4/5 the movie
  by Terry E. Koebrich (Danville, ILL.)
I like a good John Wayne shoot em up movie, which this is not. Except at the end when it starts to get good. All the Sons are killed except Wayne
and blows up the bad guy.

5/5 excellent
  by Deanna slaton (kansas)
dear sir the dvd you sent to me the sons of katie elder was in excellent condition i will recommend your products to other friends of mine thank you again deanna slaton

5/5 Based on a true story
  by Ed Hullihan
The film was roughly based on the 1888 true story of the five Marlow brothers (George H., Boone, Alfred, Lewellyn and Charles) of Graham, Texas, in Young County, and Marlow, Oklahoma.

The city of Marlow, Oklahoma is named after the Marlow family, including their parents, Dr. Wilburn Williamson Marlow, Sr., and Martha Jane (nee Keaton) Marlow. Dr. Marlow was the town's first physician and a very prominent citizen of Marlow. Marlow had previously been a Chisholm Trail rest spot near Wild Horse Creek.[1][2][3] There the Marlows built a dugout home that was called "Marlow Camp" in 1880. Ten years later the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad would come through and build a station on the location, naming it Marlow.[4]

In addition to the five brothers, Dr. Wilburn and Martha Marlow had four additional children, Wilburn Williamson "Willie" Marlow, Jr. (died in Leadville, Colorado, in 1879, where he had been taken to convalesce after contracting malaria in Mexico [5]), Charlotte Murphy, Elizabeth "Eliza" Gilmore, and Nancy Jane "Nannie" Murphy.[6] Dr. Marlow died April 12, 1885.[7][8]

Three of the brothers (Boone, Alfred, and Lewellyn) would end up being killed, although in the film, the brother that had done the real killings (basis for the Dean Martin role) was not with the other four when they were first arrested.[1][2][3]

Boone had earlier killed James Holstein (or Holdson or Holston) in 1882, a man allegedly hired to "intimidate settlers", after an inebriation Holdson began shooting at him on the Gilmore farm near Vernon, Texas, just across the Red River in Indian Territory (his sister Elizabeth had married into the Gilmore family and the couple had set up a place there).[9][10] This killing seemed to be justified in self-defense, but would be brought up later by John and William Murphy, deputy marshal Edward W. "Ed" Johnson and Sam Criswell who were having a personal feud with Boone, and would be a witness against the bothers.[11]

Boone, Alfred (aka Alf), Lewellyn (aka Epp, Ep, Ellie) and Charles (aka Charles) were arrested near the Anadarko Agency headquarters (what would become Anadarko, Oklahoma), for stealing 19 horses in the area around Fort Sill. George went to the homestead in Marlow and took the women by wagon to Graham where he was then also arrested. Martha Jane bailed out all them and they went to their place in Young County.[1][2][3] A log and clapboard building on the farm of O. G. Denson, fifteen miles southeast of Graham.[12]

The popular sheriff, Marion DeKalb Wallace,[13] and his deputy, Thomas B. "Tom" Collier, went out to the Denson farm, December 17, 1888. Before they left Graham they had been drinking and were intoxicated.[14] The Marlows (Charles and his wife, Alfred's wife, Martha, Lewellyn, and Boone Marlow) were sitting down to noon dinner.[15] Boone saw Collier through the window and invited him in for dinner, to which Collier replied, "I'm not hungry." An altercation broke out between Collier and Boone, and without showing their warrant, Collier fired at Boone. As Wallace heard the commotion he came around from the other side of the house and came up behind Collier, Boone, aiming at Collier, shot sheriff Wallace by mistake.[16][14] As Collier and Charles attended to Wallace, Boone left the area. The other four brothers went into town and turned themselves in.

A mob then tried to avenge the sheriff and attacked the jail, January 17, 1889, but the brothers where able to fight off the mob.[1][2][3]

On January 19, 1889 (after dark),[17] the deputy then decided to move the four brothers, along with two other prisoners (William D. Burkhart and Louis Clift), chained together, to Weatherford, Texas. But the two wagons and one buggy were ambushed along the way at Dry Creek (about two miles from Graham).[3][18] The deputies guarding the brothers ran away, in league with the ambush party.[17][19]

The brothers managed to get some weapons, get to cover, and hold off the attack. But, Alfred and Lewellyn were killed. Also killed where three of the mob that attacked the Marlows; Frank Harmison, Sam Criswell, and Bruce Wheeler.[20] George and Charles were both wounded (Charles severely so) but escaped, using Burkhart as a hostage and being aided by Clift, and went to their mother's house on the Denson farm (about halfway there they stopped in Finis at a farm house, they asked to stay the night, but were refused. George spotted an ax and borrowed it to separate the remaining men. As soon Burkhart was free he ran off).[21] Also wounded were Johnson, Logan and Clinton "Clint" Rutherford.[20] The Marlows stayed there until lawmen from outside Young County came and then gave themselves up.[3] Deputy U.S. Marshal W. F. Morton of Dallas finally arrive, took them into custody, and transported them to first toward Weatherford, and then fearing another ambush to Dallas.[22][19]

"This is the first time in the annals of history where unarmed prisoners, shackled together, ever repelled a mob. Such cool courage that preferred to fight against such great odds and die in glorious battle." Judge Andrew Phelps McCormick, 1891.[23]

Boone had gone to stay with his girlfriend and her family, the Harbolts in the vicinity of Marlow, but the brother of Boone's sweetheart, William "G.E." Harbolt, put some poison in the food that his sister would take to Boone. William Harbolt had obtained the poison from a Dr. Carter. Harbolt, along with bounty hunters Jim "Martin" Beavers and John E. Derrickson (aka Direkson), shot his dead body for the $1,700 in total ($200 by the State of Texas and $1,500 by Young County) reward offered for his capture, dead or alive.[3][24] An autopsy, by Doctor R. N. Price, determined that he was already dead when he had been shot, and that he had died of arsenic poisoning.[25] The three men were arrested but released on bail. Harbolt was later shot in the Chickasaw Nation and Beavers and Derrickson each received 15-year sentences.[25]

The five Marlow brothers had been falsely accused of stealing horses, and after the shootout that left three dead, George and Charles were finally acquitted in a Dallas trial.[2][3] George and Charles then moved to Colorado and became deputies.

