Movie |
Funeral | Native American
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Maureen O'Hara, her brother Charles B. Fitzsimons and writer Albert Sidney Fleischman formed Carousel Productions in order to get the film made. Sam Peckinpah was hired for $15,000, Brian Keith was paid $30,000; the entire picture was done for $300,000. Another brother, James O'Hara, has a small role in the opening scenes.
The producers found it difficult to get financial backing for the picture due to the subject matter (carrying a dead child in a coffin through Indian territory). They refused to change the story. Based on the success of the novel, "Yellowleg", on which the film is based, Pathe America was persuaded to co-finance the film along with the Theater Owners of America.
According to Maureen O'Hara in her memoirs "'Tis Herself", Sam Peckinpah was a very lousy director. For instance, he missed the filming of an important sequence involving an Indian attack. Peckinpah also seemed to enjoy cruelty towards animals, such as a horse trampling a snake to death. O'Hara also felt very uncomfortable seeing Peckinpah on the set scratching his crotch all day long. She wrote that he "didn't have a clue how to direct a movie" and was "one of the strangest and most objectionable people I had ever worked with".
The corresponding novel written by screenwriter Albert Sidney Fleischman actually came after, rather than before, the finished script. At producer Charles B. Fitzsimons's request, Fleischman, himself a previously published novelist of some note, proceeded to novelize his own screenplay in order to gauge potential demand. The resulting work would sell 500,000 copies in the space of four months, more than enough to get the cameras rolling.
This was Sam Peckinpah's feature directorial debut (he had already helmed several TV episodes, however).
"Kit Tilden: It's strange - I feel I know better than any man I've ever known, yet I hardly know you at all."
"Yellowleg: You don't know me well enough to hate me that much. Hating is a subject I know a little something about. You got to be careful it don't bite you back. I know somebody who spent five years looking for a man he hated. Hating and wanting revenge was all that kept him alive. He spent all those years tracking that other man down, and when he caught up with him, it was the worst day of his life. He'd get his revenge all right, but then he'd lose the one thing he had to live for."
