THE FILM
FILM DIRECTOR: John Ford
SCREENWRITER: John Lee Mahin, Martin Rackin
FILM STARS: John Wayne, William Holden, Constance Towers, Judson Pratt, Hoot Gibson, Ken Curtis, Althea Gibson, Willis Bouchey, Bing Russell, O.Z. Whitehead, Hank Worden, Chuck Hayward, Denver Pyle, Strother Martin, Basil Ruysdael, Russell Simpson
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Harold Sinclair
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Pan
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1959
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1956
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Western
WORDS: The Horse Soldiers is not considered one of John Ford’s best films, and it’s not, but it is very good John Ford which makes it better than most other people’s best films.
Biased I am but I notice, and it’s telling, that Ford is often compared to himself when it comes to films rather than to other similar films but when you look at this film in comparison to others similarly themed (civil war theme), others at the time (1950s) or just classic action oriented. The Horse Soldiers rides high (sic).
Having said all that Ford apparently didn’t like the film much (we’re told that John Ford loved this project but was never happy with the screenplay).
Who knows. Ford was always difficult to interview, and difficult when it came to his own work.
What we have is on the screen and there are many beauties in this film … the march of the boy soldiers, the ambivalence of participants in war, the charge of the defeated, the nature of patriotism and heroism.
The Confederate Southerners have been depicted every which way in film, often as racist psychos, buffoonish clowns or gallant heroes but usually one note. Here Ford fits in most of the types without causing offence to either side or either side of history. There is the old-world southerner (Basil Ruysdael), the moral honest old sheriff (Russell Simpson), the degenerate soldiers (Strother Martin & Denver Pyle), the gallant officer (Carleton Young) the loyal slave (Althea Gibson), the seemingly scatty but sly Southern Belle (Constance Towers). The Union soldiers are a ragtag bunch: there is the non-professional soldier leader played by Wayne, the cynical but humanist doctor (William Holden), the officer with his eye on a political career (played brilliantly by Willis Bouchey who seemed made for such roles), the Irish sergeant (Judson Pratt), the ordinary soldiers (Ken Curtis, Ron Hagerthy)
The characters, or types move through a story that is quite fascinating in being so even handed and perhaps even aa touch cynical for 1959.
Defeat, as is normal in Ford films, is dwelt on and the further the men go on their mission the more weirdness they witness (the boy march, the last charge) and the more their casualties mount, and as they mount the more they question the mission though never to the point of disobedience. Wayne’s character was a railroad builder, now he is sent to destroy a railroad, Holden a surgeon who knows his duty but is forever agonised in the patching up men who won’t make it back. The film casually and quite realistically depicts the medicine of the mid-19th century: no anaesthesia and little understanding of germs or the need for cleanliness as Holden himself washes the blood off his operating tables. As the mission progresses the more the leads turns on each other until neither side emerges unsoiled by their descent into what Col. Marlowe calls “this insanity”… and with that phrase the film is striking as a precursor in some ways to Apocalypse Now (1979) … though a less dark, family friendly version.
The mission is detailed with Ford’s humanism through framing, lingering shots and those little “grace notes” (scenes, looks, asides) he adds to a film which aren’t in the script. Ford (like many of his generation) was notorious for using a script only as a coat hanger from which he could insert all his philosophy and humour. He surrounds his story and world view with an understanding of history. His films are realist, not in look but in understanding of time and place.
Though concessions are made to the time when his films were made, his characters, largely, reflect the time and place of the story. He places them in a cultural milieu and, where appropriate, ennobles them within their circumstances, as much as he can. So, the Afro American characters here, circa 1864, aren’t Django Unchained (2012) type gunmen dispensing one liners and retribution. Likewise his native Americans in his westerns may be the villain protagonist of the film but they are rarely less than noble and there is always a hint that they were the ones who were deprived and dispossessed. Accordingly, despite haircuts, his characters, black, white or otherwise, are rarely anachronistic. They may fit in with his world view, but they fit into their times. To modern audiences they seem less emancipated and as a result less exciting perhaps but to anyone who reads they are more satisfying.
And you see that in this film. There are all sorts of bits and pieces of little detail …. how different social classes in the military and public are depicted, the divergent attitudes of northerners and southerners, the role of slaves, the encroachment of technology (photography is given a nod).
