# Red River (1948 film)

Red River is a 1948 American Western film, directed and produced by Howard Hawks and starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. It gives a fictional account of the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail. The dramatic tension stems from a growing feud over the management of the drive between the Texas rancher who initiated it (Wayne) and his adopted adult son (Clift).
The film's supporting cast features: Walter Brennan, Joanne Dru, Coleen Gray, Harry Carey, John Ireland, Hank Worden, Noah Beery Jr., Harry Carey Jr. and Paul Fix. Borden Chase and Charles Schnee wrote the screenplay based on Chase's original story (which was first serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in 1946 as "Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail").
Upon its release, Red River was both a critical and commercial success and was nominated for two Academy Awards. In 1990, Red River was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Red River was selected by the American Film Institute as the fifth-greatest Western of all time in the AFI's 10 Top 10 list in 2008.

## Plot

In 1851, Thomas Dunson and his friend Nadine Groot leave St Louis on the California Trail. When they are just north of the Texas border, Dunson says he is going to leave the wagon train saying he will go south and start his ranch there. The trail boss says it isn't safe as there are Indians around and he needs a good gunman like Dunson with the train. Dunson's love interest Fen wants to join him but he tells her to stay with the wagons and he will send for her when he is properly settled. Before he and Groot leave, Dunson gives Fen his late mother's bracelet.
Hours later, as Dunson and Groot reach the Red River (the Texas border), they spot smoke coming from the direction of the wagon train. That night they are attacked by Indians, but manage to kill them all. On the wrist of one, Dunson finds the bracelet he had given Fen. The next day, teenager Matt Garth wanders into their camp, apparently the sole survivor of the wagon train. Dunson takes the boy with them. They enter Texas by crossing the river and four weeks later settle near the Rio Grande. Dunson names his new spread the Red River D, after his chosen cattle brand for his herd. He promises to add M (for Matt) to the brand, once Matt has earned it. Two men arrive and say they work for Don Diego who owns all the land from there south for four hundred miles (640 km). Dunson tells them to tell Don Diego that now all land north of the Rio Grande is his. One of the men draws on Dunson, who kills him. He tells the other to tell Don Diego what happened.
After fourteen years Dunson had built a successful ranch, but the Civil War has left him broke. His only option is to drive his herd of 10,000 head a thousand miles (1,600 km) to the railhead in Missouri, where he believes they will fetch a good price. Cherry Valance, a professional gunman, joins the drive. Valance relates that he has heard the railroad has reached Abilene, Kansas, which is much closer than Sedalia where they are heading. When Dunson confirms that Valance had not actually seen the railroad, he ignores the rumor in favor of continuing to Missouri.
One of the drovers, Bunk Kenneally, causes a stampede by accidentally making a lot of noise while sneaking sugar from one of the chuckwagons, resulting in the death of drover Dan Latimer. When Dunson attempts to whip him for causing the stampede, Kenneally draws his gun. Both Matt and Dunson draw, but Matt is faster, shooting and wounding Kenneally. Dunson confirms that he would have killed Kenneally. Valance tells Matt that he is soft for not shooting to kill.
Dunson keeps driving the men harder and harder and they get more and more disgruntled. They find the lone survivor from an earlier drive who says they should have followed the Chisholm Trail to Abilene. When Dunson presses him, he says he can't remember for sure that the railway had reached Abilene, so Dunson says they will still go to Missouri. Three men say they have had enough and are going to leave the drive. Dunson says they agreed to finish when they signed on. There is a shootout and the three men are killed, with Matt helping Dunson. Three more men leave in the middle of the night, taking precious supplies with them. Dunson sends Valence to bring them back.
They cross the Red River and camp for the night. The next morning Valance returns with two of the three deserters, the other having tried to fight and being killed. When Dunson announces he intends to lynch them, Matt says he won't allow it. Dunson tries to shoot Matt but is shot in the hand by Valance. With the support of the cowhands, Matt takes charge of the drive saying they will head for Abilene, leaving Dunson behind. Groot is the only one who offers to stay with Dunson, but is told to go with the drive. As they leave, Dunson says he will find Matt and kill him.
The drive saves a wagon train of gamblers and dance hall girls from an Indian attack. One of the girls, Tess Millay, becomes very interested in Matt, who is not interested, at first. With the weather getting worse, and the next river rising, Matt gets the drive moving on early the next morning. Eight days after they have left, Dunson arrives with some men he has hired to help him catch up with Matt. Dunson is surprised that Tess knows his name. Dunson notices she is wearing his mother's bracelet. He tells Tess what he wanted a son to pass his ranch on to, and that was going to be Matt, until he stole the herd. He offers her half the ranch if she will bear him a son. She agrees, on the condition he abandons his pursuit of Matt, and when he says he won't, she begs to go with him, to which he agrees.
When Matt reaches Abilene, he finds the town has been awaiting the arrival of such a herd to buy. He accepts an offer for the cattle, and later finds Tess in his room. She tells him Dunson is camped a few miles out of town. The next morning, as Dunson comes into town, he is challenged by Valance. They shoot each other, both getting wounded, but Dunson carries on towards Matt. He tells Matt to draw, but he refuses, even after Dunson has emptied his gun with near misses and grazing Matt's cheek. He throws his gun away and does the same with Matt's. Even when he starts punching him, Matt does not fight back, until eventually they both fight until Tess interrupts them. Making peace, Dunson advises Matt to marry Tess and tells him that when they get back to the ranch, he will incorporate an M into the brand, telling Matt that he has earned it.

