Wagon Master

Wagon Master is a 1950 American Western film produced and directed by John Ford and starring Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr., Joanne Dru, and Ward Bond. The screenplay concerns a Mormon pioneer wagon train to the San Juan River in Utah.[2][3] The film inspired the US television series Wagon Train (1957–1965), which starred Ward Bond until his death in 1960.[4] The film was a personal favorite of Ford himself, who told Peter Bogdanovich in 1967 that "Along with The Fugitive and The Sun Shines Bright, Wagon Master came closest to being what I wanted to achieve."[5] While the critical and audience response to Wagon Master was lukewarm on its release, over the years several critics have come to view it as one of Ford's masterpieces.[6][7][8][9]

For other uses, see Wagon Master (disambiguation).

Wagon Master
Color poster. The word "WAGON" sweeps across the middle of the poster, with the word "MASTER" below it; just above there is text in smaller font that reads "John Ford and Merian C. Cooper present". Several scenes from the film are painted around the text, including a woman affectionately looking down at a kneeling man, a shootout with one man standing, holding a pistol, and several men falling or lying on the ground, and two covered wagons being pulled by galloping and rearing horses. At the top left there is text reading "John Ford's lusty successor to 'Fort Apache' and 'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon'". The credit block at the bottom reads "Ben Johnson - Joanne Dru - Harry Carey, Jr. - Ward Bond", with "Directed by John Ford" in larger font at the right. In smaller lettering, nearer the bottom, the poster has another line of credits "and Charles Kemper - Alan Mowbray - Jane Darwell".
1950 theatrical release poster
Directed byJohn Ford
Written byPatrick Ford
Frank S. Nugent
Produced byJohn Ford
Merian C. Cooper
Starring
CinematographyBert Glennon (director of photography)
Edited byJack Murray
Music byRichard Hageman
Production
company
Distributed byRKO-Radio Pictures Inc.
Release date
  • April 22, 1950 (1950-04-22) (US)[1]
Running time
86 min.
CountryUnited States
LanguagesEnglish
Navajo
Spanish

Plot

The film opens with a prelude showing a murderous robbery by the outlaw Clegg family (the patriarch Shiloh and his four "boys"). The credits then follow the prelude, which was a stylistic innovation at its time.[8]

A Mormon wagon train led by the Elder Wiggs around 1880 has reached Crystal City, and needs a wagon master to lead it further to its destination—the San Juan River country in southeastern Utah Territory. Their wagon train is being expelled from Crystal City by the townspeople there, and at the last minute horse traders Travis Blue and Sandy Owens take the wagon master job.

After resuming its journey west, the train finds and adds the wagon of a medicine show troupe, who, en route to California, have become stranded without water. The onward passage of the wagon train is marked by the beginnings of romances between Travis and Denver, a female entertainer with the medicine troupe, and between Sandy and a Mormon's daughter, and also by a Mormon square dance celebrating a successful desert passage, and by a pow wow dance with a band of Navajo. All goes well enough until the Cleggs, fleeing a posse from Crystal City, force themselves into the wagon train. The train surmounts an encounter with the posse, a washed out trail blocking the way west, and ultimately a violent confrontation with the homicidal Cleggs.

The film's conclusion leaves the wagon train and its wagon master on the verge of entry into the San Juan country.[10][11][12] There is a final montage, which Richard Jameson characterizes as follows:

Wagon Master has scant interest in the prosaic, being preeminently a musical and a poem. ... it's the final montage that lifts the movie into another realm entirely. There are shots we've seen before—landmarks, vistas, the communal dance—but also shots we haven't. ... It's a subtler, deeper variation on the closing, transfiguring memory images of How Green Was My Valley (1941)."[9]

Casting
Printer poster with a photograph and text underneath. A man is standing holding the reins of his horse. A woman is running towards the camera. They are in a dry landscape with a stony canyon wall in the background. The text consists of a copyright notice and a license for periodicals to reproduce the photograph.
Publicity poster for the film showing Ben Johnson (left, as Travis) watching Joanne Dru (right, as Denver) as she runs away from his marriage proposal.
Black and white photograph showing two men standing. They are dressed in cowboy garb: jeans, kerchiefs around their necks, and cowboy hats. The man on the left is holding a lasso near his waist. A section of what appears to be a covered wagon is visible behind them.
Publicity photograph showing Johnson (left) with Harry Carey, Jr.

