Western flop with John Wayne was banned in the UK

1939 was the year John Wayne broke out of Row Westerns’ poverty and became a full film star on the strength of his more than life portrait of Ringo’s child “Stagecoach” John Ford. The second ford pushed in on Wayne Tirling that Winchester Rifle, the American Western had gone from churning and burning programmers to big screen myth stuff. The movies would never be the same.

Wayne had to work hard to get to this point, which, 86 years ago, meant to make four or five films a year to keep your name on the tent. So while “Stagecoach” was an innovative film, he still had other standard issue oaters in the pipeline who had to get threaded through a projector before he went on with the business of making more list films.

One of these films was “Allegheny Uprising.” Directed by Hollywood diarist William A. Seiter and written by Pulp Plugger PJ Wolfson, he was an RKO production and, therefore, step up from the Westerns Republic who won his shot to Wayne in Stardom in Ford film. “Allegheny Uprising” also reunited Wayne with his co-star “Stagecoach” Claire TrevorWas, still a larger name at the time, again receiving the highest bills. Set in 1760, it is based on the black boys’ rebellion, a conflict that found colonists fighting back against the British for transporting them from “warlike goods.” At 81 minutes, he was not supposed to do more than obey the conventions of the genre in a way that pleased filmmen. So why in the HEC was banned in the United Kingdom?

“Allegheny Uprising” was released in the United States on November 10, 1939, and, despite Wayne and Trevor’s success with “Stagecoach,” bombed. His critical reputation has remained consistent over the last 86 years, so the best thing is probably best for Wayne and/or Trevor Cultletists.

If “Allegheny Uprising” is worth discussing today, it is for being banned from theaters in the UK during its initial relief. The issue was his illustration of the British as the bad guys in a war setting before the revolution. While the British had made their peace to be dropped out of the continental United States, they were not hot in displaying a film that made their military look like a bunch of losers while they were digging in against the Nazis without their Allies across the Atlantic. Pearl Harbor would change that two years later, but in 1939, the UK deservedly felt that the weight of the free world was resting on its shoulders.

The Ford’s classic “Drums along the Mohawk” was banned for the same reason, but, hey, if the country’s cultural leaders thought that their war effort could be compromised by a motion picture, the best thing to save civilization now and release the film after the axis powers were defeated. Meanwhile, “Allegheny Uprising” is available for rent on a variety of streaming platforms. I’d rather dial one of John Wayne’s best movies instead.