The Criterion Collection

Peter Bogdanovich’s latest post on Blogdanovich, his recently launched Indiewire blog, tells quite a tale. In 1968, after conducting an interview with John Wayne for an AFI documentary on John Ford, the young critic and filmmaker was walked to his car by the Duke. They cut through Wayne’s garage, where he had stashed a treasure trove: 35 mm prints of nearly all of his films—Red River, The Quiet Man, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and so on. Bogdanovich was most excited to see a canister marked “Stagecoach”: as the original negative had been lost, the existence of this “mint copy” of Ford’s early western was “golden news for film lovers.” According to Bogdanovich, this chance occurrence was what saved the film from the dustheap of history. Note: the Criterion edition of Stagecoach includes an introduction by Bogdanovich.