Wagon Master did not use either John Wayne nor Henry Fonda, the stars in many of Ford's films. The absence of any major stars of the day reduced the cost of making the film as well as its box office potential. As noted by Dennis Lim, the casting of Wagon Master was consistent with the film's focus on the emergence of a community instead of the heroic actions of individuals.[8] Many of the cast and crew of Wagon Master were members of the "Ford stock company", having also worked on previous films directed by Ford. The four principal roles, as in the film credits, were played by:

  • Ben Johnson as Travis Blue, an itinerant horse trader who becomes the wagon master for the Mormon wagon train. Johnson was a member of the Ford stock company; he was a noted horseman whose skill is featured when he gallops away from a band of Navajo.
  • Joanne Dru as Denver, an entertainer, and apparently a prostitute, attached to Dr. Hall's medicine show. Dru had previously starred in Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949).[13]
  • Harry Carey Jr. as Sandy Owens, Travis' partner. Carey was the son of Harry Carey, a superstar of silent films who worked with Ford on many films in the 1910s and 1920s. Carey's memoir, Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company (1994), provides many details of the production of Wagon Master.[14] Carey and Peter Bogdanovich did a commentary soundtrack when Wagon Master was released to DVD in 2009.[15]
  • Ward Bond as the Mormon Elder Wiggs, the leader of the wagon train (and future star of the television series). Bond acted in many films directed by Ford; their relationship is described in the book Three Bad Men: John Ford, John Wayne, and Ward Bond (2013).[16]

The supporting cast includes:

  • Charles Kemper as Uncle Shiloh Clegg, the patriarch of the outlaw Clegg Family. Wagon Master was Kemper's first appearance in a film directed by Ford. Writer Dave Kehr notes that this was consistent with his role in Wagon Master as an outside, evil force.[17]
  • Alan Mowbray as Dr. A. Locksley Hall, the principal of the medicine show whose wagon joins the wagon train. "Locksley Hall" is an 1842 poem by Alfred Tennyson. Mowbray's role in Wagon Master is reminiscent of his role as Granville Thorndyke, a Shakespearean actor, in Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946).[18]
  • Jane Darwell as the Mormon Sister Ledyard. While often on camera, Darwell rarely speaks in the film; she is charged with blowing a crude hunting horn.[19] Darwell appeared in seven of Ford's films from 1940 through 1958.[20]
  • Hank Worden as Luke Clegg. Appeared in 17 movies with John Wayne and 6 movies with Ward Bond.
  • Movita Castaneda as Young Navajo Indian, who accuses Reese Clegg (Fred Libby) of attacking her.
  • Ruth Clifford as Fleuretty Phyffe
  • Russell Simpson as Adam Perkins
  • Kathleen O'Malley as Prudence Perkins
  • Mickey Simpson as Jesse Clegg
  • Cliff Lyons as Marshal of Crystal City

Several of the minor roles in the film were also played by notable actors such as James Arness (the future star of the long-running television series Gunsmoke) as one of the Clegg boys, Francis Ford (John Ford's elder brother, and a very successful director and actor of the silent film era) as the mute drummer of the medicine show, and Jim Thorpe (the famed Native American athlete) as a member of the Navajo band in his last film role.

Themes

Emergence of a community

Wagon Master portrays the evolution of a Mormon community in passage towards a promised Eden. Sean Axmaker wrote in 2009, "It's as gentle and warm a film as he ever made and it follows a classic Ford theme—the creation of a community in the west—through an often lighthearted tale ..."[21] Dave Kehr wrote similarly in 1985: "Ford treats one of his central themes—the birth of a community—through a sweeping visual metaphor of movement. Seldom has the western landscape seemed such a tangible emblem of hope and freedom."[6] The portrayal of community predominates over portrayals of individuals; thus Dennis Lim wrote, again in 2009, that "Wagon Master is at once the plainest and the fullest expression of Ford's great theme: the emergence of a community. So committed is the film to the idea of a collective hero that there is no one central character, no leading man or marquee name. Instead of Wayne or Henry Fonda, Wagon Master is filled with lesser-known but familiar faces from the Ford stock company."[8]

