Rediscovered in France in 2000, Bucking Broadway is an uproarious comedydrama from Ford’s first year as a director that already displays his ingenious ways of finding inflections in basic Western situations. As he told Peter Bogdanovich, “It was quite novel at the time – instead of riding to the rescue through Western scenery – they rode down Broadway at full tilt, weaving in and out. We went to downtown Los Angeles and rode the cowboys down the streets with a camera car ahead of them. And not a horse slipped.” Harry Carey’s Cheyenne Harry plays a jilted, lovelorn cowpoke who follows his former flame, Helen (Molly Malone), to New York City with a herd of cattle. A fish out of water in the great metropolis, Harry nevertheless charms a female crook with his guileless, good-natured personality, and she helps him locate Helen. Discovering how unhappy Helen is with her unsavory fiancé (Vester Pegg), Harry enlists his cowboy friends to ride to the rescue, and a fabulous donnybrook ensues, filmed on multiple levels of a hotel set, often in long takes, anticipating the intricate mise-enscène of Jacques Tati. The fortuitous surfacing of Bucking Broadway demonstrates how ingenious and unpredictable Ford’s early work with Harry Carey could be – and suggests what surprises we might have in store if more of these delightfully-crafted, semi-improvisatory films can be found.

“Jack Ford again demonstrates his happy faculty for getting all outdoors into the scenes.” “Moving Picture World”, 1917