DVD Features:
- Number of Discs: 2
- Rated: Not Rated
- Run Time: 1 hours, 36 minutes
- Video: Black & White
- Released: May 25, 2010
- Originally Released: 1939
- Label: Criterion
- Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
- Note: Bucking broadway, a 1917 silent feature by John Ford, with new music composed and performed by Donald Sosin
- Journalist and television presenter Philip Jenkinson's extensive 1968 video interview with Ford
- New video appreciation of stagecoach with director and Ford biographer Peter Bogdanovich
- New video interview with Ford's grandson Dan Ford about the director and his home movies
- New video piece, featuring journalist Buzz Bissinger, about trader Harry Goulding's key role bringing monument valley to hollywood
- New video homage to legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt, with celebrated stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong
- Video essay by writer Tag Gallagher analyzing Ford's visual style in stagecoach
- Screen director's playhouse 1949 radio dramatization of stagecoach, with John Wayne, Claire Trevor, and Ford, downloadable as an mp3 file
- Plus: a booklet featuring an essay by critic David Cairns and Ernest Haycox's "stage to lordsburg," the short that inspired the film
- Audio:
Performers, Cast and Crew:
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Starring
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John Wayne,
Claire Trevor,
Andy Devine,
Thomas Mitchell,
George Bancroft,
John Carradine,
Donald Meek &
Tim Holt
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Directed by
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John Ford
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Edited by
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Dorothy Spencer
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Screenwriting by
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Dudley Nichols
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Composition by
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Louis Gruenberg,
Frank Harling,
Boris Morros,
Richard Hageman,
John Leipold &
Leo Shuken
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Art Direction by
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Alexander Toluboff
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Story by
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Ernest Haycox
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Produced by
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Walter Wanger
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Director of Photography
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Bert Glennon
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Major Awards:
Academy Awards 1939 -
Best Adapted or Musical Song/Score: Frank Harling; John Leipold; Leo Shuken & Richard Hageman
Academy Awards 1939 -
Best Supporting Actor: Thomas Mitchell
Entertainment Reviews:
Entertainment Weekly - 01/11/2002
"...[The story] feels nourishingly archetypal, especially John Wayne's turn as the outlaw Ringo Kid..."
Premiere - 12/01/2003
"...This is myth-making writ large, full of Ford's enduring themes, daring stunt work, and peerless eye for composition..."
USA Today - 01/06/2004
"[T]he DVD breathes life into Ford's character study of sundry stagecoach passenger types..."
Uncut - 12/01/2004
"[Wayne] sauntered into stardom after a decade in movies as the Ringo Kid, a charming outlaw bend on revenge."
New York Times - 04/30/2010
"[A] thrilling western about a group of travelers whose Arizona stage ride lands them smack in the midst of an apache uprising..."
A.V. Club - 05/26/2010
"STAGECOACH gives fine shading to a simple story, making it look and feel like a forgotten American myth." -- Grade: A
Entertainment Weekly - 06/04/2010
"Action-packed and jaw-droppingly epic, STAGECOACH is the perfect Western to show to people who don't like Westerns." -- Grade: A
Sight and Sound - 08/01/2010
"A classic as sharply defined and indelible as the sandstone buttes of Monument Valley, John Ford's 1939 Western is in every sense a landmark."
Empire - 09/01/2010
"[T]here's still a sophistication to STAGECOACH that goes well beyond its silent movie and stage melodrama roots....A small film but it casts a long shadow."
Product Description:
Regarded by many as the best Western ever made, STAGECOACH shot John Wayne to stardom and elevated the prestige of a genre that had hitherto been considered a B-movie province. With rumors in the air of a possible Apache attack, a motley group of travelers in a small New Mexico town board the Overland Stage bound for Lordsburg. Among them are the pregnant Lucy Mallory (Louise Platt); timid liquor salesman Peacock (Donald Meek); Hatfield, an aloof gambler (John Carradine); Gatewood (Berton Churchill), a pompous, embezzling banker; and two who have been exiled from town, alcoholic Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell) and Dallas (Clair Trevor), a lady of the evening. Along the trail, they pick up the Ringo Kid (John Wayne), an outlaw who's escaped from prison to take revenge on the Plummer brothers for destroying his family and framing him for murder. As their journey progresses, the hypocrisy of the supposedly respectable passengers becomes clear, and it's the tainted outsiders who display courage and humanity. Described by Orson Welles, who watched the film innumerable times before making CITIZEN KANE, as his cinematic textbook, STAGECOACH is superbly made in every respect, layering humor and sharp characterization into an exciting plot that includes a spectacularly photographed chase in Monument Valley.
Plot Synopsis:
Under the stress of an Indian attack, the passengers of a stagecoach reveal their genuine personalities.
Plot Keywords:
Adventure |
Classic |
Essential Cinema |
Indians |
Outlaws |
Recommended
Production Notes:
- Filmed in: Monument Valley, Kayenta and Mesa, Arizona; Kernville, Dry Lake, Fremont Pass, Victorville, Calabasas, Chatsworth, California.
- STAGECOACH was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1995.
- Production Company: Masterpiece Productions Inc.
Based on 
