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Plot summary
The Zacharys are a respected ranching family in Texas. Ben has run the household since Kiowa killed his father, Will. He looks after his mother Mattilda, his brothers Cash and Andy, and Rachel, brought home as an infant and doted on by all of them. Their neighbor Zeb Rawlins, Ben's business partner, has a shy son, Charlie, who wants to marry Rachel. As the family gets ready to drive cattle to Wichita, Kansas, Abe Kelsey arrives claiming Rachel is Kiowa by birth. Ben and Cash shoot at him and kill his horse, and Kelsey rides off on Rachel's white stallion. Kiowa led by Lost Bird then offer Ben horses for Rachel, saying she is Lost Bird's sister.
Cast
- Arnold Merrittas Jude Rawlins
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Unforgiven (1960)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Audrey Hepburn broke her back when she fell off a horse while rehearsing a scene, which suspended production of The Unforgiven for several months in 1959. She recovered, but the accident was blamed for a subsequent miscarriage she suffered.
- The plan to cast Richard Burton as Cash Zachary was stopped when Burton demanded equal billing with Burt Lancaster, which Lancaster refused. The role went to Audie Murphy.
- John Huston battled Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, the company financing the film, because it wanted a more commercial and less controversial film while he wanted to make a statement about racism in America. Neither side got exactly what it wanted.
- The name Lost Bird is applied by some Plains Indian tribes to native children adopted by whites. It was popularized by Zintkála Nuni, a Hunkpapa Lakota survivor of the Wounded Knee Massacre raised by Clara Bewick Colby, whose feminist newspaper The Woman's Tribune ran a column on Nuni for years.
- Huston's cinematographer of choice, Oswald Morris, was unavailable for the film, and Huston did not talk to him for several years afterwards.
- John Saxon, who played Johnny Portugal, had signed a three-picture deal with Hecht-Hill-Lancaster. Scenes featuring his character were deleted from The Unforgiven without the director's consent.
