Popcorn and Inspiration: ‘3 Godfathers’
NR | 1 h 45 min | Drama, Western | 1948
Several 20th-century filmmakers, among them notably John Ford, took turns bringing Peter B. Kyne’s novella “The Three Godfathers” to the screen: a Westernized retelling of the timeless Biblical Christmas tale of the Three Wise Men.
Three robbers flee a posse of Arizona lawmen across a desert, led by Sheriff Buck Sweet (Ward Bond). The outlaws, Bob (John Wayne), Pete/Pedro (Pedro Armendáriz) and Bill (Harry Carey Jr.), come across a pregnant widow in a deserted horse-wagon and, reluctantly, help deliver her baby boy.
Ford’s scenes of swearing-in deputies, convey contrasting mandates of masculinity. Sweet swears in armed cowboys. The dying mother swears in fugitives as godfathers of her child….
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