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Film details
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Featuring
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Director
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Country
USA
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Year
1962
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Genre
Western
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Type
Film
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Category
Fiction
Introduction
“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is about as fine a thesis on the intermingling of western fact and fiction as has ever been filmed.”
Tony Thomas, A Wonderful Life: The Films and Career of James Stewart, 1988
John Ford’s recent westerns, such as The Searchers (1956), had luxuriated in Technicolor open spaces, but for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance he returned to shooting on sound stages and in monochrome. Fittingly so, as this late work is a sombre reflection on what was lost when education and morality – incarnated by Stewart as East Coast lawyer Ransom Stoddard – crept westward as civilising influences.
Told within a flashback framework, as Stoddard comes clean to the press about who really shot outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), Ford’s classic waves a bittersweet adieu to the bygone values of the Old West, typified by the rough justice of rancher Tom Doniphon (Wayne). The paper-men ultimately opt to “print the legend” – famous words that have been taken as a maxim for Ford’s own myth making.
Ford was one of three directors credited on How the West Was Won (1962), a mammoth epic of western progress featuring both Wayne and Stewart.
Cast & Credits
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Cast
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Tom Doniphon
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Ransom Stoddard
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Hallie Stoddard
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Liberty Valance
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Dutton Peabody
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Link Appleyard
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Doc Willoughby
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Starbuckle
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Nora Erickson
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Peter Erickson
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Jason Tully
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Maxwell Scott
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Pompey
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Amos Carruthers
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Floyd
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Reese
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Handy Strong
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Ben Carruthers
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Mayor Charles Winder
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Hasbrouck
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[Jack, the bartender]
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[stage coach passenger]
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[election council president]
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[drunk]
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[Clute Dumfries]
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[.]
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Credits
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Direction:
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Directed by
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Assistant Director
Production:
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©
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©
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Produced by
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[Production Manager]
Writing:
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Screenplay by
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Screenplay by
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Based on the story by
Photography:
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Director of Photography
Special Effects:
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Process Photography
Editing:
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Edited by
Design:
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Art Direction
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Art Direction
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Set Decoration
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Set Decoration
Costumes:
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Costumes by
Make-up:
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Make-up Supervision
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Hair Style Supervision
Music:
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Music Scored by
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[Music] Conducted by
Sound:
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Sound Recording by
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Sound Recording by
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Sound System
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