A film poem

Wagon Master has been called a "film poem" or its equivalent by several critics and scholars, which connotes that the film's storyline is less important than its visual portrait of the community of the wagon train.[22][23] Scott Eyman and Paul Duncan wrote in 2004 that Wagon Master "is a lyrical ballad, an affirmation of Ford's folk vision of America, where a dance or a graveside ceremony speaks more for the communally minded pioneers than all the dramatic battles in the world."[24] Jeremy Arnold wrote,

There's not much action forthcoming (especially for a Western), and there is barely a story. And yet Wagon Master is one of the most poetic narrative films ever made. What little plot exists is secondary to the movie's real concern: celebrating a way of life, that of Mormon pioneers, and placing it in the context of nature.[12]

Lindsay Anderson wrote in 1954 that, "Ford often abandons his narrative completely, to dwell on the wide and airy vistas, on riders and wagons overcoming the most formidable natural obstacles, on bowed and weary figures stumbling persistently through the dust."[25] And Richard Jameson, in 2003:

Wagon Master has scant interest in the prosaic, being preeminently a musical and a poem. The musical aspect is immediately apparent, and lengthy stretches of the movie are narrated in song rather than dramatized. The poem is something else again. More, certainly, than a matter of appreciating that almost everything in the film is surpassingly beautiful to watch and uncannily evocative. Some of those behind-the-credits images of the Mormon train crossing river and plain actually anticipate crossings the community has yet to make; we see them again later. But it's the final montage that lifts the movie into another realm entirely.[9]

Pacifism and arms

Filmed about four years after the end of World War II (1939–1945), Wagon Master's treatment of violence was unusual, especially for a Western. In the film, the Mormons are pacifists and unarmed; this was Ford's story choice, as 19th century Mormons often took up arms.[26][27] The Mormon wagon train of the film is thus vulnerable to armed threats, which include its encounters with the band of Navajo, who prove to be peaceable, and with the Clegg family, who are certainly not. Travis and Sandy are armed, but Sandy has apparently never fired a weapon at a person, and Travis claims that he's only shot "snakes". They are nonetheless able to defeat the Cleggs in a brief gunbattle precipitated by the Cleggs' murder of one of the unarmed Mormon men. Glenn Erickson writes, "Travis says he only draws on snakes, not people, and when he's forced to fight he throws his gun away afterward. That's also a feeling I felt from the men in my family, all ex-soldiers. The war was over and done with; as far as they were concerned victory and peace would last forever."[28] Shigehiko Hasumi notes that Ford's films often show the throwing of objects at significant moments.[29]

In his 1984 book about Ford, Lindsay Anderson discussed the "pacific (not pacifist) theme" of Wagon Master and also of Ford's cavalry trilogy of films (Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950)) that were made at about the same time.[30] Tag Gallagher wrote in 1986 that "... the Mormons are lambs, not willing to protect themselves. Without Travis they would have maintained their pacifism, Wiggs would have died, the grain would have been lost and the colony destroyed. Yet—and this compromise of ideology for practicality fascinates Ford—the Mormons will accept protection from a shepherd, thus (a trifle hypocritically?) maintaining their innocence."[31] As noted, however, actual Mormon wagon trains were armed and would defend themselves if necessary.

Production
A wooden wagon wheel with 16 spokes occupies the right half of the image; the camera was perhaps 3 or 4 feet from this wheel. The wheel is biting about 6 inches into loose soil. Rays of sunlight are coming through just a few of the upper spokes, and are readily visible in the dusty air. The left half of the image shows the back side of a horse in harness that is straining to pull the wagon.
Screenshot of a wagon climbing a dusty hill. This image has been noted by several critics as an outstanding example of the cinematography in the film.[15][32][33]

Wagon Master was produced by Argosy Pictures, which was the independent production company formed by Ford and Merian C. Cooper mostly to give Ford a control over his films that was impossible for films produced by the major film studios. Ford and Cooper were credited as co-executive producers, with Lowell J. Farrell as associate producer.[10][11][12] Between 1946 and 1953, Ford and Cooper produced eight films through Argosy Pictures, of which Wagon Master was the fifth.

