It is a remake of the black and white 1929 movie Hell's Heroes, starring Charles Bickman, Raymond Hatton, and Fred Kohler, directed by William Wyler.
Plot
Three rustlers—Bob Hightower, Pete and The Abilene Kid—ride into Welcome, Arizona. They have a friendly conversation with Sheriff Buck Sweet and his wife, who asks if they have seen her niece and her husband on the trail. The three subsequently rob the local bank, but the loot is lost when Kid is shot and his horse falls. They flee into the desert on two horses, pursued by Sweet and his men in a buckboard. Sweet shoots a hole in their water bag and then turns back to the depot.
The fugitives come within sight of the railroad's water tank, only to see Sweet station a guard there. Doubling back to Terrapin Tanks, a granite sump at the edge of the desert, the robbers lose their horses in a sandstorm. Desperate for water, they find the tanks dynamited by a tenderfoot, who disappeared chasing his thirsting horses. In a covered wagon nearby lies the man's wife—Sweet's niece—who is in labor. While Pete helps with the delivery, the other two laboriously collect water from nearby cacti. Many hours later, the woman has a boy, whom she names "Robert William Pedro Hightower" after her benefactors. Before dying, she exacts a promise from them to save him and be his godfathers.
Moved, the three desperadoes keep their vow. They find a chest filled with baby things, condensed milk, an advice book, and a Bible. Pete offers Bob the Bible for guidance, but Bob slaps it aside. Kid, certain that a higher power guided them there, compares the baby to the infant Jesus in the manger and themselves as the Three Wise Men. Inspired by a Bible verse, they head for the town of New Jerusalem, across the desert and over a mountain. The posse later comes upon the abandoned wagon, and recognizing the possessions of his niece-in-law, Sweet believes that the fugitives killed her and sets out for revenge.
When they cross a salt flat, Kid collapses and dies. Once past the flat, Pete trips, breaking his leg. He asks Bob to leave him his pistol, "for coyotes"; as Bob walks toward the mountain, he hears a single gunshot, which means that Pete committed suicide to avoid being devoured by coyotes. Staggering through a ravine, Bob finally falls, but in his delirium the ghosts of his two friends refuse to let him give up. Finding a donkey and her colt at the end of the ravine, he uses them to reach New Jerusalem, where he stumbles into a cantina to get drinks for himself and the baby. Just as Sheriff Sweet catches up with him, Bob collapses from exhaustion.
Bob is jailed in Welcome, but with his heroic rescue of the baby, the entire town has become sympathetic towards him. Bob gives his godchild into the temporary custody of the Sweets, now his friends, but when the judge asks him to give up custody permanently in exchange for a suspended sentence, he refuses to break his promise to the baby's mother. Pleased, the judge gives him the minimum sentence of a year and a day; and as he leaves for prison, all the townspeople give Bob a rousing farewell.
Amelia Yelda as Robert William Pedro Hightower (the Baby)
Production
John Ford had already adapted the novelette once before in Marked Men (1919), a silent film thought to be lost today. Ford's longtime friend Harry Carey Sr. starred in three adaptations of the story: Marked Men, The Three Godfathers (1916) and 3 Godfathers. Ford dedicated 3 Godfathers to Carey, who had died in 1947. At the beginning, stuntman Cliff Lyons is shown silhouetted against a sunset riding Carey's favorite horse Sonny over the words: "To the Memory of Harry Carey, Bright Star of the early western sky..."[3] Carey played a former horse thief in The Three Godfathers and a prison escapee in Marked Men.[4]
Although the opening credits include the prefix "and introducing" before the name of Harry Carey Jr., he had previously appeared in numerous films, including Red River, another John Wayne Western released earlier in 1948. Carey was shocked by Ford's verbal and physical abuse on the set, but Wayne explained to Carey that it was Ford's method of coaxing the performances that he wanted from the actors.[3]
[T]he sentimental story that is told in this handsome Western film stems directly from the format and the literary style of Bret Harte. And what's more, John Ford has filmed it so that the characters and gritty atmosphere that slosh from the screen in great warm sluices of grandeur and emotion are much like Harte's. ... And, more than the character of nature, Ford has captured in his style the leathery, dry-humored romance and sentiment of the traditional good badman. From a script spiced with wry and pungent dialogue, which Laurence Stallings and Frank S. Nugent wrote, he has brought forth a gang of frontier people who have the fullness and flavor of the hearty West.[7]
According to MGM records, the film earned $2,078,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $763,000 overseas, resulting in a profit of $1,598,000.[1][8]
Maltin describes the 1948 film as "sturdy, sentimental, sometimes beautiful", but feels that the last scene "didn't ring true".[9]
^Crowther, Bosley (March 4, 1949). "The Screen in Review: John Wayne, Harry Carey Jr. in 'Three Godfathers,' Metro Western, at the Capitol". The New York Times. p. 25.
