# Stagecoach (1939 film)

Stagecoach is a 1939 film about a group of people traveling on a stagecoach who find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo and learn something about each other in the process.
    Directed by John Ford. Written by Dudley Nichols and Ben Hecht, based on a short story by Ernest Haycox.

## The Ringo Kid

* Well, there are some things a man just can't run away from.
* Well, I guess you can't break out of prison and into society in the same week.

## Henry Gatewood

* I can't get over the impertinence of that young lieutenant. I'll make it warm for that shave-tail! I'll report him to Washington. We pay taxes to the government and what do we get? Not even protection from the Army! I don't know what the government is coming to. Instead of protecting businessmen, it pokes its nose into business. Hmm. Why, they're even talking now about having bank examiners. As if we bankers don't know how to run our own banks. Why Boone, I actually have a letter from a popinjay official saying they were going to inspect my books. I have a slogan that should be emblazoned on every newspaper in the country. 'America for Americans.' The government must not interfere with business! Reduce taxes! Our national debt is something shocking! Over one billion dollars a year! What this country needs is a businessman for President.

## Dialogue

    Marshal Curly Wilcox: Come busting in here - you'd think we were being attacked! You can find another wife.
    Chris: Sure I can find another wife. But she take my rifle and my horse. Oh, I'll never sell her. I love her so much. I beat her with a whip and she never get tired.
    Dr. Josiah Boone: Your wife?
    Chris: No, my horse. I can find another wife easy, yes, but not a horse like that!
    Dr. Josiah Boone: Jerry, I'll admit as one man to another that, economically, I haven't been of much value to you. But do you suppose you could put one on credit?
    Jerry (bartender): If talk was money, Doc, you'd be the best customer I got.
    Buck: If I was you, I'd let them shoot it out.
    Marshal Curly Wilcox: Let who?
    Buck: Luke Plummer and the Kid. There would be a lot more peace in this territory if that Luke Plummer had so many holes in him he couldn't hold his liquor.
    Ed (editor): McCoy! Billy, kill that story about the Republican Convention in Chicago and take this down: "The Ringo Kid was killed on Main Street in Lordsburg tonight. And among the additional dead were..." Leave that blank for a spell.
    McCoy, typesetter: I didn't hear any shootin', Ed.
    Ed (editor): You will, Billy, you will.
    Dallas: Haven't I any right to live? What have I done?
    Dr. Josiah Boone: We're the victims of a foul disease called social prejudice, my child. These dear ladies of the Law and Order League are scouring out the dregs of the town. Come on. Be a proud, glorified dreg like me.
    [voting on whether to continue without a cavalry escort]
    Marshal Curly Wilcox: You, Doc?
    Dr. Josiah Boone: I'm not only a philosopher, sir, I'm a fatalist. Somewhere, sometime, there may be the right bullet or the wrong bottle waiting for Josiah Boone. Why worry when or where?
    Marshal Curly Wilcox: Yes or no?
    Dr. Josiah Boone: Having that philosophy, sir, I've always courted danger. During the late war - when I had the honor to serve the Union under our great president, Abraham Lincoln... and General Phil Sheridan - well, sir, I fought mid shot and shell and cannon roar...
    Marshal Curly Wilcox: Do you wanna go back or not?
    Dr. Josiah Boone: No! I want another drink.
    [voting on whether to continue without a cavalry escort]
    Marshal Curly Wilcox: How 'bout you, Mr. Hancock?
    Samuel Peacock: Peacock. I'd like to go on, brother. I want to reach the bosom of my dear family in Kansas City, Kansas as quickly as possible; but, I may never reach that bosom if we go on... so, under the circumstances - you understand, brother - I think it best we go back with the bosoms... I mean the soldiers.
    Ringo Kid: Look, Miss Dallas. You got no folks... neither have I. And, well, maybe I'm takin' a lot for granted, but... I watched you with that baby - that other woman's baby. You looked... well, well I still got a ranch across the border. There's a nice place - a real nice place... trees... grass... water. There's a cabin half built. A man could live there... and a woman. Will you go?
    Dallas: But you don't know me - you don't know who I am.
    Ringo Kid: I know all I wanna know. Will you go?
    Dallas: Oh, don't talk like that!

## Taglines

* A Powerful Story of 9 Strange People!
* Danger holds the reins as the devil cracks the whip! Desperate men! Frontier women! Rising above their pasts in a West corrupted by violence and gun-fire!
* Thrills! Thrills! Thrills! See - The Apache Attack! Charge of the Cavalry! Fight to the Death On the Last Frontier of Wickedness!

## Cast

* Claire Trevor - Dallas
* John Wayne - The Ringo Kid
* Andy Devine - Buck
* John Carradine - Hatfield
* Thomas Mitchell - Doc Boone
* Louise Platt - Lucy Mallory
* George Bancroft - Marshal Curly Wilcox
* Donald Meek - Samuel Peacock
* Berton Churchill - Henry Gatewood
* Tim Holt - Lieutenant Blanchard
* Tom Tyler - Luke Plummer

## External links

* Stagecoach quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* Stagecoach at Rotten Tomatoes