Stagecoach
Starring: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Thomas Mitchell
Director: John Ford
The film: John Wayne had already appeared in about 80 films before he found lasting fame as the Ringo Kid in director John Ford's classic western Stagecoach. The film marked a return to westerns for Ford after a 13-year break. Stagecoach also lifted the genre out of the B-movie and Saturday morning-serial circuit, and established the western as a bankable vehicle for big-name stars and serious directors.
Stagecoach brings together nine disparate characters for a perilous cross-country journey. These include an alcoholic doctor, a sharpshooting southern gambler, a meek whiskey salesman and two vulnerable females, as well as Wayne's escaped convict and the sheriff who is bringing him in. Familiar by modern standards, but quite an original congregation in 1939, the characters are well developed by the time the Apaches launch their attack - one of cinema's most celebrated chase sequences - towards the end of the film.
Ford didn't discover the magnificent Monument Valley, but he made it famous with this and several other productions that he made there, and he used it so extensively in Stagecoach that it was traversed at least three times during filming.