Undefeated: John Wayne’s Confederate-Yankee Adventure in Mexico and the Rise of Populist-Conservatism, 1860s/1960s Marco A. Macias and Daniel Robert McClure In November 1969, 20th Century Fox released a now largely forgotten Western film, The Undefeated (1969). Starring John Wayne and Rock Hudson, the story traces the exploits of ex-Union and ex-Confederate soldiers who make their way to Mexico in the late-1860s, struggling against Mexican bandits and various factions of the Second French Intervention. Upon the resolution of the movie’s conflict, the concluding scene unfolds as wagons and people on horses slowly make their way back to the United States. Characters exchanging light comedic banter presents the mood as uplifting, while the reprisal of two songs heard earlier in the film unfolds through the harmonica playing of the character, Soloman Webster (who rides just behind Wayne’s character, Colonel Thomas): Ex-Union Soloman Webster: [starts playing “Dixie” on his harmonica] Ex-Union Colonel John Henry Thomas [Wayne]: Soloman, can’t you play any other tune?! Ex-Union Soloman Webster: Sure, boss! [begins to play “Battle Hymn of the Republic”] Ex-Confederate Judd Mailer: That neither, Yank! Ex-Union Soloman Webster: [begins to play “Yankee Doodle”] As Soloman Webster plays “Yankee Doodle,” the camera cuts to the pleasant facial expressions of both ex-Union and ex-Confederate soldiers, as the choice of tune appears to satisfy everyone. Representing the nation’s founding, the selection of “Yankee Doodle” is highly symbolic for both the eras: the late 1860s (the film’s setting) and the late 1960s (the film’s production). Deep cultural echoes connect these two eras, as multiple historical shadows haunted the use of “Yankee Doodle” in The Undefeated. Within the film world of the 1860s, the Northern and Southern whites in The Undefeated— who at first despise one another—find solidarity through conflict against Mexicans in the wake of the Civil War. Within the film production world of the 1960s, the song offered white viewers a similar form of unification: the reaffirmation of Cold War patriotism in the wake of the turbulent decade of civil rights activism, racial upheavals in the North and South, and the domestic conflict over the Vietnam War. Indeed, the voices of Nixon’s silent majority echoed the sentiment of the representation of North-South conflict 100 years before, with solidarity in both eras rebuilt upon structures of racial conflict associated with settler colonialism and slavery. The Undefeated’s set of dual realities—the late-1860s and the late 1960s—presents the film as an exceptional study of conservative popular culture in the United States. In spite of the hard-won struggle for equal rights against centuries of white intransigence to social equality with people of color, the combination of a patriotic John Wayne film—with Twentieth-Century Fox giving Wayne “complete control of the film”—and the “Yankee Doodle” ending induced a heartfelt patriotism momentarily displacing the complicated reality facing white America at the dawn of the 1970s: the loss of the white nationalist monopoly on economic and political structures of American society in the wake of 1960s social equality legislation.1 In this sense, The Undefeated offers an interesting exploration of “historical projections” or the “possession of history,” where reflections of an ideal past find life in the politics of the present, with the politics of the present drawing its legitimacy from [End Page 32] this idealized past.2 Through a conflict against white America’s racial enemies, The Undefeated mobilized historical projections to rehabilitate the innocence of whiteness under siege in both the memory of the 1860s—after centuries of slavery—and the legislated end to a century of white nationalist Jim Crow policies in the 1960s. Click for larger view View full resolution This paper examines the various ways history circulated through The Undefeated as a reflection of borderland history in the 1860s, as well as how the film reflected a present filtered through images of the past. Weaving the narrative between filmed representations and the historical record, this paper [End Page 33] offers a genealogical breakdown of information flows and the way the movie both possessed a familiar American past while discarding some...