The Comancheros - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Comancheros or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Comancheros

[victoria]

On the first day of filming, John Wayne reprimanded third assistant director Tom Mankiewicz for wearing a John F. Kennedy button. He told him, "I'd take that button off if I were you. We don't advertise socialists on my set." Wayne had campaigned for Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. Presidential election, and blamed Kennedy for losing the Bay of Pigs invasion.

[ruby]

Gary Cooper and James Garner were originally set to be the leads, but Cooper was in ill health and Garner had been blackballed due to a dispute with Jack L. Warner.

[clayton]

While the Rangers are shown to be dismounting and forming skirmish lines, their specialty was the devastatingly effective method of firing and reloading their five-shot Colt Patterson pistols while riding at a full gallop. It should be noted that this film was set before the Civil War, at a time when the rifles used were not repeaters but one-shot muskets.

[amber]

According to this film's entry in the AFI Catalog, members of the Navajo tribe were employed in this film and transported from the Monument Valley area to the shooting location near Moab, Utah. They also spoke their lines in Navajo instead of Comanche.

[gabriel]

Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman) was the lead in the novel, and Captain Jake Cutter (John Wayne) had to be amplified for the film version.

[wesley]

When Paul (Stuart Whitman) asks Melinda (Joan O'Brien) about her husband, she tells him that he was killed at the Battle of San Jacinto. He must have been one unlucky soldier, since only nine Texans died in that battle.

[richard]

Besides the name of director of photography William H. Clothier, another crew member's name that appeared on the hotel registry signed by "Ed McBain" is that of assistant director Jack R. Berne.

[veronica]

When Captain Jake Cutter (John Wayne) signs the hotel register as "McBain", one of the names in the register is William H. Clothier, this movie's director of photography.

[mathew]

During much of the shooting, director Michael Curtiz was seriously ill (he died of cancer shortly after the film's release). On the days when Curtiz was too ill to work, John Wayne took over direction of the film, and when it was completed, he told the studio that he did not want credit as co-director, and insisted that Curtiz's name alone appear as director.

[christina]

The last film of Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, who died shortly after its completion.

[brent]

Stuart Whitman was the lead in Rio Conchos (1964), another film which had a remarkably similar plot to this one. In that film (which avoided the anachronisms of this film by being set after the Civil War), Whitman's character was the upstanding figure compelled to work with rogues who either had criminal pasts, or worked on the edge of the law.

[tammy]

At one point, this was seen a starring vehicle for Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster, planning to reunite them after Vera Cruz (1954).

[kyle]

The stern-wheeler steam boat "John B. Dickey", depicted as being docked at Galveston, Texas, is actually a prop boat on loan from Universal. It is probably in the large pond on Univeral Studio's back lot. It was known as "Enterprise" and can be seen in many other films such as The Mississippi Gambler (1953), The Far Country (1954), and 4 for Texas (1963). It was destroyed in the large fire on the Universal lot in 1967.

[nora]

20th Century Fox had the script re-written by John Wayne's regular writer James Edward Grant.

[willard]

Stuart Whitman, Ina Balin, and Nehemiah Persoff were all Jewish.

[ava]

John Wayne's daughter, Aissa, portrayed Melinda Marshall's daughter Bessie in this movie.

[scarlett]

According to a contemporary article in Daily Variety, a Western town set on the 20th Century-Fox lot was set to be demolished, but was burned down instead, for this film.