Original Airdate: March 12, 1951
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon on the Lux Radio Theatre stars John Wayne, Mel Ferrer, and Mala Powers. Your producer is William Keighley.
On the verge of retirement and while stationed at Fort Starke, a one-troop cavalry post, aging US Cavalry Captain Nathan Cutting Brittles (John Wayne) is given one last mission: to deal with a breakout from the reservation by the Cheyenne and Arapaho following the defeat of George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Brittles' task is complicated by being forced at the same time to deliver his commanding officer's wife and niece to an eastbound stage and by the need to avoid a new Indian war. His troop officers meanwhile vie for the affections of the niece while uneasily anticipating the retirement of their captain and mentor.
Assisting him with his mission is Capt. Brittles' chief scout, a one-time Confederate cavalry officer; his first sergeant and Maj. Allshard, Brittles' long-time friend and commanding officer. After apparently failing in both missions, Brittles returns to Fort Starke to retire. His lieutenants continue the mission in the field, joined by
Brittles after "quitting the post and the Army." Unwilling to see more lives needlessly taken, Brittles takes it upon himself to try to make peace with Chief Pony That Walks (Chief John Big Tree). When that too fails, he devises a risky stratagem to avoid a bloody war by stampeding the Indians' horses out of their camp, forcing the renegades to return to their reservation.
The Oscar-winning film version was the second of John Ford's US Cavalry trilogy, along with Fort Apache (1948) and Rio Grande (1950). The production takes its name from "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," a popular US military song that is used to keep marching cadence. It was shot on location in Monument Valley utilizing large areas of the Navajo Reservation along the Arizona-Utah state border. Ford and cinematographer Winton Hoch based much of the film's imagery on the paintings and sculptures of Frederic Remington. Brittles film-set quarters are apparently extant in Monument Valley.