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{{Short description|1961 film by John Ford}}
{{Use American English|date=September 2021}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2021}}
{{Infobox film
| name           = Two Rode Together
| image          = Two Rode Together - 1961 - Poster.png
| caption        = 1961 [[film poster]] by [[Howard Terpning]]
| director       = [[John Ford]]
| producer       = Stan Shpetner
| based_on       = {{based on|''Comanche Captives''|[[Will Cook (writer)|Will Cook]]}}
| screenplay     = [[Frank Nugent]]
| narrator       = 
| starring       = [[James Stewart]]<br>[[Richard Widmark]]<br> [[Woody Strode]]<br>[[Shirley Jones]]<br>[[Linda Cristal]]<br>[[Andy Devine]]<br>[[John McIntire]]
| music          = [[George Duning]]
| cinematography = [[Charles Lawton Jr.]]
| editing        = [[Jack Murray (film editor)|Jack Murray]]
| color_process  = [[Eastman Color]]
| studio         = John Ford Productions<br>Shpetner Productions
| distributor    = [[Columbia Pictures]]
| released       = {{Film date|1961|6|28}}
| runtime        = 109 minutes
| country        = United States
| language       = English
| budget         = 
|gross = $1.6 million<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://archive.org/details/variety-1962-01/page/n121/mode/1up?q=%22back+street%22+%22ross+hunter%22|magazine=Variety|title=1961 Rentals and Potential|date=10 Jan 1961|page=58}}</ref>
}}

'''''Two Rode Together''''' is a 1961 American [[Western (genre)|Western]] film directed by [[John Ford]] and starring [[James Stewart]], [[Richard Widmark]], and [[Shirley Jones]]. The supporting cast includes [[Linda Cristal]], [[Andy Devine]], and [[John McIntire]]. The film was based upon the 1959 novel ''Comanche Captives'' by [[Will Cook (writer)|Will Cook]].

==Plot==
Guthrie McCabe is the marshal of the town of Tuscosa, supplementing his income with a percentage of the profits of local businesses, including the saloon run by his mistress Belle.
When relatives of [[Comanche]] captives, including frontierswoman Marty Purcell ([[Shirley Jones]]), demand that the American army find their lost loved ones, U.S. Cavalry officer Major Frazer uses a combination of military pressure and financial incentives to coax ex-scout McCabe to ransom any he can find. He assigns Lt. Jim Gary, a friend of McCabe's, to accompany him. They travel into Comanche territory, where McCabe and Gary bargain with Chief [[Quanah Parker]] and find four white captives. Two women, Freda Knudsen and Hannah Clegg, refuse to go back, but McCabe and Gary succeed in returning with a teenaged boy named Running Wolf and a Mexican woman, Elena de la Madriaga. Elena is the wife of Stone Calf, a militant rival of Quanah's. The evening the two men leave camp with their "rescued" captives, Stone Calf tries to take back his wife and is killed by McCabe, much to Quanah's satisfaction.

Running Wolf clearly hates white people, and no one will accept him, but a severely traumatized and broken woman is convinced that he is her long-lost son and claims him. When she tries to cut his hair, he kills her. The settlers decide to lynch the boy, despite Lt. Gary's attempt to stop them. As the boy is being dragged off, Marty realizes to her horror that he is her long-lost brother, but is powerless to stop the mob. As for Elena, she finds herself ostracized by white society, deemed a woman who "degraded herself" by submitting to a savage rather than killing herself, which her Catholic faith forbade her to. Meanwhile, she and McCabe have fallen in love, exemplified when he, backed by Gary, gives the soldiers and their wives a dressing down for their treatment of Elena. Then McCabe discovers that Belle has taken his simple-minded deputy as a lover, and got him elected to replace McCabe as marshal. After one last humiliation from Belle, Elena decides to go to California, and McCabe happily decides to go with her. As they leave, Lt. Gary tells Belle that his friend "finally found something that he wants more than ten percent of."

==Cast==
{{Div col}}
* [[James Stewart]] as Marshal Guthrie McCabe
* [[Richard Widmark]] as First Lieutenant Jim Gary
* [[Shirley Jones]] as Marty Purcell 
* [[Linda Cristal]] as Elena de la Madriaga 
* [[Andy Devine]] as Sergeant Darius P. Posey 
* [[John McIntire]] as Major Frazer 
* [[Paul Birch (actor)|Paul Birch]] as Judge Edward Purcell 
* [[Willis Bouchey]].as Mr. Harry J. Wringle 
* [[Henry Brandon (actor)|Henry Brandon]] as Chief [[Quanah Parker]]
* [[Harry Carey Jr.]] as Ortho Clegg 
* [[Olive Carey]] as Mrs. Abby Frazer 
* [[Ken Curtis]] as Greeley Clegg 
* Chet Douglas as Deputy Ward Corby 
* Annelle Hayes as Belle Aragon 
* David Kent as Running Wolf (Steve Purcell)
* [[Anna Lee]] as Mrs. Malaprop
* [[Jeanette Nolan]] as Mrs. Mary McCandless 
* [[John Qualen]] as Ole Knudsen 
* [[Ford Rainey]] as Reverend Henry Clegg
* [[Woody Strode]] as Stone Calf 
* [[O.Z. Whitehead]] as Lieutenant Chase
* [[Regina Carrol]] as Freda Knudsen
* [[Mae Marsh]] as Hannah Clegg
* Rian Garrick as Lieutenant Upton
{{Div col end}}

