Stagecoach - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Stagecoach or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Stagecoach

[steve]

The six-sheet poster declares, "A Powerful Story of 9 Strange People!" and features head shots of the coach's nine passengers but mistakenly substitutes director John Ford's brother Francis Ford and omits Berton Churchill.

[frederick]

Hatfield's exact role and position in Mrs. Mallory's father's regiment in the Confederate Army during the late "War for the Southern Confederacy" is never explicitly stated. However, while giving a toast to all of the men in the stagecoach near the end of the journey, Doc Boone refers to Hatfield as "Major".

[stephanie]

Near the end of the movie, Luke Plummer (Tom Tyler) has a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights. This is the notorious "dead man's hand" supposed to have been held by Wild Bill Hickok before he was killed.

[ken]

In 1939, Claire Trevor was the film's biggest star and commanded the highest salary.

[terry]

Ranked #9 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Western" in June 2008.

[tom]

Selected by the Vatican in the "art" category of its list of 45 "great films."

[eli]

Thomas Mitchell had stopped drinking alcohol more than two years before he played the drunken Doc Boone.

[bernice]

One scene, which required the stagecoach full of passengers to be floated across a river, was deemed impossible by technicians to pull off and John Ford considered removing it from the script altogether. Yakima Canutt, however, suggested using hollow logs tied to the coach; the air would give them increased buoyancy, offsetting the weight of the fully loaded coach. In addition, an underwater cable was used to help pull the stagecoach. Canutt's plan worked, and the scene was retained for the film.

[jamie]

Film debut of Mickey Simpson.

[cameron]

Hosteen Tso, a local shaman, promised John Ford the exact kind of cloud formations he wanted. They duly appeared.

[javier]

John Ford employed scores of local Indians to play Apache warriors and the various Indian tribes of many of his other Westerns. More than 200 were hired to film the climactic attack on the stagecoach alone. For his commitment to providing them with much needed work (paying them on a union scale no less), the Navajos called Ford "Natani Nez," which means "tall leader."

[addison]

Asked why, in the climactic chase scene, the Indians didn't simply shoot the horses to stop the stagecoach, director John Ford replied, "Because that would have been the end of the movie." In addition, Apaches would have stolen the stagecoach horses because, in their culture, horses were valuable in calculating a warrior's worth.

[charlie]

Pictured on one of four 25¢ US commemorative postage stamps issued 23 March 1990 honoring classic films released in 1939. The stamps featured Stagecoach (1939), Beau Geste (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and Gone with the Wind (1939).

[oscar]

The cast includes three Oscar winners (Claire Trevor, John Wayne and Thomas Mitchell) and one Oscar nominee (George Bancroft).

[riley]

"Screen Director's Playhouse" broadcast a 30 minute radio adaptation of the movie on January 9, 1949 with John Wayne and Claire Trevor reprising their film roles.

[lonnie]

This is the first collaboration of the actor Tim Holt and the director John Ford. The second time was in the My Darling Clementine (1946).

[ray]

John Ford declined to use John Wayne in any of his 1930s films, despite their close friendship, telling Wayne to wait until he was "ready" as an actor. Ford successfully sought to use this film to make Wayne a big movie star. The early scene where Ringo stops the stagecoach for a ride and twirls his Winchester rifle while the camera zooms in on his face is the exclamation mark on that effort.