Release date:March 9, 1948, 128 minutes
Director: Text
Cast Includes:
Synopsis:
Lt. Col. Thursday (Henry Fonda) is sent from the East to take command of Fort Apache in the Arizona desert. Bitter because he has been demoted from his Civil War rank of general, he thinks only of winning fame and glory so he can return to army importance.
At the Fort, the hard-bitten veterans of Apache campaigning resent the colonel's obvious scorn of them and his utter ignorance of Indian fighting. They include Captain York (John Wayne), Captain Collingwood (George O'Brien), young Lt. O'Rouke (John Agar), son of Sergeant-Major O'Rouke (Ward Bond), and sergeants Beaufort, Mulcahy and Quincannon (Pedro Armendariz, Victor McLaglen and Dick Foran).
Romance quickly springs up between the colonel's daughter (Shirley Temple) and Lt. O'Rouke, but the colonel frowns at the idea of his child marrying a nomcom's son, and his insistence on rigid discipline arouses the antagonism of his men.
Finally the colonel's burning ambition sees its opportunity. Cochise (Miguel Inclan), chief of the Apaches, resenting the corrupt tactics of the local agent, leads his tribe across the border into Mexico, thereby attracting national attention. If he can bring them back, the colonel feels his reputation will be made.
He sends Captain York and Sergeant Beaufort to arrange a meeting. Cochise, trusting York's word, brings his people back over the line. But the colonel, instead of arriving with a small bodyguard as he has promised, appears with hie entire command and arrogantly orders Cochise to start back to the reservation or take the consequences.
Captain York protests this rash step, but the colonel accuses him of cowardice, and attacks. But Cochise, a brilliant strategist, throws his thousand warriors at the smaller cavalry force and wipes it out, save for Captain York's little detail guarding a commissary cache.
And back at Fort Apache Captain York, for the good of the service and the memory of his fallen comrades, covers up the colonel's blunder to allow his name to live on in the army's annals of heroism..
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