"I began to realize that my father’s work was more significant than I had ever imagined," Mr. Scott said. He established the Ned Scott Archive later that year. By then he had learned that Ned had shot the special stills for Paul Strand’s "Redes" ("The Wave") in the mid-30’s, as well as those for John Ford’s 1939 western melodrama "Stagecoach," the film generally recognized as the movie that put the western on the cinematic map, starring John Wayne as Ford’s archetypal hero.

In 1993, Norman Scott, then a real estate investor in Louisville, Ky., was leafing through his father’s old letters, looking for vintage airmail stamps to augment his son’s collection. Ned Scott, a Hollywood-based photographer who died of liver failure in 1964 at age 57, had been something of a mystery to Norman, who had never grasped his father’s place in the world of 30’s and 40’s photography. Then Norman read one of the letters, dated 1935. It referred to Ned’s photo session with Katharine Hepburn. Then he found a cache of negatives marked "Hepburn heads." Like all of Ned’s work, the Hepburn portraits had been filed in boxes, untouched since Ned abandoned Hollywood in 1948.

While I am proud to be the producer of "STAGECOACH", will you please to everything in your power to see that the picture is known as John Ford's achievement.

I read the story--but after Ford had purchased it and brought it to me. Again, it was Ford who worked with Dudley Nichols in creating the fine script; and John Wayne as The Ringo Kid was also Ford's idea.

I think the booklet on "STAGECOACH" is interesting and attractive. It fails, however, to indicate the full measure of credit that is due John Ford for his part in the making of the picture.

I am writing only because if I don't, I'll catch hell when I get home--no--!--but I've been so goddamned tired and I've been so cold & busy that I've hardly had energy to write. They're crazy--this outfit--up at 5 A.M. and back at 6 P.M. then I have to unload & load & have super & a shower & by that time I'm dead. So glad I didn't bring my own equipment. Dust galore--wind--rain--snow--and more WIND. I'm fed up & want to get back home & to you. Think there is only about another day here & then we go to Tuba City & Cimarron & then I don't know what. Everything is going according to schedule--if there is any schedule! Ford seems happy with what has been shot so far so perhaps we will be back on time--maybe sooner! I doubt it though. Don't let my return alter your plans darling--think it would be swell if you got to Babs--and if you do--you should stay at least a week--if not longer. The change wouold do you a world of good altho it sure would be tough to come home and not find you. I shouldn't say that! The phone to Flagstaff has been out ever since we arrived but someone has been coming in nearly every day--am looking forward to wire from you about your plans. Love to you, my darling--Jesus! my bed is hard and lonely--20 are in one room--CCC camp--snoring galore--Good night, my sweet--I love you--Ned.

In the days of "Stagecoach", the buck wore little except a breech cloth and moccasins. They carried with them heavy woolen blankets (draped over their ponies) which served as a cover when they slept out of doors or when it rained. Today these red men wear an old white man's coat or come discarded army uniform coat, or a vest, or a shirt worn outside trousers or overalls and shoes or moccasins. Occasionally they wear old hats; seldom even one feather. They paint their faces only for tribal ceremonies.

The moral code of the Indian is strict, with the Squaw having far more freedom and dictation than is the popular belief. The squaw does most of the labor--builds the hogan, does the cooking, raises the family and weaves the cloth, blankets and rugs. The buck is the warrior and trader and extremely shrewd in his business dealings.

Like his Astecian ancestors his religion consists mostly of a deep reverence for nature and many rituals inspired by sun, moon and stars. While the days of fantastic and fanatical Medicine Men have passed, present day Navajo and Apaches have great faith in their own religious cures.

Navajo Indians are a nomadic people. A brave and his family any build and live in three or four hogans (or huts) each year--one during the corn growing season: another during the grazing season and still another during the winter season. Most Indians have a flock of 25 to 100 sheep to provide wool for weaving; a cow (or steer) and an Indian pony (cayuse) belonging to the buck.

This tradition in the field of wealth can be applied to every branch of life in Monument Valley. Let cities grow upward and outward; let forests be destroyed and rejuvenated; let farming be mechanized and systematized. It means nothing to the Navajo of Northern Arizona who will go on forever as he has been going on for eons.

For centuries, turquoise has been treasured by the Navajo--mainly because it is the color of the sky. For centuries, he has been finding it, collecting it,and handing it down to his heirs. For centuries the Indian of Monument Valley as never parted with his precious turquoise unless dire need made it necessary.It is just the same today.

There is, for example, the matter of money. Bills may be in circulation--in fact, highly acceptable--everywhere else. But in Monument Valley they don't exist. Silver coins are a novelty, considered all right enough to buy a few things necessary for life. Sometimes a Navajo of the Valley will even make himself a belt of silver dollars--a concession to the fact that these coins, when new, are pretty flashy. But when it comes to measuring his wealth, The Monument Valley native thinks only in terms of turquoise.

After all, sea level changes very little in fifty odd years, and the Arizona plateau that greeted the eyes of John Ford and his company was practically as high--four thousand feet--as it was a half a century ago--as it has been, in fact, for the past 160,000,000 years. The expanse of the wasteland of which Monument Valley is a part, still measured a hundred by four hundred miles. The jutting buttes which Ford saw still rose sharply to heights of from five hundred feet. The mountain air was clear, distances were misleading, the arroyos were dry, and the sagebrush was everywhere. As the director of "Stagecoach" walked onto his location site, he went back m,ore than fifty years. There wasn't a Burma -Shave sign in sight. True, the "Stagecoach" company came in a fleet of cars and trucks. But once arrived, they had to function much as the early settlers did--unload, pitch a camp, and go to work. Also true, the Indians in Monument Valley didn't start shooting arrows into the pale-face movie folks' midriff. But Ford and his men now say they would rather have had a battle than go through the ordeal of getting the Indians to sign social security cards so they could appear before the cameras.