Don’t get me wrong Ford isn’t making docudramas, he is a poetical realist. Visually, he directs the camera to photograph beautiful images, but ones framed and composed to make us empathise with the emotions of the characters caught up in historical events. Events that he has made more real by attention to the culture, customs, and habitat of the time.
Here those events happen to be wrapped around a real story.
The screenplay by John Lee Mahin and Martin Rackin was loosely based on Harold Sinclair’s 1956 novel of the same name, a fictionalized version of “Grierson’s Raid” in Mississippi where Union soldiers go behind enemy lines to destroy railroads supplying supplies to the front.
In April 1863, Colonel Benjamin Grierson led 1,700 Illinois and Iowa soldiers from LaGrange, Tennessee to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, through several hundred miles of enemy territory, destroying Confederate railroad and supply lines between Newton’s Station and Vicksburg, Mississippi. The mission was part of the Union Army’s successful Vicksburg campaign to gain control over boat traffic on the Mississippi River, culminating in the Battle of Vicksburg. Grierson’s destruction of Confederate-controlled rail links and supplies played an important role in disrupting Confederate General John C. Pemberton’s strategies and troop deployments. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman reportedly described Grierson’s daring mission as “the most brilliant of the war”.
Though based loosely on Grierson’s Raid, The Horse Soldiers is a fictional account that departs considerably from the actual events. The real-life protagonist, a music teacher named Benjamin Grierson, becomes railroad engineer John Marlowe in the film. Hannah Hunter, Marlowe’s love interest, has no historical counterpart. Numerous other details were altered as well, “to streamline and popularize the story for the non-history buffs who would make up a large part of the audience.”
Dr. Erastus Dean Yule, the real-life surgeon counterpart of Major Hank Kendall, actually did volunteer to stay behind and get captured by the Confederates with the casualties who were too wounded to continue. The raid actually took place about a year before the notorious Andersonville POW camp was built, and he was eventually exchanged after several months as a POW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_Soldiers
As it turned out Grierson’s Raid worked. Troops were pinned down as supplies stopped. Not only did Benjamin Grierson and his brigade destroyed Confederate rail tracks, trains, bridges, storehouses and warehouses, the brigade but they also freed slaves apparently. I do not recall any slaves being emancipated by Marlowe’s forces in the film, but the film does not ignore the topic, thanks to presence of Lukey’s the slave maid and the doctor’s snide comments about the South’s dependence on slavery. Contance Tower’s Hannah Hunter, initially comes off as a caricature of Scarlett O’Hara but her character develops throughout most of the film as she is exposed to more outside her safety bubble.
The book, which I read a long, long time ago reads like what it is, a fictional historical narrative, much like what Upton Sinclair was doing. And I must say I do prefer reading about fictional figures and all their personal dramas in historical settings with real historical characters dipping into the story rather than giving real historical figures personal lives based on guesswork.
I note that Ford perhaps lost interest in the film after one of his stuntmen died. Then as now the director is the captain of the ship. And ford having served, took that especially seriously so when …
During filming of the climactic battle scene, veteran stuntman Fred Kennedy suffered a broken neck while performing a horse fall and died. “Ford was completely devastated,” wrote biographer Joseph Malham. “[He] felt a deep responsibility for the lives of the men who served under him.” The film was scripted to end with the triumphant arrival of Marlowe’s forces in Baton Rouge, but Ford “simply lost interest” after Kennedy’s death. He ended the film with Marlowe’s farewell to Hannah Hunter before crossing and blowing up the bridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_Soldiers
The cast is uniformly excellent.
