Fort Apache

When Shirley Temple died two months ago, I was tempted to watch some of her films. I'd seen many of them as a little kid years ago--I have distinct memory of watching Heidi (not sure if it was the airing that pre-empted the football game). I decided against it, figuring they don't hold up except for purely nostalgic reasons, and are far too saccharine.

However, I did have a film of hers in my Netflix queue, so I moved it up, where it languished labeled "Short Wait" for weeks, perhaps demanded by others seeking to see Temple films. But it's hardly known as being a Shirley Temple film--it's Fort Apache, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda and John Wayne.

That Shirley Temple was in Fort Apache is sort of an odd thing. It ended up being one of her last roles, filmed when was about 18. She met her first husband, John Agar, during the filming. Still charismatic and dimpled, Temple has a few nice scenes as the willful, spoiled daughter on Fonda's fort commander, but she's not the main focus here.

Fort Apache is one of Ford's best Westerns, the first in his so-called "Cavalry" trilogy, released in 1948. It's one of the first Westerns that didn't treat the Indians as mindless savages, and Fonda's character is one of remarkable nuance.

The setting is the eponymous fort in Arizona, post-Civil War. Fonda has been assigned to it, and he's not happy, moving from Europe to a dusty backwater. A widower, he takes his daughter, Temple (vividly named Philadelphia Thursday), and she does her best to make a home. But the others in the fort resent his presence. Wayne, as Captain York, the provisional commander, gives him a chance, but Fonda is by the book and is looking for glory--namely, capturing the renegade Apache leader, Cochise.

The film starts as a kind of comedy of manners--Fonda's uptight Colonel dealing with the lax discipline of the fort. Agar, as the lieutenant just in from West Point, is immediately drawn to Temple, and vice versa. Some of Ford's stock company--Victor McLaghlen and Ward Bond--are on hand, with Irish brogues and a thirst for whiskey. An amusing scene has McLaghlen and his cohorts, ordered to destroy a barrel of moonshine, picking up a ladle and announcing they have a lot of work to do.

The film takes on a more serious tone as it leads to a full scale battle, shot, of course, in Monument Valley. Wayne has talked Cochise into returning from Mexico to the reservation to talk peace, but Fonda wants to attack him, enraging Wayne. The film presents Fonda as the symbol of arrogant ignorance, not caring about the customs of the Apache, just the letter of the law. But Fonda is not a martinet (he even says so at one point). He is a man unable, even if he wanted to, of relaxing his standards.

As with all Ford films, it's impeccably shot. The exteriors were shot in infrared film, which makes the clouds look even more dramatic. Although there is a bit too many ballroom dances, and Temple and Agar, despite their real-life romance, don't exhibit much chemistry together, the film is vibrant.

Shirley Temple's post-film career was exemplary, so there's certainly no regret by anyone that she didn't continue it. Frankly, it's hard to see her expanding upon the cutie patootie that she was as a child, and perhaps she had no interest in expanding. But she does fine in Fort Apache, even though she is a footnote to an otherwise classic Western film.