Warner Archive has released a rare for them Blu-ray of a classic film that had never been on DVD in the U.S., John Ford’s last film, 1966’s 7 Women.

7 Women may not be one of Ford’s masterworks but it is a fascinating film.

Set in an American mission in 1935 China, the film is based on a short story by Norah Lofts (The Witches) called The Chinese Finale. It was previously done as a TV play in 1960 with Hilda Plowright as the sanctimonious missionary and Jan Sterling as the progressive modern doctor, roles played in the film by Margaret Leighton and Anne Bancroft, respectively.

Bancroft was a last-minute replacement for Patricia Neal following Neal’s stroke. Filmed on a Hollywood soundstage instead of on location due to Ford’s deteriorating health, the film featured two other Oscar nominees besides Bancroft (a winner for The Miracle Worker) and Leighton (a future nominee for The Go-Between), Flora Robson (Saratoga Trunk) as self-sacrificing British missionary and Mildred Dunnock (Death of a Salesman as Leighton’s quietly suffering assistant.

None of the four had worked for Ford before, and none of them were aware of Ford’s habit of picking out one actor or actress to lock horns with during filming. That distinction went to Robson this time.

The esteemed actress had recently played Rod Taylor’s mother in Ford’s next-to-last film, Young Cassidy, but due to illness Ford dropped out of that film to be replaced by Jack Cardiff prior to her arriving on set. Robson’s performance in that film earned excellent reviews so she thought nothing of going to Ford with a complaint, the reason being that her name on her dressing room door did not contain her title of Dame, which had been bestowed upon her in 1960. That sent Ford on a tirade from which Robson never recovered, although it didn’t interfere with her fine performance in the film.

Ford veterans on the film were Anna Lee (How Green Was My Valley, The Last Hurrah) as British missionary Robson’s assistant and Woody Strode (the title character in Sergeant Rutledge) in heavy makeup as a Mongolian warrior.

At the start of the film, Leighton, Dunnock, and novice Sue Lyon (Lolita), along with deacon Eddie Albert and his menopausal pregnant wife, Betty Field (Of Mice and Men, The Southerner) relatively secure thanks to the nearby regular Chinese army. Soon joining them are Robson and Lee whose missionary was burnt to the ground by a Mongolian warlord (Mike Mazurki) and his gang. Soon joining them is a long-promised doctor who turns out to be a woman, played by Bancroft. Then the Chinese army leaves, chased out by Mazurki, Strode and the rest of the Mongolian gang.

Eventually the Mongolians take over the mission, killing Albert and most of the Chinese men, women, and children, but leaving the missionaries alive, at least temporarily. It ends with Bancroft sacrificing herself to the warlord in exchange for allowing the missionaries and Field’s newborn baby to leave.

There are good performances from the entire cast, especially Bancroft and Leighton, who might have gotten Oscar nominations for their performances had the film been more successful. As it was, the film’s only awards recognition was at Cannes where it was a contender, losing to Robert Bresson’s Au hazard Balthazar.

Also newly released on Blu-ray by Warner Archive are Clarence Brown’s Intruder in the Dust and Vincent Sherman’s The Hard Way.

Intruder in the Dust was one of three films about U.S. race relations that made New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther’s Ten Best list in 1949, the others being Lost Boundaries and Pinky. Pinky, which received Oscar nominations for Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore, and Ethel Waters, was the most popular of the three at the time, but Intruder in the Dust is the one that lingers most in everyone’s memory. The novel on which it is based won William Faulknor the Pulitzer Prize for 1948.

Filmed on location in Falknor’s hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, the film focuses on a small-town lawyer (David Brian), his teenage nephew (Claude Jarman, Jr.), and a little old lady (Elizabeth Patterson) who combine forces to prevent a miscarriage of justice as an innocent Black man (Juano Hernandez) is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. All four stars are excellent, especially Patterson (Sing You Sinners, Remember the Night) who holds off a lynch mob by sheer force of will.

Director Brown is best remembered as Greta Garbo’s favorite director (Anna Christie, Anna Karenina) but he also directed some of the best-loved Hollywood films of the 1940s after Garbo retired from the screen. Among them were The Human Comedy, National Velvet, and The Yearling. The film’s cinematographer was Robert Surtees, whose diverse films included Ben-Hur, The Graduate, and The Last Picture Show.

The Hard Way is a show business saga reportedly based on Ginger Rogerss’ pushy mother, transformed here to the pushy sister of a musical comedy star.

Ida Lupino stars in the only film for which she won a major award, Best Actress of 1943 at the New York Film Critics Awards, for which she became the first winner of that award not to be subsequently nominated for an Oscar.

Originally planned for Bette Davis between Now Voyager Watch on the Rhine and Priscilla Lane (Four Wives, The Saboteur, but when Daivs turned it down, both roles were recast with Lupino (They Drive by Night, The Man I Love) replacing Davis and Joan Leslie (Sergeant York, Yankee Doodle Dandy), who co-starred with Lupino in High High Serra in Lane’s role.

Lupino plays the unhappily married woman who pushes her talented but naïve younger sister to become a top Broadway star. Along the way, she causes trouble for Leslie, her husband, Jack Carson (Mildred Pierce, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and Carson’s friend, Dennis Morgan (God Is My Co-Pilot), Christmas in Connecticut).

Gladys George (The Roaring Twenties), Lullaby of Broadway) has a memorable bit part as an old-time star trying to make a comeback only to be thwarted by Lupino who wants the part for Leslie.

It’s all told in flashback as Lupino who is dying from an unsuccessful rescue by the police after jumping off a bridge. A bit dopey, but it is all handled in style by director Sherman (The Hasty Heart, The Young Philadelphians).

Happy viewing.