The Colter Craven Story

[1] Presented as the 9th installment of the hour-long program's 4th season, it is the third of four episodes of various television series directed by filmmaker John Ford, the only four-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Director.

[5] Ford's previous TV episode, "Rookie of the Year", a December 1955 half-hour installment of the 1955–56 anthology series Screen Directors Playhouse, represents John Wayne's sole starring acting role on television, but Wayne made cameo appearances in "The Colter Craven Story" (as one of the key Union Army generals in the Civil War, William Tecumseh Sherman) and, two years later, in Ford's final TV episode, "Flashing Spikes", an October 1962 hour-long entry from another anthology, Alcoa Premiere, which aired from 1961 to 1963.

In early 1962, about a year-and-a-half after directing "The Colter Craven Story", John Ford recreated a longer version of the General Grant–General Sherman scene for "The Civil War", the third of five segments comprising the Metrocolor Cinerama epic, How the West Was Won (three of the lengthy production's other storyline sections were directed by Henry Hathaway and one by George Marshall).

The film, which held its initial public exhibition in Britain on November 1, 1962 (the US premiere was in February 1963), presented the scene in Cinerama's ultra-wide-screen perspective, but Ford still staged it in its 1960 television form, with extended dialogue content between Grant [played in How the West Was Won by Henry (Harry) Morgan, and in "The Colter Craven Story" by Paul Birch, who had previously portrayed both Ulysses S. Grant and his Confederate counterpart Robert E. Lee in episodes of other TV series] and Sherman (John Wayne), whose face is partially hidden in shadows throughout the conversation, in a manner reminiscent of its presentation in the TV episode.

[9] Wayne, whose scene with Morgan lasts just under four minutes, receives 12th billing among the 13 alphabetically-billed top-tier stars of How the West Was Won and is again recognized more through his posture and distinctive vocal delivery, than by the indistinct sight of his unshaven face, mirroring his "Michael Morris" one-line performance as Sherman in "The Colter Craven Story".

As Major Adams (Ward Bond) leads his wagon train through Utah's Monument Valley (using footage from Ford's 1950 frontier adventure/western Wagon Master, which co-starred Bond), the trail cook, Charlie Wooster (Frank McGrath) informs the Major that the water supply is running low.

At that point, the trail associate scout, Bill Hawks (Terry Wilson), rides up with news that he spotted smoke "three miles up ahead".

In the wagon, the Major and Hawks encounter a semi-drunken gentleman who introduces himself as Colter Craven (Carleton Young) and calls for his wife, Allaryce (Anna Lee), who addresses him as "Doctor".

Taking full measure of the doctor's alcoholism, Major Adams then tells him that "among other things, we don't allow whisky on this train, except that which is used for medicinal purposes — and that we carry on my wagon".

Upon arriving in Fort Mescalero, the Major tells Craven and his wife to "stay out of sight" and dips a bucket into the water trough.

The Major, alongside the two humbled brothers, with Kyle holding up the unsteady Quentin, enters into a room where their aristocratically-mannered father, Park (John Carradine), wearing a dandified jacket atop a shirt with ruffled sleeves, is sitting on a throne-like chair at a heavily ornate table, building a house of cards, next to a mid-game chessboard.

Park is unmoved and responds, "the Lord didn't dig the wells — I did", but eventually an unspecified [the majority of scenes from the Fort Mescalero sequence were edited out][7] arrangement is reached allowing animals to be watered "at ten cents a head".

With the boy's worried mother (Beula Blaze) watching, Craven skillfully diagnoses a broken leg and quickly sets it with splints.

As Major Adams tries to reason with him, Craven recounts that he could never perform proper surgery and that he paid for medical school with a job at a slaughterhouse.

The Major's voice continues, "I was in a little town in Illinois — Galena"… Bill Hawks and I had a little lumber outfit…" They see a man (Paul Birch), who Adams greets as Sam.

Walking into a local establishment's drinking area, Adams sees Sam at the bar and tells him that training raw recruits is a thankless task.

He asks a man in uniform who has a big, wide smile on his face (unbilled Jack Pennick, who appeared in 41 Ford films [between 1928 and 1962], the highest number of any member of the Company), "Is that you Tim Molloy?".

[2] As the men march through the streets of Galena, Adams' voice is heard narrating, "In about a month, Sam had just worked wonders with that bunch of bedraggled misfits…heh…heh… they were ready for anything… and it was just in time, too, cause the Rebs had fired on Fort Sumter… and the Civil War was on".

Seen wearing a resplendent uniform, with a sword, Adams continues with his voiceover, describing how Galena residents organized a send-off ceremony, "I was a proud man that day standing' on that platform, sayin' goodbye to our congressman, the mayor and his wife and our friends and neighbors".

As Adams persists, three uniformed men, indistinctly seen in darkness, arrive on horseback, with one of them dismounting and stating (in John Wayne's familiar voice), "Sam, Buell's up… Means we can resume fighting' in the mornin'".

In ever-increasing close-up, the Major enthusiastically yells, "All right, everybody… let's get our teams hitched up… we pull outa here in fifteen minutes… come on, we gotta river to cross… Wagoooooooons hoooooooo…..".

Although not a member of the Stock Company, 1930s B-western star Kermit Maynard (look-alike younger brother of Ken Maynard, usually wrongly assumed to be his brother's twin), who made brief unbilled appearances in Ford's They Were Expendable (1945) and My Darling Clementine (1946), is also unbilled in "The Colter Craven Story", seen for a moment as a member of the wagon train.

Seventeen or eighteen minutes were edited out of the 72-minute cut delivered by Ford, thus accounting for the abrupt nature of some of the scenes, particularly the Fort Mescalero storyline, including the excision of Chuck Roberson's entire performance as "Junior", eldest son of the John Carradine character, "Park", whose own single scene is the only remaining segment of a more complex eliminated sequence revolving around Dr. Craven's earlier mention of his refusal/inability to provide treatment for the deadly bullet wound suffered by Park's son "Buck".