The Comancheros (film)

The Comancheros is a 1961 American

When terminal illness prevented Curtiz (director of

Plot

In pre-Civil War Texas, rogue gambler Paul Regret flees to avoid a

While returning Regret to Louisiana, Cutter is compelled to join forces with the condemned man to fight the "Comancheros", a large outlaw gang headed by a former officer who smuggles guns and whiskey to the Comanche Indians, to make money and keep the frontier in a state of violence. Cutter stops at a ranch owned by a friend, when the Comanche attack suddenly. During the attack, Regret jumps on a horse and flees, but instead of making a clean getaway, he returns with a company of Texas Rangers, who repulse the attack. Because of Regret's act of valor, the Rangers and a Texas judge agree to perjure themselves, stating that Regret could not have been involved in the duel because he was helping them spy out the Comanchero's supply line. Regret is then sworn in as an official Ranger.

After encountering one of the Comancheros' suppliers and killing him in self-defense, Cutter and Regret take over his delivery wagon and infiltrate the self-sufficient Comanchero community at the bottom of a valley in the desert. Pilar reappears as the daughter of the ruthless Comanchero leader Graile, who uses a wheelchair. He is soon killed by an old woman in the community after he orders the death of her son, and Cutter and the other Texas Rangers defeat the Comanche and Comancheros. Regret and Pilar leave together for Mexico, and Jake rides off into the sunset to rejoin the Ranger company.

Cast

Production

Wellman's novel had been bought for the screen by George Stevens, who wanted to direct it after Giant (1956). He then became interested in making The Diary of Anne Frank and sold the film rights to Fox for $300,000. Clair Huffaker was signed by the studio to adapt it for producer Charles Brackett, with Gary Cooper to star. Robert Wagner was in line to play Cooper's co-star.^[4]

Cooper was in ill health and in early 1961 Douglas Heyes was announced as writer and director. John Wayne and Charlton Heston were announced as stars but Heston dropped out and was replaced by Tom Tryon, then Heyes dropped out and was replaced by Michael Curtiz. Fox had the script rewritten by Wayne's regular writer James Edward Grant.^[5]

Whitman, who later played a similar lead in the 1964

According to Tom Mankiewicz, who worked on the film as an assistant, Curtiz was often ill during production and John Wayne took over the directing.^[7] Wayne told Mankiewicz to remove his John F. Kennedy button.^[8]

Parts of the film were shot in Professor Valley,

A tie in with the release was a comic book adaption from Dell which was published in Four Color #1300 (February 1962)^[12][13]

Reception

Variety magazine wrote, "The Comancheros is a big, brash, uninhibited action-western of the old school about as subtle as a right to the jaw... Wayne is obviously comfortable in a role tailor-made to the specifications of his easygoing, square-shooting, tight-lipped but watch-out-when-I'm-mad screen personality. Lee Marvin makes a vivid impression in a brief, but colorful, role as a half-scalped, vile-tempered Comanchero agent."^[14]

Bosley Crowther called the film "so studiously wild and woolly it turns out to be good fun"; according to Crowther, "[t]here's not a moment of seriousness in it, not a detail that isn't performed with a surge of exaggeration, not a character that is credible."^[1]

The film earned

• List of American films of 1961
• John Wayne filmography

References