The Sons of Katie Elder

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sons of Katie Elder

1965 Movie Poster
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Produced by Paul Nathan
Hal B. Wallis
Written by screenplay by
William H. Wright
Allan Weiss
Harry Essex
from a story by
Talbot Jennings
Starring John Wayne
Dean Martin
Martha Hyer
Michael Anderson, Jr.
Earl Holliman
Music by Elmer Bernstein
Cinematography Lucien Ballard
Editing by Warren Low
Distributed by Paramount
Release date(s) July 1, 1965
Running time 122 min.
Country USA
Language English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Sons of Katie Elder is a 1965 western film directed by Henry Hathaway and starring John Wayne and Dean Martin. Filmed shortly after Wayne's surgery to remove a cancerous lung and two ribs, the star insisted on doing his own stunts, and nearly contracted pneumonia after being dragged into a river. The film was remade in 2005 as Four Brothers.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The sons of Katie Elder - John, Tom, Bud and Matt - reunite at their hometown for their mother's funeral. All four of them share some regret with each other as none of them have done her exactly proud, although until her death she had held her hopes high for her offspring.

However, the townspeople are mostly not on friendly terms with John, the eldest of the four and a professional gunslinger, and Morgan Hastings, the owner of the local gunsmithy and also of the old Elder ranch after their father's death, begins to display an increasingly hostile attitude towards the brothers. This only serves to pique their curiosity, and after asking questions about their father's demise they begin to suspect foul play. But as soon as it becomes clear that Hastings is a villain, he frames the Elders for murder and, not content with seeing them going to prison, arranges an ambush in which Matt is killed and Bud seriously injured. Enraged and confronted with the truth, John takes it upon himself to avenge his family by going after Hastings.


Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.