Stagecoach. John Ford's pacemaking 1939 western pushed horse opera into the thoroughbred class, made a major star of John Wayne, and clinched an Academy Award for the late Thomas Mitchell, who gave a richly liquored-up performance as a thirsty, unshaven quack. In this ill-starred remake, Bing Crosby plays Mitchell's doctor role with more flippant humor, fewer prickly insights. Bing is good, but otherwise the movie suggests once more that Hollywood's twice-told tales seldom honor the past as much as they plunder it.
The rebuilt Stagecoach has a passenger list roughly equivalent to the original's but the trip from Dryfork to Cheyenne through...
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