FLORENCE-The free film series The Screening Room: Classics, Crowd-Pleasers, Cult Favorites and Neglected Gems launches a memorial miniseries, “Farewell to Harry Carey Jr. (1921-2012),” with a special showing of Rio Grande (1950) – the final installment of John Ford’s highly revered cavalry trilogy – at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 28, at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library, 350 N. Wood Ave., Florence, Alabama.
Combining characters and elements of his two previous cavalry films, Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Ford’s Rio Grande restores John Wayne to his Fort Apache role as Lt. Col. Kirby York. Set after the Civil War, the story begins when the son York has not seen in 15 years (played by Claude Jarman Jr., an Oscar winner for The Yearling) arrives at the frontier outpost where his father is training young recruits for brewing conflict with the Apaches. York’s personal predicament intensifies when his estranged wife Kathleen (Maureen O’Hara) arrives at the training camp, determined to take her son home.
Ford’s rich, layered, character-driven cavalry Western – which explores the conflict between family bonds and 
professional duty – features the late character actor and “John Ford Stock Company” veteran Carey (son of silent-screen cowboy and longtime Ford star Harry Carey) as one of Wayne’s eager young recruits. The ensemble cast also features Ford regulars and longtime Western favorites Victor McLaglen, Ben Johnson, J. Carrol Naish, Chill Wills, Grant Withers, Hank Worden, Jack Pennick and the Sons of the Pioneers.
The evening begins with a screening of “The Road to Wickenberg” episode of the half-hour television Western “Have Gun – Will Travel” (1958), featuring series star Richard Boone (as the elegant, well-educated hired gun Paladin) and Carey (whose long, versatile film career also included roles in Red River, Three Godfathers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,Wagon Master, Mister Roberts, The Searchers, Gremlins,Mask, The Whales of August and Tombstone).
The Screening Room series – sponsored by the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library, Pillar of Fire and Bookmarks Coffee Shop – is organized and hosted by film historian and Pillar of Fire founder Terry Pace, who teaches English at the University of North Alabama. Bookmarks, the library’s coffee shop, remains open until starting time for Rio Grande and all Screening Room events.
Admission is free to all screenings. For details, call the library at256-764-6564 or Pillar of Fire at 256-366-4512.
“He called him ‘the teacher’s pet of a chuckle-headed mick sergeant.’ What’s that mean, doc?” – Trooper Daniel “Sandy” Boone (Harry Carey Jr.) in John Ford’s Rio Grande (1950)
