SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON

Name: SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON
Item: SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON
Author: Tess Farrand

"Terrific Western Full of Humor, Action and Warmth"

Family Content: +3 Some minor questionable elements. (Media-wisdom is suggested to discuss.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON is a classic 1949 western starring John Wayne as Captain Nathan Brittles on the verge of retirement. Fort Starke’s commanding officer orders Brittles to take out a last patrol to rush two women to the eastbound stage before stopping an impending Indian attack inspired by General Custer’s defeat at the Little Big Horn battle in 1876. The captain’s mission is fraught with jeopardy for him, his troops and the ladies.

SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON is just a great entertaining movie, with lots of humor, exciting action and warmth. It has a great cast, with a wonderful performance by John Wayne, who plays an older man. The color photography by Winton C. Hoch is simply gorgeous and won an Oscar. SHE WORE A YELLPW RIBBON has a strong moral, patriotic worldview that honors courage, compassionate but tough leadership, honor, peace, forgiveness, and service. It also explicitly celebrates American soldiers who serve on the frontlines anywhere and everywhere. Brilliantly directed by John Ford, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON is a classic Hollywood movie that you can watch again and again.

Content:

(BBB, PPP, CC, V, A, D, M)

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Very strong moral, patriotic worldview that honors courage, compassionate but tough leadership, honor, peace, forgiveness, service, and American soldiers who serve on the frontlines anywhere and everywhere, plus references to an afterlife and the Bible

Foul Language:

No foul language, but it’s implied a woman vomits into a pan after she witnesses a makeshift surgery in a military convoy fleeing Indians who may attack at any time

Violence:

Lots of light but exciting action includes American soldiers battle Indians in three scenes, a cavalry platoon and its commanding officer comes upon a stagecoach outpost that’s being overrun by Indians and discovers that one of the men he sent ahead to protect the outpost (a former Confederate officer serving incognito) has been fatally wounded, the platoon discovers that the parents of two children running the outpost have been killed, the commanding officer kicks a burning wagon wheel in frustration, platoon leaders meets with Indians to re-establish peaceful relations and breaks an arrow shot in front of him by the young leader of the Indian uprising and spits on the broken arrow before throwing the pieces back at the man, a convoy of U.S. calvary slows down at night so that the surgeon can take a bullet out of a soldier in a dangerous operation, calvary platoon is left at a small river to hold back some Indians while the platoon leader and the rest of the platoon takes two women back to safety at the fort, two soldiers secretly watch as Indian braves shove white gun runner through a fire and then shoot him dead with an arrow, and soldiers brawl in a saloon after their platoon leader orders them to arrest an older soldier who’s out of uniform (the incident turns out to be a ruse by the platoon leader to get the soldier placed into the brigade until his retirement starts several days ahead)

Sex:

No sex

Nudity:

No nudity

Alcohol Use:

Alcohol use includes a garrulous sergeant takes a sip of whiskey from a flask in front of two children, and he tells them it’s his “medicine,” and a wounded man drinks whiskey before a potentially dangerous surgery, but not before the unofficial nurse on duty takes a sip before him

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Soldier smokes a peace pipe with an elderly Indian chief and two soldiers chew tobacco together; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Jealousy occurs in a romantic rivalry between two young officers over the affections of a beautiful young woman.

More Detail:

SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON is a classic 1949 western starring John Wayne as a soldier on the verge of retirement who takes out a last patrol to escort two women to the eastbound stage before stopping an impending Indian attack inspired by General Custer’s defeat at the Little Big Horn in 1872. SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON is just a flat-out terrifically entertaining movie, with lots of humor, exciting action and warmth, Oscar winning color cinematography, and a wonderful performance by John Wayne and a cast of Hollywood veterans.

Director John Ford made this cavalry picture with Wayne, who stars as Captain Nathan Brittles, a soldier on the verge of retirement. The movie opens just after General Custer and his men were defeated and killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The commander of Fort Starke, Major Allshard, is concerned that the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians on the local reservation will want to follow up that success.

Meanwhile, Captain Brittles is forced to keep rein on a romantic rivalry between his two young lieutenants, Flint Cohill and Ross Penell, for the affections of Major Allshard’s niece, Olivia Dandridge. Brittles must also keep a rein his rough but lovable aide, a loquacious, boastful sergeant played brilliantly by the great Victor McLaglen. (McLaglen’s son, Andrew, went on to direct his own Western movies such as MCLINTOCK! and CHISUM, and many episodes of iconic 1960s TV Westerns, including HAVE GUN – WILL TRAVEL, RAWHIDE and GUNSMOKE.)

The Major orders Captain Brittles to take a platoon of soldiers and deliver his wife, Abby, and Olivia to the eastbound stage. Brittles orders several men to ride ahead to the stage outpost. However, when he and the rest of the platoon gets there, they find that the outpost and the solders have been attacked by Indians, and the outpost manager and his wife killed. Also, one of the soldiers has been fatally wounded and another seriously wounded.

His mission a failure, Captain Brittles decides the platoon must take the women back to the fort. However, their return journey is fraught with deadly jeopardy for him, his troops and the ladies.

SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON is just a flat-out terrifically entertaining movie, with lots of humor, exciting action and warmth. It has a great cast, with a wonderful performance by John Wayne, who in one scene mimics an important moment in a famous speech that President George Washington once gave to his troops. The color photography in YELLOW RIBBON is simply gorgeous. The movie’s cinematographer, Winton C. Hoch, won an Oscar for his brilliant work here. After seeing Wayne’s patriotic, powerful performance in this movie, you might agree with one of Actress Joanne Dru’s lines in the movie, where she remarks after seeing Captain Brittles address his troops for one last time, “I just want to stand up and cheer!”

SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON has a very strong moral, patriotic, inspiring worldview. It honors the service of American troops on the frontier in the late 1800s. It also honors their traditions and rituals. At the same time, it shows that not all the soldiers wanted to slaughter Indians, and some of them wanted to establish peaceful relations with the Indians. That’s just what happens when John Wayne’s character, Captain Brittles, visits the old Indian chief and tries to stop the war. At the end, he figures out a way to force the Indian braves to return to the reservation without a lot of killing.

Brilliantly directed by John Ford, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON is one of those classic Hollywood movies that you can watch again and again.

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Quality:

- Content: +3