in the Alabama Territory. Breen learns of a plot to take that land from them. Mistaken for a land surveyor, he is handed a theodolite, and he sets out with Willie Paine to keep up the appearance of surveying, though neither of them knows the work. He also keeps up a second pretense on a stage with a group of fiddlers.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Fighting Kentuckian (1949)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- John Wayne wanted a French actress for the lead role and considered Danielle Darrieux, Simone Simon and Corinne Calvet, but Republic Pictures forced him to cast its own Vera Ralston, so other Czech and Austrian actors were hired to match her accent.
- The Fighting Kentuckian was one of the few times Oliver Hardy worked without Stan Laurel, his Laurel and Hardy partner, and the only time Hardy appeared in a film with John Wayne; the two had worked together onstage a year earlier in a touring charity production of What Price Glory?, with Ward Bond and Maureen O'Hara, directed by John Ford.
- John Wayne wears a buckskin suit and coonskin cap in only four of his films: The Fighting Kentuckian, the 1930 epic The Big Trail, Allegheny Uprising (1939), and The Alamo (1960), where he played Davy Crockett.
- The story is set in Alabama in 1818, in Demopolis, a city really founded by Bonapartists who had been exiled from France after Napoleon I's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.
- Stuntman Chuck Roberson's first work with John Wayne was on The Fighting Kentuckian, and he went on to double Wayne frequently for the rest of his career.