John Wayne and William Holden (the producers originally wanted Clark Gable for the leading role apparently) were at the top of the game. Wayne and Holden were very close personal friends and friendly rivals at the box office. That’s part of the reason that The Horse Soldiers is so good … the chemistry between them. In fact when Wayne died in 1979, Holden was said to have gone on one legendary drinking binge. Constance Towers (in a role that looks like it could have been for Maureen O’Hara) has the right amount of Southern arrogance and. She went on to have a spotty but interesting career (she was also in Ford’s great Sergeant Rutledge (1960) and anyone in Shock Corridor (1963) Fate Is the Hunter (1964) or The Naked Kiss (1964) is worthy of attention). Althea Neale Gibson was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the colour line of international tennis. This is her only role in an era when it was common to drop sports stars into supporting roles every now and then. There is good support from Judson Pratt (also in Ford’s Sergeant Rutledge (1960)), Bing Russell (Kurt’s father) and Denver Pyle and Strother Martin great as a some white trash deserters, and of course, there is a list of Ford stock company O.Z. Whitehead , Hank Worden, Chuck Hayward, Carleton Young, William Henry, Anna Lee, Russell Simpson, Hoot Gibson, Jack Pennick, Stan Jones, Bill Borzage, Danny Borzage, Gertrude Astor. I note William Wellman Jr. – later in surf movies (and the son of director William Wellman) is a bugler.
The script is literate and thoughtful, melancholy and occasionally funny in that way Ford had of injecting humour into dramatic situations, and drama into humorous situations. This wasn’t always in the script (scripts he had an uncredited hand in) but just Ford’s temperament and perhaps more real life … real life isn’t one note.
Miss Hannah Hunter pretending to be a scatterbrained southern belle uses her feminine assets soften up the Union officers and extract information from them:
Hannah Hunter [bending over with a plate of chicken, revealing ample cleavage] asks
“Do you prefer the leg… or the breast?”
Col. John Marlowe replies
“I’ve had quite enough of both, thank you’.
Martin Rackin (The Enforcer (1951), Hell on Frisco Bay (1956), Santiago (1956)) teamed up with John Lee Mahin. Both men wrote and produced The Horse Soldiers (1959) and North to Alaska (1960) for Wayne. Both are no slouches at action films with a little colour with Mahin especially notable for films going back to the early 1930s (He was a writer and producer, known for Scarface (1932), Captains Courageous (1937) Ford’s Mogambo (1953), and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)).
The love interest between Wayne and Towers is a little unbelievable given her allegiance to the South, not to mention the large age difference between the two but it is the 1950s and a love interest is required.
The music is wonderful … from rousing themes to sad little reflections with the cavalry chorus songs being favourite “sing in the shower” songs of mine for a while. Ford (who must have had a say) makes marvellous use of music, weaving traditional Civil War era songs with the song written by Stan Jones for the film, “I Left My Love”, a catchy and infectious ballad. Incidentally Stan Jones makes a brief appearance in the film as Ulysses S. Grant and does well by him. Both the soundtrack (David Buttolph His Orchestra And Chorus) and an album of (trad pop) songs by Constance Towers (with the leads sitting around a campfire admiring her on the sleeve) are worth getting.
Did the movie make money?
Holden and Wayne both received $750,000 for starring, a record salary at the time. The film opened at number one in the United States and made good money, but apparently, was ultimately a commercial failure, due (allegedly) largely to Wayne’s and Holden’s high salaries and the complex participation of multiple production companies. I’m not sure about that. I’ve read it did good box office elsewhere in the world. In any event it was a tough year with much competition from Ben-Hur, The Shaggy Dog, Some Like it Hot, Operation Petticoat, Pillow Talk, Imitation of Life, North by Northwest, The Nun’s Story, On the Beach, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Rio Bravo and others for the box office.
Watch it.
BOOK PAGES
when books were cheap second hand …30 cents … and you could return them and get 10 cents back.
Constance Towers album – United Artists (1959)
LINKS
TRAILER
ANOTHER VERSION
PUBLISHER: Dell
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1959
COUNTRY: USA
COVER: Paperback
MUSIC
Soundtrack Album
Civil war movies, are in my view, usually disappointing. Part of the problem might be that it’s difficult to make a realistic war film without offending half of the United States.
What is sometimes forgotten is how horrific the war was- it really was the first modern war and presaged World War I. Casualty rates were astonishing. Close to 50,000 were killed or wounded in three days at Gettysburg, about a third of the two armies. The remarkable thing is that the war lasted as long as it did.
About 20 years ago there was a big budget film about Gettysburg that promised a lot but didn’t deliver. I haven’t seen Cold Mountain so I cant comment upon it. There were some good movies made in the 70s/ 80s about the aftermath of the war, such as The Long Riders. The Outlaw Josie Wales wasn’t too bad.
