Journey's End

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 Sioux territory is dull going. Mostly, the air of mounting crisis is indicated by having the actors glare at one another. As the fugitive Ringo Kid, Alex Cord can barely squeak by in Wayne's roomy old boots. Cord looks bored, a reasonably sensible reaction to Ann-Margret's pastel flouncing in the painted-lady role defined for keeps by Claire Trevor. In case they don't know what they have missed, the cast ought to sit home some night and catch the real thing on the late show.

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