3 Godfathers

Three bank robbers flee a town called Welcome after a holdup and head into the desert. Their pursuers follow, and when a sandstorm costs them their horses, they reach a water hole called Terrapin Tanks. There they find a woman who is dying after giving birth. Before she dies she asks them to save her newborn son, and the three men promise to carry the baby to safety, a journey across harsh country that puts them at constant risk. The film is a Western built around that promise and the change it works in the men who make it.

John Ford directed, working from a screenplay by Laurence Stallings, Frank S. Nugent and Robert Nathan; Merian C. Cooper and Ford produced for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Argosy Pictures. John Wayne plays Robert Marmaduke Sangster Hightower, with Pedro Armendáriz as Pedro Roca Fuerte and Harry Carey, Jr. as William Kearney. Ward Bond, Mae Marsh and Mildred Natwick appear in supporting roles. The film was the twelfth of the thirty-one Ford directed, arriving between Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Made for about a million dollars, it returned roughly three million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7 out of 10 from around 12,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.8 out of 10 from 216 votes; a critics' rating of 7.5 out of 10 from 16 reviews places it above the audience scores on both sites.