Vitals

John Wayne as Ethan Edwards, obsessive Confederate Army veteran

West Texas and New Mexico Territory, Fall 1868 through 1873

Film: The Searchers
Release Date: May 26, 1956
Director: John Ford
Costume Designer: Charles Arrico (uncredited)

Background

Ten days after its Chicago premiere, John Ford’s Western epic The Searchers was released 70 years ago today on May 26, 1956—which coincided with its star John Wayne’s 49th birthday. Successful upon its release, The Searchers remains considered not just one of the greatest Westerns but also one of the best films of all time, influencing generations of contemporary and future filmmakers including David Lean, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Wim Wenders.

The Searchers begins in 1868 when Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) returns to his brother’s home in West Texas, following years spent fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War and the second French intervention in Mexico. Following a Comanche raid on the Edwards homestead that leaves most of his brother’s family dead—and his nieces seemingly abducted—Ethan and the family’s adopted brother Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter) ride in pursuit of the missing girls. Lucy is soon found murdered, but Ethan’s search for Debbie (Natalie Wood) continues for five long years, stunningly photographed in VistaVision by cinematographer Winton C. Hoch against Ford’s favorite filming location: the picturesque Monument Valley along Utah’s southern border with Arizona.

Frank S. Nugent adapted his screenplay from Alan Le May’s 1954 novel of the same name, itself reportedly based on real-life “searchers” like Black teamster Britton Johnson and James W. Parker, who financed a band of Texas Rangers who retrieved Cynthia Ann Parker from her marriage to a Comanche war chief after she had been abducted 24 years earlier at the age of nine.

The flawed, Ahab-like character of Ethan Edwards has been described as one of John Wayne’s greatest performances, to the extent that Duke himself paid tribute to the role by naming his sixth child Ethan.

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What’d He Wear?

Bib-front shirts were indelibly established as part of John Wayne’s screen image as early as his 1930s Westerns like Stagecoach. Typically on loan from Western Costume Co., Duke often sported the same shirts across different productions; for example, the red bib shirt he wears in The Searchers would later reappear in Rio Bravo (1959) as well while this blue bib shirt’s identical equivalent appeared with a lieutenant colonel’s rank insignia attached to the soldiers in The Horse Soldiers (1959).

Duke’s navy-blue twill bib shirt as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers features a keystone front bib with ten large white four-hole buttons along the edges, arranged in two tapered columns of five each, covering a more traditional button-up front with dark-blue buttons. The long sleeves are also finished with a single white button on each cuff. (You can see the screen-worn shirt posted by the Old West & Native American Art Show & Auction.)

When on the trail, Ethan loosely knots patterned kerchiefs around his neck to catch sweat. At the start of their search in 1868, he wears a navy neckerchief with white polka dots. As the narrative stretches approximately five years later to 1873, he has swapped this out for the same neckerchief with a white-and-red striped print that Duke would later wear in films like McLintock! (1963).

Ethan tops his look with a black wide-brimmed cowboy hat, styled with a curled-up brim and a low, dented pinch-front crown. He started The Searchers with a distinctive silver metal band over the base of the crown, though this is already gone by the time he’s dressed in the blue bib shirt, reveling the more standard black grosgrain band and brown rawhide stampede string.

Ethan stands tall in brown work trousers during the finale, though his pants across most of The Searchers are very anachronistic Levi’s 501 jeans. Levi Strauss & Co. technically began manufacturing their “denim overalls” after the U.S. Patent Office awarded their patent for copper rivets in May 1873, though the visible “Levi’s” red tab on the back-right pocket of Ethan’s jeans wasn’t introduced until 1936, when it was added to dissuade trademark infringements.

Ethan’s jeans are a curious mishmash of 1930s-era Levi’s with belt loops (not added until 1922), no cinch-back, and a set of rear suspender buttons which may have been added for the production rather than sourcing true early 20th-century Levi’s that still had suspender buttons. These also retain the familiar five-pocket design of curved front pockets, inset watch pocket, and patch back pockets. He self-cuffs the bottoms.

The rigors of trail life could forgive Ethan’s redundant belt and braces approach to his jeans and trousers, held up with a smooth russet leather belt that closes through a brass-finished single-prong buckle and the same suspenders he had worn with his Confederate uniform. These braces consist of wide swaths of tan cloth, bisected with two pale-blue stripes, rigged with silver-toned adjusters and brown leather hooks to connect to buttons along the outside of his waistband.

