She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

John Wayne stars in “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” as a cavalry officer serving his final week before retiring from the only job he has ever known.

While anticipating his retirement, Captain Brittles gets assigned to take the major’s niece Olivia (Joanne Dru) to the stage line at Sudros Well.  The niece becomes a source of trouble because two men in the cavalry, Lieutenants Cohill and Pennell become romantically interested in her and start competing for her affection. 

However, the trip to Sudros Well is derailed when Captain Brittles finds out that warring Indians are headed toward the same place that they’re going.

His last week on the frontier is not turning out the way that Captain Brittles expected.

•  “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” is one of three films that director John Ford made that are called his “Cavalry Trilogy” because all of three movies revolve around the cavalry.  The other two John Wayne calvary films are
“Fort Apache” and “Rio Grande.” Of these three films, “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” was the only one made in color.

• John Ford spent over a million dollars making  “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” which was a lot of money for a western movie at the time. However, “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” turned out to be an enormous box office success making the investment a good one. 

• The song "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" is still to this day the official anthem of the United States Cavalry/Armor.

• Extensive makeup was used to make John Wayne look 20 years older for his role in this movie.

• “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” won an Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography (Winton C. Hoch)