The story idea for Wagon Master emerged while Ford was directing She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) on location in southern Utah. Patrick Ford, a screenwriter and Ford's son, learned the history of the Mormon Hole in the Rock expedition (1879–1880) from some local Mormon horsemen. Ford developed a story loosely based on the historical expedition. It was unusual for Ford to base his films on the stories he wrote, and it had been nearly 20 years since he'd last done so (Men Without Women (1930)).[7] Ford commissioned Patrick Ford and Frank S. Nugent to write the screenplay.[34] As was typical for Ford, he changed the screenplay significantly while directing the film; he was quoted as telling Patrick Ford and Nugent that, "I liked your script, boys. In fact, I actually shot a few pages of it."[35]

Ford had been shooting the film She Wore a Yellow Ribbon the year before (1948) in Monument Valley, near the town of Mexican Hat, Utah, close to the locations where he had also filmed Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), and Fort Apache (1948). He wanted a different look for his next film and drove to Moab, Utah. Filmed in black and white on location, mainly north-east of the town of Moab, Utah in Professor Valley (with additional shooting at Spanish Valley south-west of Moab, and a few stage shots were done at Monument Valley).[10][11][12][36][37][38]

Ford selected Bert Glennon as the director of photography. He'd worked with Glennon on five films between 1935 and 1939, including Stagecoach, for which both Ford and Glennon were nominated for Academy Awards.[39] Ford chose to film Wagon Master in black and white; in 2009, Glenn Kenny wrote that the film "... reveals Bert Glennon's cinematography for the miracle that it was/is. Watching the disc this evening I wondered if it was not, in fact, frame-by-frame one of the most gorgeous motion pictures ever shot."[32]

Location filming was done in less than a month. Wagon Master was edited by Jack Murray, who had edited six of Ford's previous films, including all of the Argosy Pictures productions.

Musical elements
This is an outdoor scene with trees and the night sky visible in the background. In the foreground is a wooden dance floor consisting of long wooden boards butted roughly together. Four couples form the four sides of a square about 10 feet across. Two of the men are starting to move towards the center; all of the individuals are smiling and jovial. In the background there are about twenty more people watching, and behind them on the right there is a medicine show wagon. The wagon has several signs and banners. The topmost and largest reads "Dr. A. Locksley Hall"; smaller signs say "Hair Restored" and "Teeth Pulled". A man in a top hat is sitting regally on a small platform in front of the wagon. On the left are two musicians, one playing a flute and the other carrying a drum.
Publicity photograph of the Mormon square dance held to celebrate safe passage through the desert. Although there are musicians in the scene, the sound track uses the musical performance of the Sons of the Pioneers.

The film's score was composed by Richard Hageman, a noted conductor and composer of art songs and other musical works. Commencing with Stagecoach (1939), Hageman wrote music for seven films directed by John Ford; Wagon Master was the last. Kathryn Kalinak has written that Ford "got great work out of the people he worked with, and often those he was hardest on produced the best work of their careers. One of those was Richard Hageman, the Philadelphia Orchestra notwithstanding."[19]

Songs are important in Wagon Master. Critic Dennis Lim has written, "Practically a musical, Wagon Master is filled with frequent song and dance interludes and accompanied by a steady stream of hymns and ballads, performed by the popular country group the Sons of the Pioneers."[8] Filmgoers learn of Travis Blue's and Sandy Owens' decision to accept the wagon master job when Travis and Sandy break into song. Stan Jones wrote four original songs that were performed by the Sons of the Pioneers for the film's soundtrack. At its conclusion, the film incorporates a "spirited" rendition of the Mormon hymn, "Come, Come, Ye Saints". John Ford had insisted that Harry Carey Jr. lead the company of the film, which included many Mormons, in singing the hymn; the version used for the film's soundtrack was apparently recorded by the Robert Mitchell Boys Choir.[14][40][41]

Release

The film was apparently not widely reviewed upon its 1950 release.[42] Variety noted that "Wagon Master is a good outdoor action film, done in the best John Ford manner. That means careful character development and movement, spiced with high spots of action, good drama and leavening comedy moments."[43]

The picture was distributed by RKO Pictures. The film recorded a loss of $65,000 and was the last co-production between Argosy and RKO.[44]

Critical response
Ben Johnson, Harry Carey, Jr. and Ward Bond

Film critic Tag Gallagher wrote at length about Wagon Master in his 1986 book, John Ford: the man and his films. His summary is, "That Wagon Master (1950), one of Ford's major masterpieces, grossed about a third of any of the cavalry pictures surely came as no surprise. It was a personal project, with no stars, little story, deflated drama, almost nothing to attract box office or trendy critics. Its budget was $999,370, its highest paid actor got $20,000 (Ward Bond). Almost every frame bursts with humanity, nature and cinema, quite like Rossellini's Voyage in Italy. The story, resembling the Carey-Fords of the teens more than a 1950s western, was written by Ford himself, the only such instance after 1930."[7]

