A Thunder of Drums is notable for the involvement of
James Warner Bellah, a controversial author who made a name for himself by writing a series of pulp magazine stories about the U.S. Cavalry. Famed director
John Ford took early notice of Bellah, adapting many of his cavalry stories printed in The Saturday Evening Post for his informal "Cavalry Trilogy":
Fort Apache (1948),
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949),
Rio Grande (1950), and later
Sergeant Rutledge (1960). Bellah, an unrepentant misanthrope once described by his own son as "a fascist, a racist, and a world-class bigot," saw Native Americans as the "red beast in the night." In most of his films adapted from Bellah stories, Ford countered this contemptuous viewpoint by granting Indians a sense of dignity and humanity. In Fort Apache, for example, the Indians are not the villainous, mysterious "Other," but the victims of government-sanctioned scoundrels. Despite their racial disagreements, Ford and Bellah agreed on one thing: the valor and pride of the military. The cavalry was basically honorable and uncomplicated by psychological neuroses or social bugaboos.
