“I think Rio Grande may have been the first John Ford film I ever saw. It is not generally reckoned as good as its companions in the cavalry trilogy--Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. But I like it more because of a boyhood memory of the friendship among three young soldiers--Claude Jarman Jr., Harry Carey Jr. and Ben Johnson--as they find themselves, reprobates, with a chance to save a band of children kidnapped by the Apaches. They are supporting characters. The leads are John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in a relationship I did not understand as a boy, but which now seems one of the most interesting Ford ever created. But I saw the spaces between the soldiers, the way they looked out for one another and moved as a unit--as flamboyant, realistic and noble as a Remington picture.
“Rio Grande also has Harry Carey Sr. and Victor McLaglen, as well as several other semi-permanent members of Ford's traveling stock company. It is a story about an isolated community, and it is packed with some of Ford's best group shots. But for the specific purposes of this evening, it has the young Ben Johnson, vaulting onto a horse, a sketch of dash and nerve on the horizon, a man who usually spoke with a shy grin, as if words perplexed him--a lion, unaware of his grace, but regarded even by Wayne with respect and admiration.” David Thomson