## Cast

* John Wayne as Thomas Dunson
* Montgomery Clift as Matthew "Matt" Garth
* Walter Brennan as Nadine Groot
* Joanne Dru as Tess Millay
* Coleen Gray as Fen
* Harry Carey as Mr. Melville, representative of the Greenwood Trading Company
* John Ireland as Cherry Valance
* Noah Beery Jr. as Buster McGee (Dunson Wrangler)
* Harry Carey Jr. as Dan Latimer (Dunson Wrangler)
* Chief Yowlachie as Two Jaw Quo (Groot's second cook)
* Paul Fix as Teeler Yacey (Dunson Wrangler)
* Hank Worden as Sims Reeves (Dunson Wrangler)
* Ray Hyke as Walt Jergens (Dunson Wrangler)
* Wally Wales as Old Leather (Dunson Wrangler)
* Mickey Kuhn as Young Matt
* Robert M. Lopez as an Indian

### Uncredited

* Shelley Winters as Dance Hall Girl in Wagon Train
* Dan White as Laredo (Dunson Wrangler)
* Tom Tyler as Quitter (Dunson Wrangler)
* Ray Spiker as Wagon Train Member
* Glenn Strange as Naylor (Dunson Wrangler)
* Chief Sky Eagle as Indian Chief
* Ivan Parry as Bunk Kenneally (Dunson Wrangler)
* Lee Phelps as Gambler
* William Self as Sutter (Wounded Wrangler)
* Carl Sepulveda as Cowhand (Dunson Wrangler)
* Pierce Lyden as Colonel's Trail Boss
* Harry Cording as Gambler
* George Lloyd as Rider with Melville
* Frank Meredith as Train Engineer
* John Merton as Settler
* Jack Montgomery as Drover at Meeting
* Paul Fierro as Fernandez (Dunson Wrangler)
* Richard Farnsworth as Dunston Rider
* Lane Chandler as Colonel, the wagon master of the pre-Civil War wagon train
* Davison Clark as Mr. Meeker, one of Dunson's fellow ranchers
* Guy Wilkerson as Pete (Dunson Wrangler)

## Production

Red River was filmed in 1946, copyrighted in 1947, but not released until September 30, 1948. Footage from Red River was later incorporated into the opening montage of Wayne's last film, The Shootist, to illustrate the backstory of Wayne's character. The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Film Editing (Christian Nyby) and Best Writing, Motion Picture Story (Borden Chase). John Ford, who worked with Wayne on many films such as Stagecoach, The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, was so impressed with Wayne's performance that he is reported to have said: "I didn't know the big son of a bitch could act!"
Hawks felt Dru's final speech after Dunson and Matt fight didn't work, wishing his original choice to play Tess Margaret Sheridan had been available. He felt Sheridan could have done a far better job of delivering the lines than Dru did.
The film was shot in black and white rather than color, because director Howard Hawks found Technicolor technology to be too "garish" for the realistic style desired. But as with many remembrances of Hawks, he has also said the exact opposite to Peter Bogdanovich, to whom he claimed that he wished he had shot the picture in color, especially the sequence involving driving the cattle across the Red River. Had he done so, he thought it would have made a lot more money. Second unit director Arthur Rosson was given credit in the opening title crawl as co-director. He shot parts of the cattle drive and some action sequences. The film's ending differed from that of the original story. In Chase's original Saturday Evening Post story, published in 1946 as "Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail", Valance shoots Dunson dead in Abilene and Matt takes his body back to Texas to be buried on the ranch.

