CHEYENNE AWFUL

CHEYENNE AUTUMN (1964)
dir: John Ford

CHEYENNE AWFUL
MAD #97, September 1965
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

This was a roadshow picture, John Ford's last western meant to make up for his previous westerns, showing how American Indians had been mistreated by the white man. Not particularly a big hit but since it was made by John Ford and had an all-star cast it was deemed worthy enough to be parodied by MAD.

They begin with this narration:

"The beginning of a day. September 7th, 1878. It dawned like any other day on the Cheyenne reservation... in that vast barren land in the American Southwest... which was then called Indian Territory.

“But this wasn't just another day to the Cheyenne. Far from their homeland... as out of place in this desert as eagles in a cage... their three great chiefs prayed over the sacred bundle... that at last, the promises made to them... when the white man sent them here more than a year ago... would today be honored. The promises that had led them to give up their own way of life... in their own green and fertile country, 1500 miles to the north."

The Cheyenne tribe has been led to new territory by the U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and being settled in by them. There's a love story between Capt. Archer (Richard Widmark) of the officers and a Quaker schoolteacher who has been assigned to the base (Carroll Baker).

Sal Mineo is Red Shirt and Patrick Wayne, son of John Wayne, is Lieutenant Scott. Gilbert Roland is Dull Knife. James Stewart is Wyatt Earp. Ricardo Montalban is the chief.

Karl Malden is Captain Wessels.

Edward G. Robinson was Secretary of the Interior Carl Schulz in the movie. He's not in this. In the mid sixties he was more known for Maxwell House commercials (my generation grew up with him as the gangster in Warner Brothers cartoons that went “Nyah nyah see?”).

Usually I go into greater detail about the movie here but you can tell as much as I do from these scenes. Besides, I didn't catch everything because I watched everything sped up. John Ford may have made some of the greatest westerns of all time, but I didn't feel like sitting through nearly three hours of what was apparently his least successful picture.

Interesting bit of trivia: Many of the extras were not Cheyenne but Navajo and in the movie while speaking authentic Navajo added profanities which made it into the film and the crew were none the wiser.