There have been a number of reviews of Wagon Master since its 2009 DVD release. Most contemporary critics appear to concur with Gallagher's view that Wagon Master is a major masterpiece.[6][8][9][12][32][45] Linda Rasmussen wrote, "This wonderful film emphasizes the virtues of solidarity, sacrifice and tolerance, and shows John Ford at his most masterful, in total control of the production from the casting to the bit players to the grandeur and scope of the visual compositions. The film, with its breathtaking scenery, brilliant performances by a cast of character actors, and an engaging sense of humor, is a superlative example of the American western."[10] While respectful of the film's accomplishments, other critics are more muted. In George N. Fenin and William K. Everson's 1973 overview, The Western: from silents to the seventies, they wrote that "Wagon Master is as close to a genuine Western film-poem as we have ever come, but attempts by Ford's admirers to enlarge it beyond that do both it and Ford a disservice."[22] David Fear wrote in 2009, "For a modest little movie, this still has all the solid storytelling and visual majesty of Ford's classic works; scholars like Joseph McBride and Peter Bogdanovich actually think it's his masterpiece."[46]

Mormonism and Wagon Master

Come, come, ye saints, no toil nor labor fear;
But with joy wend your way.
Though hard to you this journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day.

—William Clayton, 1846

The film's story is inspired by the 1879–1880 Mormon Hole in the Rock expedition, and Ford has been quoted as saying of the Mormons that "These are the people I want." The film depicts the prejudice against Mormons; the marshall in Crystal City is expelling their wagon train, and he lumps them together with other outcasts: "Mormons, Cleggses, showfolk, horse traders." Following a discussion of somewhat earlier films (Brigham Young (1940) and Bad Bascomb (1946)) that also depict Mormons sympathetically, Randy Astle and Gideon Burton write, "It is less surprising, then, to find Mormons featuring prominently in one of the most humanistic films ever made, John Ford's Wagon Master (1950). Although its scale could not equal that of Brigham Young, it deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest of Mormon films."[34] The film ends with a chorus of perhaps the best-known Mormon hymn, "Come, Come, Ye Saints".

Home media

A region 1 DVD was released by Warner Home Video in 2009.[15] Critic Glenn Kenny wrote of this release, "the main attraction is the film itself, buffed to a lustrous (but still grain-rich) sheen that reveals Bert Glennon's cinematography for the miracle that it was/is. Watching the disc this evening I wondered if it was not, in fact, frame-by-frame one of the most gorgeous motion pictures ever shot."[32] A region 2 DVD was released in Europe in 2002; it has a French language soundtrack as well as the English one.[47] There was a release to videotape (VHS) in 1990.[48] A colorized version was also released as a VHS tape.[49]

In 1998, the copyrights to both the original and colored versions of the film were donated to The Library of Congress, along with an original master reel copy of the film. The reel is stored in an individual secure vault at the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia in order to preserve the film for future generations.