==Production==
John Ford agreed to direct the film for money ($225,000 plus 25% of the net profits){{sfn|McBride|2011|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=WzvtZqXA72AC&pg=PA618 p. 618]}} and as a favor to [[Columbia Pictures]] head [[Harry Cohn]], who died in 1958. The director hated the material, believing he had done a far better treatment of the theme in ''[[The Searchers (film)|The Searchers]]'' (1956). Even after he brought in his most trusted screenwriter, [[Frank Nugent]] — the man responsible for ''The Searchers'' and nine other Ford classics — to fix the script, the director said it was "the worst piece of crap I’ve done in 20 years."{{sfn|Eyman|1999|loc=[https://archive.org/details/printlegendlifet0000eyma/page/482/mode/2up p. 483]}}

In [[Andrew Sinclair]]'s 1979 biography, ''John Ford'', Stewart revealed that Ford's "direction took the form of asides. Sometimes he'd put his hand across his mouth so that others couldn't hear what he was saying to you. On ''Two Rode Together'', he told me to watch out for Dick Widmark because he was a good actor and that he would start stealing if I didn't watch him. Later, I learned he'd told Dick the same thing about me. He liked things to be tense."<ref name=Nixon/>

One of the film's most notable scenes is a four-minute [[Two shot|two-shot]] of Stewart and Widmark bantering on a river bank about money, women, and the Comanche problem.{{sfn|McBride|2011|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=WzvtZqXA72AC&pg=PA621 pp. 621-623]}} Ford shot the lengthy scene with his crew waist-deep in the chilly river.{{sfn|Eyman|1999|loc=[https://archive.org/details/printlegendlifet0000eyma/page/484/mode/2up pp. 484-485]}}{{sfn|McBride|2011|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=WzvtZqXA72AC&pg=PA621 pp. 621-623]}}

The film was shot at the [[Alamo Village]], the movie set originally created for [[John Wayne]]'s ''[[The Alamo (1960 film)|The Alamo]]'' (1960).<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/national/26ALAM.html |title=The Alamo of the Big Screen Tries to Skirt the Fate of the Original |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=March 26, 2004 |access-date=March 31, 2014 |last=Blumenthal |first=Ralph}}</ref>

''Two Rode Together'' was the first of three Westerns that Stewart and Ford would collaborate on;{{sfn|McBride|2011|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=WzvtZqXA72AC&pg=PA621 p. 621]}} ''[[The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance]]'' came the following year and ''[[Cheyenne Autumn]]'' was released in 1964.{{sfn|Eyman|1999|loc=[https://archive.org/details/printlegendlifet0000eyma/page/484/mode/2up p. 484]}}<ref name=Nixon>{{cite web |url=https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/4300/two-rode-together#articles-reviews|title=Two Rode Together |first=Rob |last=Nixon |date=2005-07-29 |website=Turner Classic Movies |publisher=Time Warner |access-date=November 2, 2022}}</ref> This film was also the fifteenth that [[Jack Murray (film editor)|Jack Murray]] would edit for Ford. It was also the last; Murray died a few months before the film's release.

==Critical reception==
The film received mixed reviews. The ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' described ''Two Rode Together'' as the "most disappointing western" of John Ford’s career,<ref name="AFI">{{cite web |title=Two Rode Together |url=https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/23757 |website=[[AFI Catalog of Feature Films]] |access-date=19 April 2023}}</ref> while ''[[The New York Times]]'' praised James Stewart's performance as a career best.<ref name="NYT">{{cite news |last1=Archer |first1=Eugene |title='Two Rode Together' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1961/07/27/archives/two-rode-together.html |access-date=19 April 2023 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=July 27, 1961}}</ref>

== References ==
<references />

===Bibliography===
*{{cite book |last1=Eyman |first1=Scott |title=Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford |year=1999 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=978-0-68-481161-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/printlegendlifet0000eyma/page/482/mode/2up |access-date=19 April 2023}}
*{{cite book |last1=McBride |first1=Joseph |title=Searching for John Ford |year=2011 |publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi |access-date=19 April 2023 |isbn=978-1-60-473467-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WzvtZqXA72AC}}

==External links==
* {{IMDb title|0055558|Two Rode Together}}
* {{TCMDb title|id=4300}}
* {{AFI film|id=23757|title=Two Rode Together}}

{{John Ford}}

[[Category:1961 films]]
[[Category:1960s English-language films]]
[[Category:1960s historical films]]
[[Category:1961 Western (genre) films]]
[[Category:1960s buddy films]]
[[Category:1961 action films]]
[[Category:American buddy action films]]
[[Category:American historical films]]
[[Category:American Western (genre) films]]
[[Category:Columbia Pictures films]]
[[Category:Films scored by George Duning]]
[[Category:Films based on American novels]]
[[Category:Films based on Western (genre) novels]]
[[Category:Films directed by John Ford]]
[[Category:Films set in the 1880s]]
[[Category:Films set in Texas]]
[[Category:Films shot in Texas]]
[[Category:Revisionist Western (genre) films]]
[[Category:1960s American films]]
[[Category:Comanche in popular culture]]
[[Category:English-language Western (genre) films]]
[[Category:English-language historical films]]