Among John Ford's many westerns, The Searchers is probably the film that best presents Ford's beloved Monument Valley location in all its glory. Located in northern Arizona and southern Utah, Ford once described the stunning setting as "the most complete, beautiful, and peaceful place on earth." As Edward Buscombe writes in a British Film Institute monograph on The Searchers, "No Ford picture, indeed no American picture, makes such sumptuous use of landscape as The Searchers."

Since a good deal of The Searchers dealt with family ties and commitments it was no coincidence that the film set resembled one big family. Dorothy Jordan, the wife of producer Merian C. Cooper played Martha Edwards. Olive Carey, the widow of Harry Carey, senior played Mrs. Jorgensen, while her son Harry, Jr. played Brad Jorgensen. Patrick Wayne, John Wayne's son, played Lt. Greenhill. Little Lana Wood, younger sister of co-star Natalie Wood, played Debbie as a child. And let's not forget the film's screenwriter, Frank S. Nugent, who was John Ford's son-in-law.

Aside from family, The Searchers also features favorite actors and crew members from John Ford's stock company. Of course, John Wayne and Ward Bond had already appeared in numerous John Ford productions. By the end of their careers, Wayne and Ford had collaborated on fourteen films together, while Bond and Ford made fifteen. Hank Worden, John Qualen, Ken Curtis, and Mae Marsh were all regular performers in Ford's ensemble troupe. Danny Borzage, who can be spotted playing the accordion in the film, also played the accordion on the set of many a Ford film - the director used him to set the mood.

Ford was known for his terrible temper and his habit of playing cruel practical jokes on his cast and crew but he was unusually kind to John Wayne's son, Patrick, during the filming of The Searchers. It was Patrick Wayne's first important part and in the biography, Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford by Scott Eyman, he recalled that Ford "was crazy about me...Everyone had their day in the barrel, but I was always spared that. Which was good and bad. I wasn't exactly the most popular person on the set. Everyone was getting reamed but me...He handed everything to me...Remember, he was the only director I'd worked for at that point, and I figured that this was the way pictures were made. And I had my real father standing there watching me in the scene. I wasn't acting scared; I was scared."

Ken Curtis, who plays the buffoonish Charlie McCorry in The Searchers, was first overheard by Ford using the exaggerated accent that Harry Carey, Jr. described as "Colorado dryland." Ford liked it so much that he demanded Curtis play the role with the accent. Curtis objected, but Ford countered that the accent would get him noticed in the thankless role of the guy who does not win the girl. It apparently worked, since the accent helped Curtis land the role of Festus in the long-running TV Western series Gunsmoke.

The day-for-night filming of John Wayne's powerful speech recounting his discovery and burial of Lucy required more than one take, but only because Ward Bond needed a shave. It turns out that Wayne nailed the scene the first time, but for some inexplicable reason, the camera had stopped. Supremely irritated, Ford asked the operator what was wrong with the camera. As he answered, the power to the camera returned and they resumed filming the scene without incident. Indeed, nothing was wrong with the camera. Ward Bond had pulled the plug on the camera in order to use his electric razor. The crew never did tell Ford, for fear that he would physically harm Bond. But years later, after Bond's death, cameraman Winton Hoch told Ford about the incident at a Hollywood event. Reportedly, Ford's face turned white and he was speechless.

Perhaps the most famous shot in any Western is the final image of John Wayne framed by a doorway. Cinematographer Winton Hoch told Ford biographer Joseph McBride that when Ford described the unscripted idea to him, all he could think was, "How corny can you get?" For his part, Wayne was suffering a bad hangover when the ending was filmed. Still, he was able to pull off the scene, complete with a touching homage to Harry Carey, Sr., a famous cowboy star of the silent screen. Wayne recalled in Peter Bogdanovich's film Directed By John Ford (1971) that when he grabbed his right arm with his left as he stands in the doorway, he did so in a completely improvised way as a tribute to Carey, his idol and a huge influence on both him and Ford. Olive Carey, Harry's widow, reportedly wept when she spotted Wayne's subtle and affectionate tribute.

Lana Wood, who plays Debbie as a little girl, went through a "grueling" audition. She was ushered into a room where she was introduced to John Wayne and John Ford. Instead of rehearsing a scene from the script with the two performers, Ford issued one command to Wayne, "Lift her up, please." As Lana recounted in her autobiography, "Mr. Wayne stood up - he seemed to extend further toward the ceiling than anyone I had ever seen in my life - grinned, and rubbed his huge hands together. Then he reached down, picked me up, and never once stopped smiling at me. 'That's fine, no problem at all,' he finally said, putting me down. And that was it." Lana got the part, and even starred in a later western called Grayeagle (1978), a low-budget remake of The Searchers.

Henry Brandon, the actor who plays the Indian chief Scar, was actually a native of Germany, born Heinrich Kleinbach. The Navajos working on The Searchers teasingly referred to him as "the Kraut Comanche." As to how the blue-eyed Brandon came to be cast as an Indian chief, the actor recalled to Ford biographer Joseph McBride that he waited until the first day of shooting to ask, "Mr. Ford, I've lost lots of native parts - Indians, Arabs - because of my blue eyes. How come you cast me?" Ford replied, "Brandon, hasn't it occurred to you that the exception, dramatically speaking, is always more exciting than the rule?" Brandon told McBride that he used that line many times whenever the issue of his blue eyes came up, and he "always got parts by quoting Mr. Ford." But overall, Brandon described his experience working with Ford as "combative." Ford tried to goad the Shakespearean-trained actor one day over lunch. Ford said, "You know Shakespeare didn't write those plays at all, it was that guy Francis Bacon." Brandon refused to respond to Ford's antagonistic remarks while shooting his scenes, but he suffered enough from the frequently sadistic director to remark, "God, he was an evil bastard."

The relationship between Ford and co-producer C.V. Whitney created an interesting dynamic on the set. According to biographer Scott Eyman in Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford, "Whitney was astonished by Ford's eye. "He could have 2,300 extras in a scene," he said, "and he could spot the one girl who had too much makeup on. He'd turn around and scream at some poor assistant, 'I see a girl out there with lipstick. Get it off!" For his part, Ford found Whitney to be a high-maintenance friend. "He had to spend a lot of creative time....amusing Whitney," said Patrick Ford. "[Whitney] would trade you the Hudson's Bay for the Gulf Stream, Cape Horn for the Cape of Good Hope. He'd come around, and he'd want certain things done on the pictures and Ford would just con him out of it, and resented it. Resented having to do it. So he assigned me to Whitney...So I'd play around with Whitney...That was the worst thing about Whitney and his money. He had to be right in the middle of everything."

Both John Agar and Robert Wagner (the two men had acted in previous John Ford films - Agar in Fort Apache (1948) and Wagner in What Price Glory, 1952), wanted the role of Martin Pawley, but the director was set on Jeffrey Hunter for the part.

While on the desert locale of The SearchersJohn Ford was bitten by a scorpion. Worried about his investment, financial backer C.V. Whitney asked John Wayne, "What if we lose him? What are we going to do?" Wayne offered to check in on the "stricken" director. A few minutes later he came out of Ford's trailer and said to Whitney, "It's OK. John's fine, it's the scorpion that died."

According to the biography, Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford by Scott Eyman, the author wrote that while on location Ward Bond "developed a fixation that Vera Miles was ravenous for him. Bond spent most of his non-working hours parading around nude in front of open windows, providing what he believed was the proper atmosphere of seductive sensuality."

By Scott McGee & Jeff Stafford