References
  1. "Wagon Master: Detail View". American Film Institute. Retrieved May 18, 2014.
  2. Franklin, Richard (July 2002). "John Ford". Senses of Cinema (21). I read Senses of Cinema's call for contributions on "Great Directors" with interest. Among the list of directors to be profiled were Cox (Paul) and Cronenberg (David), both of whom I've met. But among the list of those for whom you were looking for "expressions of interest" I noted Ford (John), who I am delighted to say I also met and who is quite simply the greatest director of all time. For the neophyte seeking acquaintance with Ford's art, Franklin recommends viewing ten of Ford's films in a specific sequence.
  3. Dirks, Tim. "Greatest film directors of all time". filmsite.org. In addition to his own unranked list of the 50 greatest directors, Dirks reproduces several ranked listings of film directors; John Ford appears on all these lists.
  4. Jackson, Ronald; Abbott, Doug (2008). 50 Years of the Television Western. AuthorHouse. p. 102. ISBN 9781434359254. OCLC 606043989.
  5. Bogdanovich, Peter (1978). John Ford. University of California Press. p. 88. ISBN 9780520034983. OCLC 4090377.
  6. Kehr, Dave (October 26, 1985). "Wagon Master". Chicago Reader. Ford treats one of his central themes—the birth of a community—through a sweeping visual metaphor of movement. Seldom has the western landscape seemed such a tangible emblem of hope and freedom. A masterpiece beyond question — but a masterpiece that never degenerates into pomposity or self-consciousness. It's American filmmaking at its finest and most eloquent.
  7. Gallagher, Tag (1986). John Ford: The Man and His Films. University of California Press. p. 261. ISBN 9780520063341. OCLC 10100654. Gallagher has made his revised version of this book freely available for download; see "Tag Gallagher". Archived from the original on April 30, 2016. Page numbers in the e-book do not match the numbering of the 1986 printed version.
  8. Lim, Dennis (September 20, 2009). "Second Look: John Ford's 'Wagon Master'". The Los Angeles Times. Wagon Master is at once the plainest and the fullest expression of Ford's great theme: the emergence of a community. So committed is the film to the idea of a collective hero that there is no one central character, no leading man or marquee name. Instead of Wayne or Henry Fonda, "Wagon Master" is filled with lesser-known but familiar faces from the Ford stock company. And while some of the usual elements of the genre are accounted for, down to a climactic gunfight, there is not much of a plot.
  9. Jameson, Richard T. (2009). "Wagon Master (1950)". Undercurrent. The International Federation of Film Critics. 5. Archived from the original on May 18, 2012. Might Wagon Master be John Ford's greatest film? With so many worthy candidates, we needn't insist. But it's the purest. No one else could or would have made it. There's not a second, not a frame, that answers to any convention, any imperative beyond the director's wish that it be as it is, look at what it looks at the way it does. An essay about Wagon Master from a noted film critic; Jameson edited Film Comment from 1990–2000.
  10. Rasmussen, Linda. "Wagon Master". AllRovi. This wonderful film emphasizes the virtues of solidarity, sacrifice and tolerance, and shows John Ford at his most masterful, in total control of the production from the casting to the bit players to the grandeur and scope of the visual compositions. The film, with its breathtaking scenery, brilliant performances by a cast of character actors, and an engaging sense of humor, is a superlative example of the American western.
  11. Wagon Master at IMDb
  12. Arnold, Jeremy. "Wagon Master". Turner Classic Movies. And yet Wagon Master is one of the most poetic narrative films ever made. What little plot exists is secondary to the movie's real concern: celebrating a way of life, that of Mormon pioneers, and placing it in the context of nature. Director John Ford, one of the most visual of directors working near the peak of his career, called Wagon Master not only his favorite Western but described it as, 'along with The Fugitive (1947) and The Sun Shines Bright (1953), the closest to being what I had wanted to achieve.'
  13. Everson, William K. (1992). The Hollywood Western: 90 Years of Cowboys and Indians, Train Robbers, Sheriffs and Gunslingers, and Assorted Heroes and Desperados. Carol Publishing Group. p. 238. ISBN 9780806512563. Ben Johnson and Joanne Dru, a dull actress who came to life for Ford, were Ringo and Dallas from Stagecoach all over again. Johnson, one of Ford's best players, gave an especially appealing performance.
  14. Carey, Harry (1994). Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company. Scarecrow Press. p. 90. ISBN 9780810828650. OCLC 30079070.