As deputy marshal Ed Johnson was lying wounded at his home he gave a newspaper interview to the Graham Leader. In the interview he said that deputy sheriff Eugene Logan had been one of the guards taking the prisoners to Weatherford, and had been wounded in doing so. In fact Logan had not been one of the guards but one of the men in the ambush party. The insistence of the Graham Leader in its January 24 edition that something be done and this slip up by Johnson would start an investigation into the affair by the U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas, William Lewis Cabell. In addition the U.S. attorney sent an investigator to Young County.[26][19]

Collier, deputy Johnson, David "Dink" Allen, attorney Robert "Bob" Holman, Jack Wilkins, W. R. Benedict, county attorney Phlete A. Martin, deputy tax collector John Levell, constable Marion A. Wallace (the dead sheriff's nephew), Wil Hollis, William Bee Williams, Richard "Dick" Cook, deputy sheriff Eugene Logan, constable Sam Waggoner, Clint Rutherford, and Verna Wilkerson would all be charged with conspiring to falsify a case against the Marlow brothers, conspiring to kill the Marlow brothers in an ambush, and murdering Alfred and Lewellyn Marlow while they were in the protective custody of a United States Marshal.[19][27] Although only Cook, Hollis, Levell, Logan, Rutherford, Waggoner, Wallace, Wilkerson, and Williams, would go forward to trial.[28]

John William "Bee" Williams and Thomas B Collier (typhoid fever) died while in jail in mid-January 1891.[29]

George and Charles where summoned to testify and asked for and received protective custody from U.S. Marshal George A. Knight of Dallas. Additionally Knight made George a "Special Deputy", while Charles was made an "attached witness".[30] P. A. Martin and John Frank Spears (Spears was in jail with the Marlows at the time of the mob attack) both turned states evidence and testified against the conspirators.[19]

Clinton Rutherford was found not guilty on November 22, 1890, and the court removed Rutherford from the indictment, but bound over Eugene Logan and Verna Wilkerson. Logan, Waggoner, and Wallace were found guilty of conspiracy and not guilty of murder on April 17, 1891, and each sentenced to pay a $5,000 fine and ten years imprisonment, the other defendants (Cook, Levell, Hollis, and Wilkerson) were found not guilty.[19][31]

The case involving Eugene Logan, William Williams, Verna Wilkerson, and Clinton Rutherford (United States v. Eugene Logan et al.), would be separated from the other defendants, and would go all the way to the United States Supreme Court, see Logan v. United States, 144 U.S. 263 (1892), filed March 16, 1891.

"A citizen of the United States, in the custody of a United States Marshall under a lawful commitment to answer for an offense against the United States, has the right to be protected by the United States against lawless violence; this right is a right secured to him by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and a conspiracy to injure or oppress him in its free exercise or enjoyment is punishable under section 5508 of the Revised Statutes."[19]

The city of Graham had wanted to keep a federal court in their town, but after this incident the federal government denied that request.[32]

[edit] Screenplay

5/5 Great Grandfather
  by Jon Snow
My father and Great Grandfather love this movie, and consider it one of the best John Wayne movies. I bought it for them and they highly recommend it to watch.

3/5 From the four winds four brothers came... Their eyes smoking and their fingers itching...,
  by Roberto Frangie (Leon, Gto. Mexico)
Katie Elder bore four sons... The day she was buried they all return to the Texas town of Clearwater to pay their last respects...

John (John Wayne) is the oldest, the toughest, the gunfighter... Texas, its bigness and its violence echoes in his empty soul... Tom (Dean Martin) is a different breed of hombre... He is good with a deck of cards and good with a gun--when he has to be... Matt (Earl Holliman) is the quiet one... Nobody ever called him yellow--twice... Bud (Michael Anderson, Jr.) is the youngest, but he is the rebel one...

At the funeral are Sheriff Billy Wilson (Paul Fix) and his grim young deputy, Ben Latta (Jeremy Slate) who's real conscientious about his job... Also at the burial, in addition to many townspeople, is the young Mary Gordon (Martha Hyer), the woman who tries the impossible...

Mary visits the four brothers, brings them food, and is sardonic about their desertion of their mother... Only Bud, who has been going to college, shows a possibility of becoming a fine, respecting young man...

As the brothers investigate into the past and present circumstances of their mother's life, they find the old place is no longer hers and that she was penniless...

John discovers that his father supposedly gambled away the ranch when he was pretty drunk and that on the same night he was shot in the back...The only witnesses are Morgan Hastings (James Gregory) and his son Dave (Dennis Hopper)... The sheriff warns the Elders to stop digging around and to stay out of trouble...

Realizing that the only tribute to Ma Elder would be for Bud to finish college, the brothers pledge themselves to that cause... Yet they feel the loss of the ranch was under peculiar circumstances, they decide to find out the truth...

Henry Hathaway was one of the great versatile directors whose Westerns have been as variable in quality as his other films...

Hathaway's strong points were atmosphere, character and authentic locations... In "The Sons of Katie Elder" he took particular care with locations, proud of the fact that he is one of the few directors who handle their own second-unit work, and when this element combines successfully with the other two the result can be impressive indeed...