Rio Grande

65TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING
TRIBUTE TO MAUREEN O’HARA

Tuesday, January 12, at 7:00 PM at the Royal Theatre

As a tribute to Maureen O’Hara, we present the final chapter in director John Ford’s Cavalry trilogy (following Fort Apache and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon). Rio Grande works affecting variations on some of the director’s favorite themes. While there is an Apache uprising to test the soldiers, the heart of this movie lies in the family relationships, as a stern commander (John Wayne) confronts his long estranged wife (O’Hara) and the son he barely knows (Claude Jarman Jr.), who joins the battalion as a new recruit. Pauline Kael caught the distinctive charm of the film when she wrote, “Wayne and O’Hara are very effective together, so that the viewer deeply wants the final reconciliation.” This was the first pairing of the two stars, who went on to make four more movies together, including the Oscar-winning The Quiet Man. Filmed in Ford’s beloved Monument Valley, with music by Oscar winner Victor Young and the Sons of the Pioneers, this mellow Western co-stars Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr., Victor McLaglen, Chill Wills, J. Carol Naish, and John Wayne’s son Patrick in his film debut.

Joining for a Q&A after the screening will be actor Claude Jarman, who won a special Oscar for his very first film, the 1946 classic The Yearling, in which he played the son of Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman. Jarman appeared in several other films during that period, including the pioneering look at race relations, Intruder in the Dust. Later he gave up acting and became involved in civic activities in the Bay Area, serving as executive director of the San Francisco Film Festival and director of Cultural Affairs for the City of San Francisco.