After reading a story by Ernest Haycox in Collier's Magazine called "The Stage to Lordsburg," John Ford bought the film rights from the author for $4,000.

As Ford acknowledged, the basic outline of the story resembles the classic Guy de Maupassant short story "Boule de suif."

When John Ford pitched Stagecoach to almost every major studio in Hollywood, all of them were universal in their disdain for the Western genre which they felt was no longer popular. Ford himself had not directed a Western in thirteen years, his last film from the genre being Three Bad Men (1926). As a result, the Academy Award-winning director (Ford won the Best Director Oscar for The Informer in 1935) was advised to find other material that was more appealing.

John Wayne was John Ford's first and only choice to play the Ringo Kid, even though the actor, who had spent nearly ten years starring in Poverty Row Westerns, made Stagecoach a more difficult sell to studio moguls looking for an A-list star.

John Ford initially had an agreement from David O. Selznick to produce the picture, but the two men were not willing to capitulate to each other's vision. Selznick wanted bigger stars, like Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich. Ford knew Wayne and Claire Trevor were perfect. Selznick contemptuously ended the negotiations, writing "there is no point treating (Ford) as a god, and if he doesn't want to be here I'd just as soon have some other good director."

John Ford finally found a willing producer to fund Stagecoach - Walter Wanger, one of Hollywood's most powerful independent producers. Wanger, believing in Ford's masterful ability to make a great picture as well as the eternal appeal of certain genres like the Western, green-lighted Stagecoach, securing $250,000 for the production. At first, even Wanger wanted a more prestigious actor for the part of the Ringo Kid, but he gave in when Ford promised to give top billing to Claire Trevor, a bigger star at the time.

by Scott McGee