John Ford first encountered Merian C. Cooper in the mid-1930s, when Cooper was in charge of production at RKO and was executive producer on Ford’s The Lost Patrol (1934). The two men got along well, having in common a love of military matters (Cooper had been a pilot during World War I, Ford was to become a rear admiral in the Navy). At the end of the 1930s Cooper tried to interest David O. Selznick in Ford’s projected picture of Stagecoach. Cooper’s admiration for Ford was such that, when Selznick refused to get involved, dismissing it as “just another Western”, Cooper resigned from his position at Selznick-International. After World War II Cooper and Ford formed Argosy Pictures, which produced Ford’s “cavalry trilogy” among other films. In the 1930s one of Cooper’s associates was Jock Whitney, a wealthy businessman who helped finance Selznick’s Gone with the Wind. In the 1950s, Cooper was the logical person to turn to when Whitney’s cousin, C.V. “Sonny” Whitney, decided to get involved in film production. Both Whitney and Cooper had an early involvement with the new widescreen processes which were being developed, Cooper being for a time general manager of the Cinerama company while Whitney was one of its investors. In 1954 Cooper optioned a story that had appeared in the “Saturday Evening Post” under the title of The Avenging Texans, written by Alan LeMay. This was to become The Searchers, produced by the newly formed C.V. Whitney Pictures Inc with Merian C. Cooper as executive producer. Cooper’s wife, Dorothy Jordan, plays Martha in the film.

Ed Buscombe