When John Ford's groundbreaking Western was released in 1939, the genre, never considered seriously, was at its lowest ebb. "Stagecoach," along with several other films released the same year, such as "Destry Rides Again," pulled the cowboy flick up by its bootstraps. (To use that desert kind of metaphor.)

Here Ford used his beloved Monument Valley for the first time. Here we get disparate characters taking that stagecoach journey through the land where Geronimo is on the loose. So are the desperadoes.

Ford won the New York Film Critics award for Best Direction. Thomas Mitchell won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. My guess is, however, that you will most remember John Wayne and Claire Trevor and John Carradine and Andy Devine.

Few are the flicks of which it can be said they revived a whole genre of cinema. This one did it for the Western.