  15. Wagon Master (DVD (region 1)). Warner Home Video. September 15, 2009. OCLC 436307452. Contains a commentary soundtrack by Harry Carey, Jr. and Peter Bogdanovich, who also incorporates some recordings from his interviews of John Ford in the 1960s. There is also a Spanish language soundtrack that was noted favorably; see Erickson, Glenn (September 11, 2009). "DVD Savant Review - Wagon Master". The B&W image is excellent throughout and the sound is very clear. An optional Spanish language audio track is a real curiosity, as it sounds like an original and is very well done.
  16. Nollen, Scott Allen (2013). Three Bad Men: John Ford, John Wayne, Ward Bond. McFarland. ISBN 9780786458547.
  17. Kehr, Dave (September 25, 2009). "Back to Yellow Brick Road and That Long Dusty Trail". The New York Times. One of the rare outsiders in the cast is Charles Kemper, who plays the portly, sadistic outlaw (and head of a clan of inbred gunfighters) who commandeers the train; his sheer unfamiliarity inserts a radically disruptive new element in Ford's world, a kind of unmotivated, sociopathic evil that would increasingly appear in the noirish westerns of the '50s, and come to dominate the Spaghetti westerns of the '70s. Impossible, as always, to pin down—was he a radical or a reactionary, a restless innovator or a fierce protector of tradition?—Ford remains Ford, one of the great American artists of the 20th century in any field.
  18. The allusion to Tennyson's poem was noted by Dennis Grunes, who was an erudite freelance film critic. See ("My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)". March 28, 2007. Archived from the original on October 7, 2008. Alan Mowbray is terrific as Granville Thorndyke, the itinerant ham actor for whom Ford has such immense affection that he would bring him back, as A. Locksley Hall (Tennysonians, take note!), in Wagon Master (1950), Ford's favorite among his westerns, from his own original story. Ford is typically fond of his characters, but somehow his embrace of this one provides an especially joyous index of his generosity. It's with real panache that Thorndyke skips out of town without paying his bill.
  19. Kalinak, Kathryn Marie (2007). How the West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford. University of California Press. p. 121. ISBN 9780520941076. ... the association of the traditionally masculine hunting horn with a female character, Sister Ledyard, another example of Ford's disruption of cultural stereotypes about gender and music.
  20. "Jane Darwell And John Ford". Internet Movie Database.
  21. Axmaker, Sean (September 21, 2009). "DVDs for 09/22/09".
  22. Fenin, George N.; Everson, William K. (1973). The Western: from silents to the seventies. Grossman Publishers. p. 251. ISBN 9780670757268. OCLC 752070. Revised and expanded from The Western: from silents to Cinerama (1962).
  23. McBride, Joseph (1975). John Ford. p. 28. Ford's admirers generally prefer the functional poetry of Wagon Master, The Searchers, and Seven Women to the overt expressionism of such films as The Informer, The Prisoner of Shark Island, and The Long Voyage Home. Yet the style of even a 'simple' Ford film such as Wagon Master, on further inspection, is revealed as a blend of forthrightly presented action and a highly sophisticated manipulation of foreground and background movements through a dazzling palette of shades.
  24. Eyman, Scott; Duncan, Paul, eds. (2004). John Ford: The Complete Films. Taschen. p. 140. ISBN 9783822830932.
  25. Anderson, Lindsay (April–June 1954). Sight and Sound.   Quoted in McBride, Joseph (2003). Searching For John Ford: A Life. Macmillan. p. 498. ISBN 9780312310110.
  26. Fleek, Sherman L. (2006). History May be Searched in Vain: A Military History of the Mormon Battalion. Arthur H. Clark Company. ISBN 0870623435. OCLC 62172752.
  27. Denton, Sally (2003). American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadowns, September 1857. Vintage Books. ISBN 0-375-72636-5.
  28. Erickson, Glenn (September 11, 2009). "Review: Wagon Master". DVD Savant. Retrieved October 16, 2013.
  29. Hasumi, Shigehiko (2005). "John Ford, or The Eloquence of Gesture". Rouge. 7. Archived from the original on April 28, 2013. The act of throwing, as a theme, functions here by surprise. We note that it comes at the end of a sequence in Fort Apache while, in Rio Grande, it marks the beginning. Ford's genius is demonstrated in such unexpected but indispensable mise en scène. Ben Johnson throwing his gun into the distance in Wagon Master (1950) is also inscribed in this context.
  30. Anderson, Lindsay (1983). About John Ford. McGraw Hill. pp. 126–7. ISBN 0070016240. OCLC 9557237.
  31. Gallagher, Tag (1986). John Ford: The Man and His Films. University of California Press. p. 267. ISBN 9780520063341. OCLC 10100654. Gallagher has made his revised version of this book freely available for download; see "Tag Gallagher". Retrieved April 22, 2013. Page numbers in the e-book do not match the numbering of the 1986 printed version.
