She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is a 1949 American Technicolor Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. It is the second film in Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", along with Fort Apache (1948) and Rio Grande (1950). With a budget of $1.6 million, the film was one of the most expensive Westerns made up to that time. It was a major hit for RKO. The film is named after "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon", a song popular with the US military. The film was shot on location in Monument Valley utilizing large areas of the Navajo reservation along the Arizona-Utah state border. Ford and cinematographer Winton C. Hoch based much of the film's imagery on the paintings and sculptures of Frederic Remington. Hoch won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color in 1950. It was also nominated as 1950's Best Written American Western (which the Writers Guild of America awarded to Yellow Sky). Plot On the verge of his retirement in 1876 at Fort Starke, a small Frontier Army post, aging cavalry veteran Nathan Cutting Brittles is given one last mission: to deal with a breakout by the Cheyenne and Arapaho from their reservation following the defeat of George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and prevent a new frontier war. Brittles' task is complicated by a second order: to deliver his commanding officer's wife and niece, Abby Allshard and Olivia Dandridge, to an eastbound stage. His troop officers, 1st Lt. Flint Cohill and 2nd Lt. Ross Pennell, meanwhile, vie for the affections of Olivia while uneasily anticipating the retirement of their captain and mentor. Assisting Capt. Brittles with his mission is his chief scout, Sgt. Tyree, a one-time Confederate captain of cavalry; his first sergeant, Quincannon; and Maj. Allshard, Brittles's long-time friend and commanding officer. After apparently failing in both missions, Brittles returns with the troop to Fort Starke to retire. His lieutenants continue the mission in the field, joined by Brittles after "quitting the post and the Army". Unwilling to see more lives needlessly taken, Brittles takes it upon himself to try to make peace with his old friend Chief Pony That Walks. When that too fails, he devises a risky stratagem to avoid a bloody war by stampeding the renegades' horses out of their camp, forcing them to return to their reservation. Brittles is recalled to duty as Chief of Scouts with