El Dorado (1966 film)

Sheriff J.P. Harrah rides into the town of El Dorado to talk to his old friend, gun-for-hire Cole Thornton, who has just arrived in response to a mysterious job offer from wealthy landowner Bart Jason. Harrah reveals to Thornton that Jason is actually trying to muscle the honest MacDonald Family off their land. Thornton agrees to turn down the job and rides out to Jason's ranch to tell him so.

Kevin MacDonald and his family hear about Thornton's arrival, and fear the worst. The youngest son, Luke, is made sentry, but falls asleep behind a rock. As Thornton returns from his confrontation with Jason, Luke is startled awake and fires. Thornton reflexively fires back and wounds Luke in the stomach. Luke commits suicide before Thornton can stop him, believing his wound fatal. Feeling guilty, Thornton brings the body to the farmhouse and tells Kevin what happened. The only daughter of the MacDonald clan, Joey, rides off before she can hear the truth, and shoots Thornton on his way back to town.

Thornton spares Joey's life, but the bullet has lodged against his spine. The local doctor doesn't have the skill to remove it, so Thornton heals and departs, despite the protests of local saloon owner Maudie, who has feelings for him. Doc Miller warns Thornton a skilled surgeon should remove the bullet soon. As time goes on, Thornton suffers bouts of temporary paralysis in his right side.

Six months later, Thornton is in a saloon out of town, having avoided El Dorado out of guilt, when he witnesses a young man, "Mississippi" Traherne, confronting famed gunslinger Nelse McLeod, because McLeod's right hand man Charlie killed his foster father. Thornton has to step in to save the naive youngster, who has literally brought a knife to a gunfight. McLeod is impressed and offers Thornton a job, revealing that he's accepted Jason's job offer. He also says that Harrah is no longer a threat. Thornton refuses, and he and Mississippi return to El Dorado ahead of McLeod to find out the truth.

In El Dorado, Maudie reveals that Harrah has become a helpless drunk 2 months prior after a girl ran out on him, and Harrah's deputy Bull confirms this. After a fist fight with the drunken Harrah, Thornton agrees to use one of Mississippi's sobering concoctions to bring Harrah round, with violently effective results. Harrah, ashamed of the laughingstock he's become, agrees to stay sober. After three men shoot one of the MacDonald's, Thornton, Bull, Mississippi and Harrah hunt the men into an old church and gun them down. One man escapes, leading them straight to Jason, whom Harrah arrests and holds for trial. Mississippi stops Joey from killing Jason on the walk back to the jail, and the two begin a relationship.

Bull officially deputizes Mississippi and Thornton. They patrol the town to keep the peace, stopping an attempted attack by McLeod's gang on the jail in which Harrah is crippled by a bullet to the leg. Maudie brings them some supplies while they are holed up in the jail, and McLeod's men start harassing her and her patrons. Thornton and Mississippi go to rescue them, but Thornton suffers an attack of paralysis and is captured by McLeod. Harrah agrees to trade Jason for Thornton and leave town, despite Thornton's protests.

Jason and McLeod's men kidnap Saul MacDonald and demand that Kevin turn over his water rights for the return of his son. Rightly suspecting Jason will kill both Saul and Kevin once he has the water rights, Thornton, unable to walk, rides a wagon up to the front door of Jason's Saloon while Harrah, Bull, and Mississippi sneak in the back. Bull distracts the men with a bugle call and Thornton opens fire, killing McLeod and several others while the rest ambush from behind and free Saul MacDonald. Joey takes out Jason personally, saving Thornton from being shot in the back, and telling him she felt she owed him after her previous mistake. Doc Miller's new assistant, Dr. Donovan, agrees to operate on Thornton if he stays in town, and Thornton implies he may give up wandering to stay with Maudie.

Leigh Brackett wrote the original script which she described as "the best script I had ever done in my life. It wasn't tragic, but it was one of those things where Wayne died at the end." However she says the closer they got to production "the more we got into doing Rio Bravo over again the sicker I got, because I hate doing things over again. And I kept saying to Howard I did that, and he'd say it was okay, we could do it over again."[6]

Mitchum later said, "When Howard called me, I said, 'What's the story?' and he said, 'No story, just characters' and that's the way it was. Did one scene, put it away, did another, put it away."[7]

Shot at Old Tucson Studios just west of Tucson, Arizona, as well as in and around Kanab, Utah, from October 1965 to January 1966, the film was Wayne's 138th picture and was actually filmed before The War Wagon, but its release was delayed so that Paramount's Nevada Smith with Steve McQueen would not have to compete with a John Wayne film at the box office. El Dorado finally reached the theatres in June 1967, a month after The War Wagon had opened.[8]

Film footage from El Dorado was later incorporated into the opening montage of Wayne's final film, The Shootist, to illustrate the backstory of Wayne's character. Director Don Siegel used no scenes from any film shot before 1948 in The Shootist's frontispiece even though Wayne's career as a leading man began in 1930 with Raoul Walsh's lavish widescreen epic The Big Trail and had continued throughout the following two decades.

As he often did in action movies, especially Westerns, John Wayne wore his Red River D belt buckle Hawks had given him when shooting wrapped on Red River in El Dorado. It can be seen in the opening scene where Robert Mitchum confronts Wayne in the washroom.

Wayne's horse was a six-year-old Appaloosa stallion named Zip, from Spalding, Idaho.[9]

Cinematographer Harold Rosson had retired in 1958, but Hawks persuaded him to come back to work. In a 1970 interview with Leonard Maltin, Rosson said, "I was out of my mind I'd ever quit," but went back into retirement—for good—afterwards, citing his age as a reason (75 at the time of the interview).

Caan was somehow unable to pronounce the word "boldly" as he recited "Ride boldly ride" during the course of the film, leaving audience members unfamiliar with Poe's poem to wonder what or whom "bodie" was.

In the film, Mississippi gives Sheriff Harrah a concoction meant to deter him from further drinking. The ingredients include (among others) Cayenne pepper, ipecac (an emetic), mustard, croton oil (which induces diarrhea), asafoetida (often misspelled acifedida) and gunpowder.

The movie marked the only time Wayne and Mitchum worked together in a theatrical film unless one counts The Longest Day, an ensemble epic in which they share no scenes.

The poem repeated in the film and paraphrased in the theme song is "Eldorado", a ballad poem by Edgar Allan Poe.

• Dell Movie Classic: El Dorado (October 1967)[13][14]

• List of American films of 1967
• List of American films of 1966
• John Wayne filmography

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

• El Dorado at IMDb
• El Dorado at the TCM Movie Database
• El Dorado at AllMovie
• El Dorado at the American Film Institute Catalog