Ethan wears the same gun-belt that John Wayne reportedly encountered in New Mexico during the early 1950s and had replicated by Andy Anderson so that he could wear it in all of his Westerns from Hondo (1953) through Rooster Cogburn (1975). The belt itself is a wide, folded strip of distressed tan roughout cowhide, detailed with brown oiled leather cartridge loops across the back and left side—which we see are filled with both revolver and longer rifle cartridges—and a matching brown ranger-style strap across the front, closing through a steel single-prong buckle. Looped onto the right side is Duke’s “half-breed holster”—which combines the classic “slim jim” with a hidden skirt and loop.

Ethan’s brown leather cowboy boots were almost certainly made by the San Antonio-based Lucchese, John Wayne’s preferred bootmaker for decades. These have tall riding heels, decorative shafts, and the usual bug-and-wrinkle stitching over the instep.

Even well-made boots like Luccheses need relief, so Ethan changes into comfortable open-toed slippers when making camp. These are constructed simply, with wide tan suede vamps and matching heel quarters sewn to beige leather soles.

A brief scene swaps out Ethan’s black hat for a taller-crowned silverbelly hat, paired with a tan buckskin button-up jacket with long fringe along the collar and shorter fringe on the shoulder seams.

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The Guns

Following the costumes’ loose relationship with historical authenticity, Ethan Edwards is armed for his expedition with 1870s-era firearms despite the story beginning in 1868. His sidearm is the classic Single Action Army revolver, which Colt introduced in 1873 and has since been produced in at least thirty calibers including the original .45 Long Colt cartridge. Immortalized as “the Peacemaker”, the Single Action Army was originally configured in a trio of barrel lengths: the 7½”-barrel Cavalry, the 5½”-barrel Artillery, and the 4¾”-barrel Civilian, Gunfighter, or Quickdraw model, which is what Ethan carries.

Ethan’s long arm is the lever-action Winchester Model 1892 Saddle Ring Carbine, a slightly shortened variant of the Model 1892 rifle. Seen across many of Duke’s films, this Model ’92 has an enlarged lever loop that allowed the actor to twirl the rifle one-handed by the loop—his trademark trick that he pioneered with sutntman Yakima Canutt for Stagecoach.

Though ubiquitous in Westerns set during this period, the Winchester Model 1892 is ultimately an anachronism, likely used as a stand-in for the older Winchester Model 1873 due to their strong visual similarities. Nicknamed “The Gun That Won the West,” the Model 1873 became closely associated with frontier expansion across the Great Plains and beyond, though even it would only have been available during the final year in which The Searchers is set. In reality, a former Confederate scout like Ethan Edwards would have been more likely to carry an earlier lever-action such as the brass-framed Henry 1860 or Winchester Model 1866 “Yellow Boy” in the years immediately following the Civil War.

When Winchester introduced the Model 1892, it was chambered in several popular revolver-compatible centerfire cartridges including .32-20, .38-40, and the venerable .44-40 Winchester Center Fire (WCF), allowing riders to carry one type of ammunition for both rifle and revolver. After more than one million rifles had been manufactured by the end of production in 1945, the Model ’92 was also offered in calibers like .25-20 Winchester and .218 Bee, though .44-40 remained its signature chambering throughout its long production run.

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How to Get the Look

As another John Ford film would later tells us, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” This aphorism sartorially extends to John Wayne’s usual screen costumes, such as his look in The Searchers that is much more Hollywood hero cowboy than rooted in actual Western tradition. And that’s just fine.

• Navy-blue twill cowboy bib shirt with 10×5-button front bib and single-button cuffs
• Red-and-white or blue-and-white printed neckerchiefs
• Blue denim Levi’s 501 button-fly jeans with belt loops, suspender buttons, and five-pocket layout
• Russet leather belt with brass-toned single-prong buckle
• Tan, yellow, and light blue striped suspenders with brown leather hooks
• Tan folded roughout leather gun belt with brown front strap (with steel single-prong buckle), brown leather cartridge loops, and brown leather “half-breed” right-side holster
• Black felt hat with wide, curled-edge brim and black grosgrain band
• Dark-brown leather Lucchese cowboy boots with decorative shafts
• Black socks

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

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The Quote

That’ll be the day.