Shane (1953)

Van Heflin: Joe Starrett

Photos 

Quotes 

• Shane : Do you mind putting down that gun? Then I'll leave.

  Joe Starrett : What difference does it make, you're leaving anyway?

  Shane : I'd like it to be my idea.

• Marian Starrett : You're both out of your senses. This isn't worth a life, anybody's life. What are you fighting for? This shack, this little piece of ground, and nothing but work, work, work? I'm sick of it. I'm sick of trouble. Joe, let's move. Let's go on. Please!

  Joe Starrett : Marian, don't say that. That ain't the truth. You love this place more than me.

  Marian Starrett : Not anymore.

  Joe Starrett : Even if that was the truth, it wouldn't change things.

• Joe Starrett : What's the matter, honey?

  Marian Starrett : Joe, hold me. Don't say anything, just hold me - tight.

• [first lines] 

  Joey : Somebody's comin', Pa!

  Joe Starrett : Well, let him come.

• Joey : Could you whip him, Pa? Could you whip Shane?

  Joe Starrett : Don't you ask nothin' but questions?

  Joey : But could you?

  Joe Starrett : Ooh, maybe. But there's no call for that, Joey. Shane's on our side.

• Rufus Ryker : I had somethin' I wanted to talk over with you, Starrett.

  Joe Starrett : Whatever business you and I got, we can talk over right here.

  Rufus Ryker : I'll just lay it on the barrel-head then. How would you like to work for me?

  Joe Starrett : I'm workin' for myself. I've done enough workin' for others.

  Rufus Ryker : Wait till I tell ya: I'll pay ya top wages, more than you can make on this patch of ground.

  Joe Starrett : Nope. I'm not interested.

  Rufus Ryker : I haven't said it all. You can run your cattle with mine. What's more, I'll buy your homestead. Set a price you think is reasonable, you'll find me reasonable. Is that fair?

  Joe Starrett : You've made things pretty hard for us, Ryker, and us in the right all the time.

  Rufus Ryker : Right? You in the right? Look, Starrett, when I come to this country, you weren't much older than your boy there. We had rough times, me and other men that are mostly dead now. I got a bad shoulder yet from a Cheyenne arrowhead. We made this country. Found it and we made it. With blood and empty bellies. The cattle we brought in were hazed off by Indians and rustlers. They don't bother you much anymore because we handled 'em. We made a safe range out of this. Some of us died doin' it but we made it. And then people move in who've never had to rawhide it through the old days. They fence off my range, and fence me off from water. Some of 'em like you plow ditches, take out irrigation water. And so the creek runs dry sometimes and I've got to move my stock because of it. And you say we have no right to the range. The men that did the work and ran the risks have no rights? I take you for a fair man, Starrett.

  Joe Starrett : I'm not belittlin' what you and the others did. At the same time, you didn't find this country. There was trappers here and Indian traders long before you showed up and they tamed this country more than you did.

  Rufus Ryker : They weren't ranchers.

  Joe Starrett : You talk about rights. You think you've got the right to say that nobody else has got any. Well, that ain't the way the government looks at it.Look

  Rufus Ryker : I didn't come to argue. I made you a fair proposition.

  Joe Starrett : What about the others?

  Rufus Ryker : Shane already knows he can work for me anytime.

  Joe Starrett : The other homesteaders.

  Rufus Ryker : Look, be reasonable! After all, there's just so many hands in a deck of cards.

  Joe Starrett : Then I've got to say no.

  Rufus Ryker : You don't give a man much choice do you, Starrett?

• Joe Starrett : I wouldn't ask you where you're bound.

  Shane : One place or another. Someplace I've never been.

• Joe Starrett : I know one thing, the only way they're gonna get me outta here is in a pine box.

  Joey : What do you mean, Pa?

  Joe Starrett : Well, I mean son, they'll have to shoot me and carry me out.

  Marian Starrett : Joe, I wish you wouldn't talk like that.

  Joe Starrett : Well, that's the truth! You love this place. We've got our roots down.

• Joe Starrett : That's one thing a married man has got to get used to, is waitin' for women.

  Joey : Hurry up, Ma!

• Joe Starrett : These old-timers, they just can't see it yet, but runnin' cattle on an open range just can't go on forever. It takes too much space for too little results. Those herds aren't any good, they're all horns and bone. Now, cattle that is bred for meat and fenced in and fed right - that's the thing. You gotta pick your spot, get your land, your own land. Now a homesteader, he can't run but a few beef. But he can sure grow grain and cut hay. And then what with his garden and the hogs and milk, well, he'll make out all right. We make out, don't we, Marian?

  Marian Starrett : Of course.

• Joe Starrett : Now, wait a minute. Let's not be in a hurry. There's one more thing. Torrey was a pretty brave man, and I figure we'd be doin' wrong if we wasn't the same.

  Fred Lewis : Joe, last time you argued us into stayin', Torrey was alive.

  Ed Howells : What do you want us to stay for? More of this?

  Joe Starrett : Because we can have a regular settlement here, we can have a town and churches and a school and...

  Fred Lewis : Graveyard.

  Joe Starrett : I-I don't know, we just got to, that's all.

  Shane : Know what you want to stay for? Something that means more to you than anything else - your families - your wives and kids. Like you, Lewis, your girls. Shipstead with his boys. They've got a right to stay here and grow up and be happy. That's up to you people to have - nerve enough to not give it up.

