Frederic Remington (1861-1909)

It is well known that John Ford (that arch mythologist of the Old West) based the screenplays for his Cavalry Trilogy on the works of James Warner Bellah. Perhaps less well known is that the look of all three movies owes a lot to Frederic Remington.



In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Ford acknowledged Remington's influence: "I like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. I tried to copy the Remington style there - you can't copy him one hundred percent - but at least I tried to get in his color and movement, and I think I succeeded partly."*



[* Quoted in Edward Buscombe's Painting the Legend: Frederic Remington and the Western]