The tears of my tracks

The Horse Soldiers

(1959)

Must have seemed like a good idea to add William Holden to the John Ford-John Wayne-cavalry formula, but Holden has never looked so uncomfortable; it's no surprise that Ford never worked with him again.

In a story based on an actual Civil War campaign, the Duke is a colonel assigned by Grant and Sherman to march through Mississippi on a suicide mission and destroy a rail junction crucial to the support of the Rebel forces defending Vicksburg. Holden is . . . well, Hawkeye Pierce. And there's a woman--a proud, defiant, treacherous daughter of the Confederacy (Constance Towers, notable for a nuclear pout) who ultimately, of course, succumbs to the well-hidden charms of Colonel Marlowe (who--this is supposed to give his character depth, you see--builds railroads in real life and thus hates having to destroy one for war, and incidentally hates doctors because two killed his young wife with a wrong-headed operation).

One nice bit has boys in a southern military academy marching out against the Yankees in a desperate bid to buy time for Bedford Forrest's men to intercept the bluecoats (Marlowe's troops gallantly retreat to avoid having the slaughter the little fellas, and also to give them a taste of glorious victory), but mostly it just makes you feel bad for Ford and Wayne and especially Holden--or maybe especially for Althea Gibson, who plays Miss Hannah's slave and (of course) beloved friend and confidante. Gibson was one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century, and in this, her only film role, she proved that she was every bit the thespian that Babe Ruth was.