Trivia / Cheyenne Autumn

• Billing Displacement: Jimmy Stewart is sometimes listed as a main star of the film, but he's only onscreen for around ten minutes, in the famously disconnected Dodge City sequence that was cut from some prints.
• Fake Nationality: The main Cheyenne roles are played by Ricardo Montalbán, Dolores del Río and Gilbert Roland (all born in Mexico), plus Victor Jory (born in Canada to American parents) and Sal Mineo (from The Bronx), while the remainder of the tribe are played by Navajos who lived around Monument Valley.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: John Ford initially conceived the film as a smaller drama with non-professional Native American actors, but by the time it got greenlighted it had become an Epic Movie that would feature well-known stars.
• The Other Marty: Spencer Tracy was originally cast as Carl Schurz, but left due to illness and was replaced by Edward G. Robinson. Oddly, Robinson would replace Tracy again for the exact same reason in The Cincinnati Kid the next year.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Blonde bombshell Carroll Baker as prim Quaker Schoolmarm Deborah.
  • Karl Malden, who tended to play admirable, if gruff, Everymen, in a rare villain role as Captain Wessels.
  • In the opposite direction of Malden, Mike Mazurki usually played tough guy villains but has the role of the jolly Sgt. Wachowski.
  • Ken Curtis specialized in amusing, likable hayseeds like Festus Haggen on Gunsmoke and Charlie McCorry in The Searchers, but here he's a Jerkass cowboy who kills a Cheyenne scout looking for food For the Evulz and scalps him.
• What Could Have Been:
  • John Ford wanted Anthony Quinn to play Dull Knife and Richard Boone to play Little Wolf. He also suggested Woody Strode for a role. The studio insisted on Ford's casting Ricardo Montalbán.
  • Ford offered Jeffrey Hunter the role of Second Lieutenant Scott, but he turned it down in favour of the television series Temple Houston, which was cancelled after one season. Patrick Wayne ended up in the role (making him the Wayne family's representative in Ford's last Western).
  • The usually puritanical Ford contemplated filming a nude scene with Carroll Baker bathing in a river, but ultimately it wasn't shot.

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