Red River

John Wayne stars as a frontiersman trying to carve a ranch out of worthless land while caring for an orphan he has adopted. Years later, with the ranch seemingly tamed, he is forced to drive his cattle an arduous distance. Hawks used this archetypal Western situation to present, in epic mode, a study of the effects of danger on the male group. (Does not circulate)

Thomas Dunson (John Wayne) is a stubborn man who wants nothing more than to start up a successful cattle ranch in Texas. Dunson learns that his love interest Fen (Coleen Gray) was killed in an Indian attack. The next day, an orphaned boy named Matthew Garth (played as a boy by Mickey Kuhn and as an adult by Montgomery Clift) wanders into Dunson and Groot's camp, traumatized and babbling incoherently. Fourteen years later, Dunson now has a fully operational cattle ranch and his herd now numbers over ten thousand cattle.