It’s either the fact that he played a gruff, straight-talking sheriff in almost every film or the fact that each of his western outings seems to take place in the baking hot sun, but John Wayne really doesn’t seem a fan of Christmas. It’s just very difficult to see Ethan Edwards of The Searchers or Tom Doniphon of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, two of the actor’s most iconic roles, slurping on a Baileys while watching the Dr. Who Christmas special.
In reality, however, this couldn’t be further from the truth, with Wayne being the second coming of St. Nick if his daughter, Marisa Wayne, is to be trusted. “He loved Christmas,” she once revealed, “We had a huge living room, and by the time Christmas came around, you couldn’t walk through it because there were so many gifts under the tree,” making her father sound like quite the little festive elf.
It’s a shame then that Wayne didn’t frequent the annually popular Christmas movie genre then, although this too is a common misconception, starring in the 1948 John Ford movie Three Godfathers alongside the likes of Pedro Armendáriz and Harry Carey Jr. Certainly not one of the pair’s most iconic collaborations, Three Godfathers remains one of their most endearing, being one of the very few western flicks set at Christmas.
If the December setting wasn’t enough to inspire festive magic, the story is also a loose re-telling of the nativity, following three outlaws who risk their lives and freedom to help save a newborn baby on Christmas Eve. After robbing a bank and riding away on horseback, we join the three rustlers once they come across a solitary woman inside a wagon who is about to give birth.
The amoral criminals surprisingly choose to help the woman, with Armendáriz’s Pedro assisting with delivering the baby, only for the mother to pass away during the process, with her final promise being for the outlaws to take her baby to safety. As if this wasn’t enough of a moral duty, before she gasped her final breath, she named the baby boy Robert William Pedro after each one of the outlaws.
In the middle of nowhere without water and only a few cans of milk, Carey’s Kid suggests that they follow the brightest star in the sky and head to New Jerusalem, a rather on-the-nose nod toward the biblical tale of the three wise men. Yet, this is less a story about Jesus, sorry Robert William Pedro, than it is about the three outlaws, with their mission to carry the baby to safety being a chance of divine redemption for their crimes.
There may be no snow, no Christmas trees or reindeer running across the land, but when the trio get to New Jerusalem, they are greeted by a bunch of drunkards singing the hymn ‘Silent Night’. Delivering the baby to safety rather than birthing it themselves like Mary in the iconic tale, Three Godfathers is a western spin on the nativity that speaks to the hope of a good deed by the most unlikely souls.
While inspired by the bible, it was also dedicated to John Ford’s friend, Harry Carey, who passed away shortly before the release of the movie. The movie’s dawn shows a rider at sunset before the text arises, reading: “To the Memory of Harry Carey, bright star of the Western sky”.
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