Distinctly Montana Magazine

44 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 T he Western as a genre has a few titles, literary and cinemat- ic, that can be cited as touchstones for a whole host of stories that followed in their wake. Owen Wister's The Virginian and John Ford's 1939 film Stagecoach are right up at the top; Shane is alongside them, both the 1949 book and especially its 1953 screen incarnation. The movie is an enduring classic for a host of rea- sons, not the least among them the sense of refreshing Western authenticity permeating every frame. An element of said authen- ticity was bringing in author A. B. Guthrie, Jr., to write a screen- play from Jack Schaefer's novel. Guthrie's long attachment to Montana, as well as his own fictional stories of pioneer experience there, carries through into Shane. The story is well known. The eponymous character (Alan Ladd, who was cast when Montgomery Clift proved unavailable), a for- mer gunfighter with a mysterious past, rides into a valley where conflict is brewing between a ruthless cattle baron named Ryker (Emile Meyer) and the homesteaders. Shane falls in with one homesteading family, Joe Starrett (Van Heflin), his wife Marian (Jean Arthur, in her final screen appearance) and their little son Joey (Brando De Wilde). He is content working as their hired man, but the threat of violence only escalates, especially after Ryker calls in a hired killer named Wilson (Jack Palance). Shane's skill with a gun is necessary to save the people who have come to care for him, but it also guarantees that he can never be a part of their lives, leading to one of the most famous, and frequently referenced, conclusions in American cinema. Jack Schaefer was making a living as journalist when he penned Shane, his first work of fiction. Its eventual success motivated him to quit journalism and continue as an author of Westerns; ironi- cally enough, at the time his writing career took flight he had nev- er been anywhere out in the West. When the film rights were ac- quired, George Stevens came on as the director. Stevens already had an eclectic resume, having tackled smalltown Americana in Alice Adams (1935), romantic comedy with Woman of the Year (1942)—both starring Katherine Hepburn—action adventure with Gunga Din (1939), and literary adaptation with A Place in the Sun (1951), among other projects. It was Stevens's idea to ap- proach Guthrie to adapt the novel into a screenplay. Guthrie had no previous experience with screenwriting, but had won the Pu- litzer Prize for his novel The Way West (1949), the second book in what became referred to as his Montana trilogy—the other books are The Big Sky (1947) and These Thousand Hills (1956). Stevens had chosen an adapter who not only wrote about the West, but had grown up there. Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr. was born January 13, 1901, in Bed- ford, Indiana. His parents moved to Choteau, Montana, when he was six months old; he would have an attachment to Choteau all his life. He graduated from the University of Montana with a jour- nalism degree in 1923. After a series of odd jobs, he eventually ended up in Kentucky, where he worked as a reporter and edito- rial writer for the Lexington Leader newspaper for the next twen- ty-one years. In 1944 he received the Nieman Fellowship from MONTANA MEDIA by KARI BOWLES & SHANE A.B. GUTHRIE

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