  Joe Starrett : That's right. That's - we can't give up this valley and we ain't gonna do it. This is farmin' country, a place where people can come and bring up their families. Who is Ruf Ryker or anyone else to run us away from our own homes? He only wants to grow his beef and what we want to grow up is families, to grow 'em good and grow 'em, grow 'em up strong, the way they was meant to be grown. God didn't make all this country just for one man like Ryker.

• Joe Starrett : Looks like your friends are a little late. What are the Ryker boys up to this time?

  [points a rifle at Shane] 

  Shane : Ryker?

  Joe Starrett : That's what I said.

  Shane : I wouldn't know a Ryker from your Jersey cow.

  Joe Starrett : Don't forget to close the gate on your way out.

• Marian Starrett : Isn't there anything I can say that'll change things?

  Joe Starrett : Can't you see, honey, maybe this is the chance. Morgan and them boys went home.

  Marian Starrett : You don't really believe that. That's not the reason.

  Joe Starrett : It's just too much for me to give up, this place and the valley. All the things that will be.

  [Marian makes Joey leave] 

  Marian Starrett : It's just pride, that's all, a silly kind of pride! Don't I mean anything to you, Joe? Doesn't Joey?

  Joe Starrett : Mariaon... Honey, it's because you mean so much to me that I've GOT to go. Do you think I could go on living with you and you thinking that I showed yella. Then, what about Joey? How do you think I'd ever explain that to him?

  Marian Starrett : Oh Joe, Joe...

  Joe Starrett : I've been thinkin' a lot and I know I'm kinda slow sometimes, Marian, but I see things. And I know that if... if anything happened to me that you'd be took care of, took care of better than I could do it myself. I never thought I'd live to hear myself say that, but I guess now's a pretty good time to lay things bare.

  Marian Starrett : It's as though I'd be glad for you to go.

  Joe Starrett : Honey, you're the most honest and the finest girl that ever lived and I couldn't do what I gotta do if I hadn't always knowed that I could trust ya.

  [puts on his gun holster] 

  Joe Starrett : Now don't you go countin' me out. I wouldn't have lived as long as I have already if I wasn't pretty tough.

• Joe Starrett : My place ain't very much yet; but, I'll tell you one thing, my wife sure can cook.

• Fred Lewis : Joe, just how far is this Ryker gonna push us?

  Joe Starrett : Let's not talk scared. That's just exactly what Ryker wants. He thinks he can just shoo us off of here like a flock of chickens.

• Joey : Goodnight, Ma.

  Marian Starrett : Goodnight, Joey.

  Joey : Goodnight, Pa.

  Joe Starrett : Goodnight, son.

  Joey : Goodnight Shane!

• Joe Starrett : What do you make of him?

  Shane : He's no cowpuncher.

• Joe Starrett : What Ryker has comin' isn't fit for a woman to see.

• Rufus Ryker : I don't want no trouble, Starrett. I came to inform ya. I got that beef contract for the reservation.

  Joe Starrett : Did it take this many of you to tell me that?

  Rufus Ryker : I mean business.

  Joe Starrett : Then you tend to your own.

  Rufus Ryker : That's just what I'm doing! I'm telling ya now, I'm gonna need all my range.

  Joe Starrett : Now that you've warned me, would you mind gettin' off my place?

  Rufus Ryker : Your place! You're gonna have to get out before the snow flies.

  Joe Starrett : And supposin' I don't?

  Rufus Ryker : You and the other squatters...

  Joe Starrett : Homesteaders, you mean, don't you?

  Rufus Ryker : I could blast you out of here right now, you and the others.

  Joe Starrett : Now you listen to me, the time for gun-blastin' a man off his own place is past. Why, they're building a penitentiary right now...

  Marian Starrett : Joe, that's enough.

• Joe Starrett : If this don't beat all. My name is Starrett, Joe Starrett, and, um, this here is Joey. You heard what my little woman said. Come on in, please. I-I feel like eatin'.

  Shane : Call me Shane.

• Marian Starrett : Oh, Ernie, you wouldn't leave your home and land. Oh, Ernie, you...

  Ernie Wright : I'm worn down and out. I'm tired of bein' insulted by them fellers. Called a pig farmer. Who knows what comes next?

  Joe Starrett : Well, don't throw your tail up.

• Marian Starrett : You'd think I could get ready in the time it takes you to hitch up a team.

  Joe Starrett : Now, hold your horses. We just wanted to see how purty you were. We couldn't wait. Come on in.

• Shane : Been a long time since I've seen a Jersey cow.

  Joe Starrett : Well, you'll see a lot more: Jerseys and Holsteins and the like. Can I offer you some water?

  Shane : Thanks.

  [as Joey walks away in back of Shane, he cocks the rifle. Shane spins around ready to draw] 

  Joe Starrett : You're a little touchy, aren't ya?

  Marian Starrett : Joey, you know better than to point guns at people.

  Joey : I wasn't pointing at anybody, Mother.

  Shane : You had me snortin', son.

• Joey : Can you shoot as good as Shane, Pa?

  Joe Starrett : How do I know? I've never seen him shoot, but I doubt it.

  Joey : He didn't wear his gun today. Why is that, Pa?

  Joe Starrett : Well, he's tradin' at the store, not holding it up.

• Morgan Ryker : [as Shane appears next to the menaced homesteaders]  Who are you, stranger?

  Shane : I'm a friend of Starrett's.

  Rufus Ryker : Well, Starrett, you can't say I didn't warn you.

  Joe Starrett : All right, you've told me. Now you get off my claim!