Cheyenne Autumn
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Short description
Cheyenne Autumn is a Western set in the late nineteenth century, when a group of Cheyenne, starving and living in poor conditions on a reservation far from their homeland, decide to leave and travel back to their ancestral territory. Their leaders choose to defy the authorities rather than accept the situation any longer, and the migration becomes a long and difficult journey north. A cavalry captain is ordered to find the group and bring them back, setting up a conflict between his duty and the ordeal of the people he is pursuing. An army officer and a teacher who joins the journey are among the figures caught up in the crossing.
John Ford directed the film, working from a screenplay by James R. Webb; Ford also produced with Bernard Smith. It is the thirtieth of the thirty-one films he directed in chronological order, made between Donovan's Reef and 7 Women. Richard Widmark plays Capt. Thomas Archer, with Carroll Baker as Deborah Wright, Karl Malden as Capt. Wessels, Sal Mineo as Red Shirt, Dolores del Río as a Spanish woman and Ricardo Montalban as Little Wolf. The production, from Warner Bros. Pictures and Ford-Smith Productions, had a budget of four million dollars and runs 157 minutes, with a large credited cast and crew.
On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.7 from around 7,000 votes, and on TMDB it also scores 6.7, from a much smaller number of 152 votes. Critics gave it 7.3 from fifteen reviews, a somewhat higher figure than either audience rating.
What's left behind the scenes
- Director John Ford (1894-1973) forbade Sal Mineo (1939-1976) from speaking on camera because his accent immediately revealed him as being from the Bronx.
- A long time ago, Richard Widmark (1914-2008) commissioned a study on the subject of the film at Yale University. He gave the resulting materials to John Ford, but the topic did not interest him at the time. Many years passed before Ford changed his mind, and since he still had the materials, he cast Widmark in the lead role.
- Navajo Native Americans were cast in the roles of Cheyenne Indians, and they spoke Navajo (mostly telling each other rude jokes).
- Little Wolf was the chief of the Cheyenne tribe in 1878. He and another chief led the Cheyenne from the reservation in Oklahoma back to Montana, through numerous US Army cavalrymen attempting to stop them. The Northern Cheyenne exodus served as the basis for this film.
- The final duel between the characters, played by Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009) and Sal Mineo, was filmed on the day President of the United States John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was assassinated in Dallas. It is claimed that John Ford was so saddened by the assassination of the first American president of Irish descent that he ordered a one-day break in filming; however, surviving documents indicate that only this duel scene was scheduled for that day (and was already filmed when the news arrived), and after lunch, the film crew left the location in Utah as planned.
- Spencer Tracy (1900-1967) was originally considered for the role of the Minister of Internal Affairs, but he suffered a stroke and was replaced by Edward G. Robinson (1893-1973). All of his scenes were filmed on set.
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