“On the night of March 8th, 1916, a large mounted force of Mexican rebels under Pancho Villa crossed the American border and attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing and wounding both American civilians and soldiers. As a result of this action, the United States Army sent an expedition into Mexico with orders to capture Villa and disperse his forces. It was during this campaign that one man, a United States Army officer, was forced to come face to face with two of the great fundamental questions that affect mankind: What is courage? What is cowardice? This is the story of his search for an answer.”
John Wayne accused the film of a lack of patriotism and condemned his pal Gary Cooper for taking the role of a coward who is charged with collecting names of heroes for the Congressional Medal of Honor. He claimed the film made a mockery of the coveted award and was quite outspoken about the film’s impact on our own servicemen. Was he right? That’s a call you’ll get to make for yourself, because KL Studio Classics has just released They Came To Cordura on Blu-ray, and you’ll have the opportunity of seeing the film and drawing your own conclusions. I have my own thoughts on the film, and I’m happy to share them with you here.
“One act of cowardice doesn’t make a man a coward forever, just as one act of bravery doesn’t make a man a hero forever.”
Col Rogers (Keith) is sent for what just might be the final U.S. Calvary mission on horseback. It was. The Mexican troops have retreated to an estate where the Calvary makes their final attack successfully. Once the fighting is over, Rogers his hoping for his own Congressional Medal of Honor so that he can retire at a higher rank and with more pay. To clinch his chances, he personally led the charge instead of giving it to a junior officer. When he approaches the man he assigned the task of Awards Officer Major Thomas Thorn (Cooper) he denies the request, citing that it’s a commander’s duty to lead a charge and does not fall into that above-and-beyond territory needed for the medal. But Thorn does have five candidates. Rogers isn’t happy, and we get the first idea that Thorn has something in his past he’d rather not have widely known. Because WWI is starting in Europe, the brass think that it’s only a matter of time before Americans are involved in the fighting. So these medal candidates can’t be risked on the battlefield. Thorn is ordered to take them and a prisoner back to Cordura where they’ll be safe and can be submitted for the honor.
The prisoner is Adelaide Geary, played by Rita Hayworth. She’s accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It was her estate the enemy retreated to, and she was caught administering food and medical treatment. So the seven of them take off in the wilderness toward Cordura. Geary ends up on the wrong side of the men’s temper as she willfully smokes and drinks tequila while the soldiers haven’t had either in a long time. The bad blood ferments, particularly by Sgt. John Chawk, played by Van Heflin. It doesn’t help that the men haven’t been told why they are on this mission. That surely aggravates the ranking officer among the men, Lt. William Fowler, who is played by Tab Hunter. Throughout the ride Thorn interviews each of the candidates to get info for the award presentation, but he has his own reasons. He’s trying to find out where that act of heroism comes from. We learn he’s fighting his own cowardice, and among the candidates one of the officers knows he was cited for cowardice by hiding in a ditch during an attack. Cpl. Milo Trubee, played by Richard Conte, tries to use that information to blackmail Thorn into cutting him slack. It doesn’t work, and when Thorn finally lets the candidates know the true nature of their mission, the truth comes out.
The team ends up walking into a Mexican ambush, and Geary ends up offering an unpopular solution so they can save themselves. The renegades really only want their horses, and if they give them up the renegades will go away. This is the final straw for most of the men, and the group begins to turn against Thorn. Eventually there is open hostility with Sgt. Chawk openly promising to kill him if he so much as closes his eyes. The group eventually have no food or water and appear lost and perhaps miles off course. They even start to stone Thorn because he had collected their weapons. Just as it all falls apart, one of the men looks over a ridge and finds that they have reached Cordura after all. When the candidates read what he’d written about them along the way, they have varying degrees of guilt. The truth is they all had reasons for not wanting the medal for fear of missing out on promotions to being wanted for murder and can’t afford the publicity.
One of the film’s deep flaws is that Gary Cooper is playing a man half his age. Thorn was 30, and Cooper was 57. There was a lot of heat for that, but I’m not sure it mattered until the character started to suffer abuse from both the elements and his men. Cooper was a good actor still at that time, and he carried the man looking for answers and redemption quite well. Look for other interesting names in the cast. One of the candidates was played by Dick York, who would later find fame on Bewitched as Darrin Stevens. But he injured his back on the film quite badly. It never healed and got so bad later that it caused him to have to leave Bewitched where he was replaced by Dick Sargent. In a bit of irony, one of the candidates wishes a broken back on the character. You’ll also note Richard Conte as the blackmailing candidate. He would go on to become the nemesis of the Corleone family in The Godfather. Yep, that’s Don Barzini. Look also for Edward Platt, who is best known as the Chief in Get Smart.
The film was based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, who was himself an Awards Officer in WWII. He was unhappy that the film’s climax was changed dramatically from what he’d written. In the novel Thorn is stoned to death by the film’s candidates for heroism. That wasn’t going to happen, and what turned out to be a story of redemption by all of the characters grew from a story intended to shock. I think the ending here serves the purpose, and it’s still left quite open in the end. We never learn the consequences of any of these actions.
The locations are quite nice. The film was shot in both New Mexico and Utah, and it adds that much more authenticity to the film’s punishing conditions. Unfortunately, it didn’t win at the box office. I doubt John Wayne’s comments were much of a contributing factor. There was a sequel planned, but the box office numbers killed any chance of that happening. That was maybe a good thing for Director Robert Rossen, because his next film ended up being The Hustler with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleeson. It’s a classic. This one isn’t, but I’m glad that Kino Lorber is putting in such an effort to save these films. “They have one thing in them that is a miracle and a mystery. It redeems them. They don’t know what it is themselves, but they have it. I have to save it.”
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