Shane is a 1953 American Technicolor Western film starring Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur and Van Heflin. Released by Paramount Pictures, the film is noted for its landscape cinematography, editing, performances, and contributions to the genre. The picture was produced and directed by George Stevens from a screenplay by A. B. Guthrie Jr., based on the 1949 novel of the same name by Jack Schaefer. Its Oscar-winning cinematography was by Loyal Griggs. Shane was the last feature film and the only color film of Arthur's career. It also features Brandon deWilde, Jack Palance, Emile Meyer, Elisha Cook Jr., Edgar Buchanan,and Ben Johnson. It was listed as No. 45 in the 2007 edition of AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list, and No. 3 on AFI's 10 Top 10 in the 'Western' category. In 1993, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". Plot Shane, a laconic but skilled gunfighter with a mysterious past, rides into an isolated valley in the sparsely settled Wyoming Territory in 1889. A drifter, he is hired as a farmhand by hardscrabble rancher Joe Starrett, who is homesteading with his wife, Marian, and their young son, Joey. Starrett tells Shane that a war of intimidation is being waged on the valley's settlers. Though they have claimed their land legally under the Homestead Acts, a ruthless cattle baron, Rufus Ryker, has hired various rogues and henchmen to harass them and force them out of the valley. Shane goes to town alone to buy supplies at Grafton's, a general store with an adjacent saloon. Shane enters the saloon where Ryker's men are drinking and orders a soda pop for Joey. Chris Calloway, one of Ryker's men, ridicules and taunts Shane by throwing his drink on him, but Shane ignores him and leaves. On Shane's next trip to town with the Starretts and other homesteaders, he defeats Calloway, and then he and Starrett win a bar room brawl against most of Ryker's other men. Ryker promises the next fight will be with guns. Ryker hires Jack Wilson, an unscrupulous and notoriously skilled gunfighter. Joey admires Shane, much to his mother's chagrin, after Shane demonstrates his shooting skills. Frank "Stonewall" Torrey, a hot-tempered ex-Confederate homesteader, is taunted and forced to draw his gun by Wilson, who then shoots Torrey dead outside the saloon. At Torrey's funeral,