How does The Horse Soldiers compare to The Undefeated? There seems to be some commonality between the two.
N, as you know The Undefeated (1969) is a post civil war film so no comparison really , at least in relation the war. Horse Soldiers I think is much superior. Undefeated is (more) action oriented and a lot of fun but HS has the resonance.
I know what I know about the Civil War generally, there seems to be no shortage of books on the same but no one seems to agree on what the best overall history is, so I haven’t read anything non fiction (in book form).
Film wise I loved Glory (1989) at the time but that had a bias or an agenda and was largely confined to a vacuum.
Cold Mountain (2003) likewise I haven’t seen … though I do want to see if Romania looks like the South. The recent (last 10 years or so) Civil War theme films … Lincoln (2012) (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) was much better and almost as accurate), Free State of Jones (2016), Emancipation (2022) are to one note to be interesting.
The Blue and the Gray (1982), Andersonville (1996) and Gettysburg (1993) got kudos but they are long and TV-ish (not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that)
The post Civil War westerns I find interesting …. The Beguiled (1971), Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Love Me Tender (1956)!, Horizons West (1952), Ford’s Rio Grande (1950), Seraphim Falls (2006)
I suspect some of the best films about the war aren’t about battles specifically but are key at looking at the mindset – So Red the Rose (1935), (especially) Jezebel (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939)
My favourites?
The three just mentioned and Horse Soldiers (1959) The Red Badge of Courage (1951) (great because of Audie Murphy), Shenandoah (1965) and The General (1925) (is Buster Keaton’s The General a Civil war film?).
Oddly neither Wayne nor Ford made many Civil War films. Just this and they both did the civil war sequence for How the West Was Won (1962).
Ford did nothing else.
Wayne did Dark Command (1940)(loosely based on Quantrill’s Raiders) whilst Rio Lobo (1970) and The Undefeated (1969) start at the tail end of the war.
Obviously they both made many westerns that touch or reference the war.
Wow, that was an epic review of what appears to be an epic movie Frank. I am sad to confess that I haven’t seen that movie Frank. The march of the boys was very tragic.
M, well, not quite “epic” like Ben Hur epic but certainly not small budget either. The march of the boys was treated lightly / humorously in the film though the motivations behind the march are much more serious.
Seconded. When you retire you should do a MA in film studies Frank. It would be very much appreciated by discerning types.
Looking at the list of movies made in 1959 makes you realise how far Hollywood has declined.
MA? I would be forced to watch Darren Aronofsky and Spike Lee and read critical film theory. That is not for me. I have books I can read. Yes, 1959 is a particularly nasty year for pointing out the decline of recent Hollywood …. but just about every year to the early 80s sometime will also show the decline in overall output. I hesitate to say it coincides with the decline of studios … but for all their faults they did foster talent in front and behind the camera
You are a better man than me if you could watch Lincoln. The thought of Daniel Day-Lewis chewing the scenery for two hours was more than I can stand.
In the original version of True Grit, was John Wayne’s character said to be one of Quantrill’s raiders? The Jeff Bridges character in the remake had that attribute tacked on , but it came across as a little gratuitous.
In The Searchers JW’s character was an ex- Confederate soldier who had moved west. Texas was a Confederate state, so it’s likely that any Texan western set between the 1860s and 1890s would be dominated by pro southern types.
The mythology of the James gang is interesting, coming as they did from a border state where there had been extreme partisan violence before the war.
Yes Lincoln was hard work …. Lewis did not sound like Lincoln to me who was too high pitched. Of course I did not know what he sounded like but in my head it’s Henry Fonda or Raymond Massey or Jason Robards.
Rooster Cogburn’s backstory is mentioned in the film and in the novel by Charles Portis. Yes, he was a veteran of the Civil War who served under Confederate guerrilla leader William Quantrill who launched the careers of the teenaged Frank and Jesse James.
In the Searchers (which starts off in 1868) you will recall Ethan Edwards returns to his brother’s farm after an eight year absence and gives Debbie a medal. Apparently he fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and then went to fight in Mexico (presumably in the Second Franco–Mexican War) where he won the medal.