Sergeant Rutledge (1960)

Director:

John Ford

Writers:

James Warner Bellah (written by) and
Willis Goldbeck (written by) ...

Release Date:

18 May 1960 (USA)

Genre:

Western | Crime

Tagline:

It's the rendezvous with DEATH for men to whom DEATH was no stranger!

Plot:

Respected black cavalry Sergeant Brax Rutledge stands court-martial for raping and killing a white woman and murdering her father, his superior officer.

Plot Keywords:

Sergeant | Rape | Murder | Courtroom | Buffalo Soldier

Cast

Jeffrey Hunter	...	Lt. Tom Cantrell (counsel for the defense)
Constance Towers	...	Mary Beecher
Billie Burke	...	Mrs. Cordelia Fosgate
Woody Strode	...	1st Sgt. Braxton Rutledge
Juano Hernandez	...	Sgt. Matthew Luke Skidmore
Willis Bouchey	...	Col. Otis Fosgate (president of the court-martial)
Carleton Young	...	Capt. Shattuck (prosecutor)
Judson Pratt	...	Lt. Mulqueen (court-martial board member)

Runtime:

111 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Certification:

UK:PG | West Germany:12 (nf) | USA:Approved (certificate #19413) | Canada:PG (video rating) | Finland:K-16 | Spain:13

Filming Locations:

Mexican Hat, Utah, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Final film of Billie Burke.

Goofs:

Continuity: Mary Beecher claims at the trial that she first met Sgt. Rutledge on a caboose, but in her flashback, she clearly meets him in the desert right before they are attacked by Apaches.

Quotes:

1st Sgt. Braxton Rutledge: Soldier can never think by his heart, ma'am. He got to think by the book.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Big Guns Talk: The Story of the Western (1997) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Captain Buffalo

"I'm a man."

I first caught the tail end of this John Ford masterpiece on AMC during Black History month, and couldn't wait for it to pop up on the schedule again so I could see the whole thing. I couldn't believe I had never heard of this film before, and after I did some research and discovered how reviewers in 1960 had dismissed it, I understood why. They went expecting To Kill A Mockingbird and got Breaker Morant instead. Ford was WAY ahead of his time with this one. Woody Strode, who plays the title character, helped break the color barrier in professional football years before Jackie Robinson did so in baseball. And he broke some huge barriers in this film, too. Every young black man -- heck, every young American male today -- should be required to watch this film. As Strode later said, Ford and script writers "put classic words in my mouth." Words that would be echoed three years later by Dr. Martin Luther King in his immortal "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln memorial.