  32. Kenny, Glenn (September 10, 2009). ""Wagon Master" (John Ford, 1950)". Some Came Running. Kenny's blog entry includes several screenshots that illustrate his view that Wagon Master is "one of the most gorgeous motion pictures ever shot."
  33. Gilman, Sean (September 3, 2012). "A Top 100 Films of All-Time List". The End of Cinema.
  34. Astle, Randy; Burton, Gideon O. (2007). "A History of Mormon Cinema: Second Wave". BYU Studies. Brigham Young University. 46 (2): 50. While shooting Yellow Ribbon in southern Utah, Ford's son, Patrick, met some LDS horsemen, which led to the Wagon Master story being created around the Hole in the Rock expedition that some of the horsemen's ancestors had participated in. Though Patrick and his co-writer, Frank Nugent, had to research Mormonism intensively, Ford seem to understand the Mormons instinctively. 'These are the people I want', he said. For their article, Astle and Burton draw upon a lengthy, unpublished transcript of James d'Arc's April 25, 1979 interview with Patrick Ford.
  35. McBride, Joseph (2011). Searching for John Ford. University Press of Mississippi. p. 497. ISBN 9781604734676. Reprinting of a 2001 book published by St. Martin's Press.
  36. Movies Filmed in the Moab Area (In PDF document: )
  37. Stanton, Bette L. (1994). Where God Put the West, Movie Making in the Desert. Moab, Utah: Four Corners Publications. p. 78. ISBN 0-944123-02-3.
  38. Murray, John A. (2000). Cinema Southwest: An Illustrated Guide to the Movies and Their Locations. Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Publishing. pp. 76–93. ISBN 978-0-87358-747-1.
  39. Gallagher, John A. (1993). "Glennon, Bert". In Cook, Samantha (ed.). International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. Vol. 4. Writers and Production Artists (2nd ed.). St James Press. ISBN 9781558620407. It was ten years before Glennon worked with Ford again, but the occasion and the project was a special one—Wagonmaster (sic). Ford told Peter Bogdanovich that Wagonmaster was one of the films that "came closest to being what I had wanted to achieve." A western masterwork written largely by Ford, the film is graced by Glennon's newsreel quality cinematography.
  40. Corliss, Richard (April 25, 2011). "Wagon Master (1950 Movie) - 10 Memorable Depictions of Mormons in Popular Culture". Time. Wagon Master is as much a musical as a Western: the Sons of the Pioneers contribute four songs, and there's a spirited rendition of the Mormon hymn, 'Come, Come, Ye Saints.'
  41. "Film and Video - the Robert Mitchell Boys Choir". The Boy Choir and Soloist Directory. Archived from the original on October 10, 2012. Retrieved October 5, 2013.
  42. Anderson, Lindsay (1983). About John Ford. McGraw Hill. p. 79. ISBN 0070016240. OCLC 9557237. Unfortunately, this lyrical celebration of a hazardous trek west by a Mormon wagon train in the eighteen eighties was prevented by its lack of star players from achieving a wide commercial release; as a result it received almost no critical attention. Outside Britain, it seems never to have been shown in Europe at all. Anderson, a noted film director and critic, includes several essays on Ford's work as well as descriptions of their meetings over more than twenty years.
  43. "Review: "Wagon Master"". Variety. December 31, 1949. Presumably, Variety was reviewing a screening of the film that occurred some months before national release in April 1950.
  44. Jewell, Richard; Harbin, Vernon (1982). The RKO Story. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House. p. 248. ISBN 9780517546567. OCLC 8132684.
  45. Anderson, Jeffrey M. "Wagon Master (1950): Mormons on the Move". Combustible Celluloid. Yet Ford considered it among his personal favorites, and a handful of Ford's biggest admirers consider it a neglected masterpiece. (I do too.)
  46. Fear, David (September 8, 2009). "Wagon Master". Time Out - Los Angeles.
  47. Le Convoi des braves (DVD (region 2)). Éditions Montparnasse. February 12, 2002. ASIN B000059NYM. This version has both French language and English language soundtracks. It is listed at 80 minutes, which is about 6 minutes shorter than the English language release.
  48. Wagon Master (VHS). Turner Home Entertainment. 1990. OCLC 22606332.
  49. Wagon Master (VHS). Turner Home Entertainment. 1993. OCLC 607447954. Colorized version; catalog #6230.

Further reading
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wagon Master (film).
  • Astle, Randy (2012). "Mormons and Cinema". In Hunter, J. Michael (ed.). Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon. ABC-CLIO. p. 12. ISBN 9780313391675. OCLC 776495102. Shot around the Moab area and based on the story of the regions actual settlers, the film tells the story of a south-bound pioneer company, their non-Mormon wagon masters and the misfits, outcasts, and outlaws they encounter along the way. The Mormons are immediately humanized and equated with the other downtrodden groups they encounter, most notably the Navajo.
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