Except for a railroad station a hundred and eighty miles away, one or two roads of the axel-cracking type, a single telephone line, and an emergency radio phone--except for these appurtenances of civilization, the country where Walter Wanger's "Stagecoach" was filmed is exactly as it was in 1885--the time of the story.

And so "Stagecoach" started on its epoch making journey with a group of passengers who were to live through love and hatred, kindness and greed, ambition and despair--each of them on his or her way to a destiny unknown.

A pillar of society--but the termites had gotten to him--the termites of greed. He kept calling this a business trip--hoping no one would detect the embezzled fortune he was carrying off in his small black bag.

Untied States Marshal--the arm of the law extending to the frontier of a great and growing nation. Ready to kill and be killed for the laws by which men live--but ready also to forget rules and regulations for he sake of humanity.

Mrs. Mallory wanted to be with her husband when their baby was born. Courageously she chanced the long trip by Stagecoach. She reached her destination too late--but in sufficient time to witness the courage and character of a woman she had only despised.

Too "fluid" to stay put, the drinking doctor moved on with the Stagecoach. Maybe there was better drinking ahead--and no Temperance League. Nine cups of black coffee and a dim remembrance of medical tradition sobered him up enough to bring a baby into thr world--though the surgery was cabin in the wilderness and the operating table a floor of clay.

Gambler, mystic, adventurer--deft in his manners, even more deft at cards. His strange past was filled with unconfessed crimes--but his were the highest ideals on the subject of pure womanhood. Where di he come from?--Where was he going?--Questions to which no one will ever know the answer. But his score with life was settled, though death was high stakes even for an adventuring gambler.

One of the best and loudest drivers in the Territory--even if he was scared of Indians who, he claimed, were always ready to pop him off. Yet he preferred the dangers of the trail to the thought of returning to his wife, his eight kids and a multitude of sponging relatives too numerous to count on his fingers--and toes. Buck wasn't very educated.

He'd been wanting to get to Lordsburg to settle an old score with three men waiting for him there--settle it in the only way known on the frontier--by means of speeding, singing lead. But he was wanted by the law, and he couldn't get to Lordsburg unless he surrendered to the U.S. Marshal. He gave himself up, went along on the Stagecoach, and met his enemies. But--on the way to Lordsburg he also met Dallas, and that made a difference...

She had no first name, and had no last. Dallas was what they called her--that is, when they took the trouble to call her by name at all. A young dance hall girl who had come from nowhere and kept moving because she wasn't good enough to associate with respectable women. Hardened by the frontier, toughened by a life no civilized woman was meant for, Dallas was amazed to discover that she was loved--that she, in turn, was a woman in love.

Who was to be that craftsman? There could only be one answer--John Ford. With a record of "The Lost Patrol", "Arrowsmith", "The Informer", "Steamboat, Roufh The Bend", "Mary of Scotland" and "The Hurricane" among many others, no one but John Ford could combine the romance, the adventure, the suspense, the speed and the humanity that were contained in the story of "Stagecoach".

Here was the beginning of a story born out of action, adventure and history--a story that needed only the magic touch of a master craftsman to take it off the page and put it, iife-size, onto the screen.

There was nothing unusual about the small group of passengers--that is, nothing unusual unless you knew them, and knew them well. There was, for example, a girl named Dallas. To the naked eye she looked like nothing more or less than the dance-hall girl she was. There was Buck--the Stagecoach driver--blustering but a little afraid of what Geronimo might be having in mind. There was Hatfield, the gambler; there was Lucy Mallory, going to join her husband; there was Doc Boone being "poured" into the Stagecoach by the Temperance League; there was Curly Wilcox, going about the mysterious duties of U.S. Marshal.

He read on: The Stagecoach from Tonto to Lordsburg was just about ready to leave. Its passengers were gathering for the long and hazardous journey. News had just been received that the murderous Geronimo and his Apaches were out to kill again.

On April 10, 1937, Walter Wanger was reading the current number of Collier's. On page 18, there was a story by Ernest Haycox. Mr. Wanger's eyes wandered to the opening words. "This was one of those years in the Territory when Apache smoke signals spiraled up from the stony mountain summits..."

Within the narrow confines of a Stagecoach, life goes on. And another brilliant page in history is written! Just as the production of "Stagecoach" is a glimpse on one romantic chapter in the growth of America, so these pages must serve as a glimpse into the artistry that has put that chapter on the screen.

They are thrown together for a trip by Stagecoach. In forty-eight hours they will separate on paths as widely diverse as those which brought them together. Yet before the journey is over, some of them will have good reason for hate; two of them will have discovered love; there will be death; there will even be the birth of one new life.

"Stagecoach" presents a small group of people against the background of the panoramic West. They are a likely group of people, a representative group--yes, you could call them an ordinary, everyday group of people. Yet behind each of the them lurks his or her individual story. Ahead of each of them looms a personal future of much hope, but little certainty.

Bearing this in mind, but without ever forgetting the whole pattern, Walter Wanger produced "Stagecoach". It is a single incident in the Westward progress of a people. Yet it is a symbol of our whole development.

Our country is great. Our pride in what it stands for is real. Our gratitude for what it has given us is unquestioned. If we stop to take inventory of the assets which have given us our our balance-sheet of dignity, freedom and respect of the world, we would be bound to highlights a thousand events in a glorious history. To compress it all into a single screenplay would be an impossibility.