### Alternate versions

During the production and while the film was still being shot, Hawks was not satisfied with the editing and asked Christian Nyby to take over cutting duties. Nyby worked for about a year on the project. After production, the pre-release version was 133 minutes and included book-style transitions. This version was briefly available for television in the 1970s, but was believed to be lost. It was rediscovered after a long search as a Cinémathèque Française 35 mm print, and released by the Criterion Collection.
Before the film could be released, Howard Hughes sued Hawks, claiming that the climactic scene between Dunson and Matt was too similar to the film The Outlaw (1943), which both Hawks and Hughes had worked on. Hughes prepared a new 127-minute cut, which replaced the book inserts with spoken narration by Walter Brennan. Nyby salvaged the film by editing in some reaction shots, which resulted in the original theatrical version. This version was lost, and the 133-minute pre-release version was seen on television broadcasts and home video releases. The original theatrical cut was reassembled by Janus Films (in co-operation with UA parent company MGM) for their Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD release on May 27, 2014.
Film historian Peter Bogdanovich interviewed Hawks in 1972, and he was led to believe that the narrated theatrical version was the director's preferred cut. This view was upheld by Geoffrey O'Brien in his 2014 essay for the Criterion release. Contrarily, some, including film historian Gerald Mast, argue that Hawks preferred the 133-minute version. Mast points out that this is told from an objective third-person point of view, while the shorter cut has Brennan's character narrating scenes he could not have witnessed. Filmmaker/historian Michael Schlesinger, in his essay on the film for the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, argues that when Bogdanovich interviewed Hawks, the director "was 76 and in declining health", when he was prone to telling tall tales. Schlesinger also points out that Hughes's shortened version was prepared for overseas distribution because it is easier to replace narration than printed text.

## Soundtrack

The song "Settle Down", by musician Dimitri Tiomkin and lyricist Frederick Herbert, was heard over the credits and at various places throughout the film score. It was later adapted by Tiomkin with a new lyric by Paul Francis Webster as "My Rifle, My Pony, and Me" in the 1959 film Rio Bravo for an onscreen duet by Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson as John Wayne and Walter Brennan look on.

## Reception

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times gave the film a mostly positive review, praising the main cast for "several fine performances" and Hawks' direction for "credible substance and detail." He only found a "big let-down" in the Indian wagon train attack scene, lamenting that the film had "run smack into 'Hollywood' in the form of a glamorized female, played by Joanne Dru." Variety called it "a spectacle of sweeping grandeur" with "a first rate script," adding, "John Wayne has his best assignment to date and he makes the most of it." John McCarten of The New Yorker found the film "full of fine Western shots," with the main cast's performances "all first-rate." Harrison's Reports called the film "an epic of such sweep and magnitude that it deserves to take its place as one of the finest pictures of its type ever to come out of Hollywood."
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 100% rating, based on 34 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10.
Roger Ebert considered it one of the greatest Western films of all time.
This movie was the last movie shown in the 1971 Peter Bogdanovich motion picture, The Last Picture Show.
In 1990, Red River was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Red River was selected by the American Film Institute as the 5th greatest Western of all time in the AFI's 10 Top 10 list in 2008.

## "Red River D" belt buckles

To commemorate their work on the film, director Howard Hawks had special Western belt buckles made up for certain members of the cast and crew of Red River. The solid silver belt buckles had a twisted silver wire rope edge, the Dunson brand in gold in the center, the words "Red River" in gold wire in the upper left and lower right corners, the initials of the recipients in the lower left corner, and the date "1946" in cut gold numerals in the upper right corner. Hawks gave full-sized (men's) buckles to John Wayne, his son David Hawks, Montgomery Clift, Walter Brennan, assistant director Arthur Rosson, cinematographer Russell Harlan, and John Ireland. Joanna Dru and Hawks' daughter Barbara were given smaller (ladies') versions of the buckle. According to David Hawks, other men's and women's buckles were distributed, but he can only confirm the family members and members of the cast and production team listed above received Red River D buckles.
Wayne and Hawks exchanged buckles as a token of their mutual respect. Wayne wore the Red River D belt buckle with the initials "HWH" in nine other movies: Rio Bravo (1959), North to Alaska (1960), Hatari! (1962), McLintock! (1963), Circus World (1964), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), El Dorado (1966), The War Wagon (1967) and Rio Lobo (1970). The actor did this even when he wasn't filming under the direction of Howard Hawks, with one known exception: Apparently John Wayne didn't wear the Red River belt buckle in films of John Ford.
In 1981, John Wayne's son, Michael, sent the buckle to a silversmith, in order to have duplicates made for all of Wayne's children. While in the silversmith's care, it was stolen and has not been seen since. Red River D buckles, made by a number of sources, are among the most popular and sought after icons of John Wayne fans.