Broken Arrow

Arizona in the 1870s. The prospector Tom Jeffords finds a wounded Apache boy and treats him. The encounter gives him an idea: the way to end a war that has lasted ten years is to talk to the other side. He learns Apache and rides alone into Cochise's camp, wanting an agreement to let the mail through. Jeffords also marries a woman there, Sonseeahray, and the whites in town count him a traitor. The film was among the first westerns in postwar Hollywood to present Native Americans as a party to negotiate with rather than an enemy. Cochise is a political actor here: there is opposition among his own people, and he pays for the agreement too. Its flaws are plain today, but for 1950 the position is unmistakable. Delmer Daves directed. James Stewart plays Jeffords and Jeff Chandler plays Cochise. The writing credit was corrected thirty years later. Albert Maltz of the Hollywood Ten wrote the screenplay but was blacklisted and could not be named; his friend Michael Blankfort put his own name on it and risked being blacklisted himself. In 1991 the Writers Guild restored the credit to Maltz and separately acknowledged Blankfort's courage. Who it is for: anyone who likes classic westerns and early examples of the genre questioning itself. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot overlook the casting. Most of the Apache roles are played by white actors, and the story stays inside the white hero's point of view throughout.