The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) on Netflix
Katie Elder's four sons come home to Clearwater, Texas for her funeral. Morgan Hastings holds their ranch, which he says their father lost in a card game the night he was shot.
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- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Four brothers come home to Clearwater, Texas in 1898 to bury their mother, Katie. John earns his living with a gun, Tom with cards, Matt has struggled as a hardware dealer, and Bud, the youngest, is still at mining college. None of them turned out as she hoped. The town loved Katie, but John and Tom get a cold welcome from the townspeople and the new deputy sheriff. Morgan Hastings, a gunsmith, holds the Elder ranch and the water his factory needs, and he says he won the land from their father, Bass, in a card game. Bass was killed that same night, and nobody knows who fired the shot. Hastings has brought in Curley, a gunman, expecting trouble.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Filming of The Sons of Katie Elder was pushed from September 1964 to January 1965 after John Wayne was diagnosed with lung cancer; after surgery to remove a lung and two ribs he insisted on doing his own stunts and nearly got pneumonia when dragged into a river.
- Tommy Kirk, a former Disney star, was signed for the film, presumably as Bud Elder, but was fired from the production after his arrest at a party where marijuana was used.
- Alan Ladd was set to star in the film, but in July 1956 he bought himself out of his Paramount commitment for $135,000 and no longer made it.
- In the real case behind the film, Boone Marlow was poisoned by his girlfriend's brother and then shot by bounty hunters for the $1,700 reward offered for his capture; an autopsy found he had already died of arsenic poisoning.
- Johnny Cash sang a 1965 song also called "The Sons of Katie Elder", written by Elmer Bernstein and Ernie Sheldon; despite the title and composer, it did not feature in the film but appeared on its soundtrack LP.
- The train depot where the brothers wait for a no-show John Wayne was filmed at Perkinsville, Arizona; the same depot served as Gold City in How the West Was Won and still stands at the end of the Verde Canyon Railroad ride.
