The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

A new offering in the nascent Reel West film history series that focuses on that quintessentially American cinematic art form, the western.

Few lines of movie dialogue have had greater impact than the most famous line from John Ford’s 1962 masterpiece The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: ＂This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.＂ Although critics of the day did not realize its magnitude, with time The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has become cemented in our popular culture. This film connects to nearly every Western before or after, from Ford’s own Stagecoach (1939) to Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992).

Coming six years after The Searchers, Ford’s other great late-career masterpiece, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance may be even more archetypal of a changing West. In this first-ever book on the subject, Chris Yogerst unpacks one of the signature films of the post-classic Western period and one of the greatest works of director John Ford and actors John Wayne, James Stewart, Lee Marvin, and Woody Strode.

Chris Yogerst is a writer, professor, and film historian whose columns can be found in The Hollywood Reporter, TheWashington Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His most recent book, The Warner Brothers, was named one of the best film books of 2023 by Sight and Sound magazine.