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{{quote|''"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."''|'''Maxwell Scott'''}}
 
That single quote, uttered by newspaperman Maxwell Scott (Carlton Young), encapsulates the primary theme of '''''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'''''. Truth is only accepted as long as it agrees with what the public wants to hear. The public needs heroes! So when heroes don't exist, it is necessary to invent them. And, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.▼
''For the trope formerly named The Man Who Shot Liberty Vance, see ''[[Framed for Heroism]].
 
[[John Ford]], a filmmaker since 1914, already had given the movie-going public such classics as ''[[The Iron Horse]],'' ''[[Stagecoach]],'' ''[[My Darling Clementine]],'' ''[[Fort Apache]],'' ''[[She Wore a Yellow Ribbon]],'' and ''[[The Searchers]].'' Ford's last great [[Western]], ''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,'' makes explicit everything that was implicit in the genre which Ford himself shaped so heavily. By clearly showing that the conquest of the west meant the triumph of civilization (embodied in [[Jimmy Stewart]]) over wild innocence ([[John Wayne]]) and evil ([[Lee Marvin]]), this elegiac film serves as a film coda for Ford and also meditates on what was lost as progress and statehood marched across the West. The film's concluding aphorism has entered the American lexicon: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
▲That single quote, uttered by newspaperman Maxwell Scott (Carlton Young), encapsulates the primary theme of ''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance''. Truth is only accepted as long as it agrees with what the public wants to hear. The public needs heroes! So when heroes don't exist, it is necessary to invent them. And, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
 
''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'' was added to the [[National Film Registry]] in 2007.
The film opens with the return of Senator Ransom Stoddard ([[James Stewart]]) and his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles), to the small frontier town of Shinbone. Stoddard is an influential and well-liked political figure, but nowhere is he more revered than in Shinbone, the place where his career started. On this sad day, however, Ransom has returned to pay tribute to an old friend, Tom Doniphon ([[John Wayne]]), who has died. Initially, he intends to slip in and out of Shinbone with little fanfare, but, when a newspaper reporter corners him, he decides to reveal the true story about how his life in politics began, and why his most famous appellation, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," was not really true.
 
We see in flashback when years earlier, Ransom arrives in Shinbone broken, bruised, and bloodied after being robbed and beaten by the notorious outlaw, Liberty Valance ([[Lee Marvin]], dripping malice and paranoia). With the help of Hallie and her parents, he recovers his health and vows to bring Valance to justice. For Ransom, a book-learned attorney with little knowledge of the real world, "justice" means "arrest and jail." But in Shinbone, where the marshal (Andy Devine) is completely spineless and almost everyone else is afraid of Liberty, justice is a bullet. This is the lesson that Tom tries to impress upon Ransom, that in Shinbone, enforcing the Law requires a gun, not a book. Tom is one of the most respected men in Shinbone because of his prowess with a gun and because he is the only one who can, and will, stand up to Liberty and make him back down. The two become rivals for Hallie's affections, but each earns the other's grudging respect.
 
In the film's pivotal scene, Ransom is forced to confront Liberty in a duel, and seemingly kills the outlaw. Shortly thereafter, Ransom is elected territorial representative, the first step on his long and successful political career.
 
Now we return to the beginning of the film as Stoddard tells the reporter ''the true story''. We learn that the man who really shot Liberty Valance was Tom Doniphon! Hallie went to find him and Tom showed up in the opposite alleyway. Watching the encounter from that secluded spot, Tom used a rifle to shoot Valance before the outlaw could kill Ransom. By timing his own accurate shot to coincide with Ransom's wild one, Tom was able to create the illusion that Ransom had done it. He accepts no glory then or later, recognizing that Ransom can do better with the reputation than he could, and when he dies, only a handful of people know the secret. When Ransom finishes disclosing the truth to newspaper reporter Scott, the reporter lists all of Ransom's accomplishments -- getting statehood, governing with honor -- and declines to print the truth... insisting instead to print the legend.
 
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{{tropelist}}
* [[The Alcoholic]]:
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* [[Based on a Great Big Lie]]: the whole point of the movie.
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: {{spoiler|Tom, the real hero, dies drunk and alone. Ransom hasn't gotten over his guilt that Tom never got his credit, and that he took Tom's happiness away when Hallie fell for him. Worse, the legend that Ransom killed Liberty Valance -- a total lie -- remains. The only good thing at the end is that Ransom lived up to Tom's hopes of using that lie to give Hallie -- and the residents of Shinbone and the West -- a better life.}}
* [[The Cameo]]: [[John Carradine]] shows up as an ex-Confederate orator representing the cattle barons during the convention for statehood.
* [[Clear My Name]]
* [[You're Cute When You're Angry]]: Tom to Hallie at least twice.
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* [[Technical Pacifist]]
* [[Tempting Fate]]: When Doc Willoughby works up the nerve to denounce Liberty for all the harm he's done, and notes how happy he'll be when the day comes for him to perform his physician's duty of declaring the gunman dead, Valance laughs and tosses a stolen gold coin at the doctor: "Payment in advance!"
* [[Throwing Out the Script]]: Subverted. The pro-rancher candidate claims to do this. However, when the "notes" he so dramatically screwed up and threw away are examined they turn out to be blank paper. The "words from his heart" was the speech he had memorisedmemorized all along.
* [[Trailers Always Spoil]]: While the title gives us [[Foregone Conclusion|a hint that Liberty won't make it to the final credits]], and we ''see'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA2JgS6zycQ him being shot in the trailer] -- the left half of the screen is blacked out, so you can't see who's firing the shot.
** {{spoiler|Which is actually misleading, because when the scene comes, and Rance shoots him, we find out that Tom was standing in an alley across the street and ''he'' fired the fatal shot. Although, to be fair, it looks like they both nailed him. So really, the title should be "The ''Men'' Who Shot Liberty Valance"...}}
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]
[[Category:National Film Registry]]
[[Category:Films of the 1960s]]
[[Category:The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance]]
[[Category:Film]]
[[Category:Film Westerns]]
[[Category:Films Based on Short Stories]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The}}
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