The Searchers — Making of an American Legend

By Glenn Frankel, 432 pages, Bloomsbury USA, 2013
Reviewed by Gregg Herrington, April 2, 2020

In her April 1 contribution to this delightful, anyone-may-play, collection of book reviews established by my former newspaper colleague Jim Stasiowski, Sue Fountain praises Paulette Jiles’ News of the World. The book is about the kidnapping (circa 1866) of a young Texas girl by Kiowa Indians and the man who found and returned her to family.

It brings to mind a totally different sort of book but one with a similar starting point, 2013’s The Searchers — The Making of an American Legend by Glenn Frankel. He deftly weaves two subjects: (1) the Comanches’ place in Southwest U.S. history including the saga of the girl they kidnapped in 1836, and (2) the making of movie director John Ford’s 1956 classic, The Searchers, ranked the No. 1 best western by the American Film Institute.

Frankel, winner of a 1989 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting at The Washington Post, reprised his skillful two-subject blending and reportage in 2017 with High Noon — The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic. The movie’s principal screen writer, Carl Foreman, was a victim of that disgraceful era. High Noon, by the way, is ranked 2nd-best Western by the AFI.

For any other “Copper Clapper Caper” followers with an interest in the Old West (and the myth of Wyatt Earp as all-around good guy), I recommend Jeff Guinn’s 2011 The Last Gunfight — The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral and How it Changed the American West.