MovieChat Forums > Four Guns to the Border (1954) Discussion > The fictional date.

The fictional date.

posted 5 years ago by MAGolding (1096)
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According to the IMDB goofs section for Four Guns to the Border:

"When Jay Silverheels throws his knife into the calendar for June 1881, it shows June having 31 days. When he repeats the throw a few moments later, the hole made by the first throw has disappeared and June now has 30 days."

June always has 30 days in real life. In AD 1881 June 1 was a Wednesday and June 30 was a Thursday. Since I didn't see that part of the movie I can't say what weekday June 1 was in the movie calendar(s), but I would guess the probability that it wasn't a Wednesday would be rather high.

In real history, June 1881 would have a decent probability of having having a small band of hostile Apaches near the Mexican border. The western Apaches all settled down on reservations, willingly or otherwise, in 1872-73, and from then on thousands of Apaches, the vast majority, were at peace. But there were a number of outbreaks of Apache groups from the reservations in the next few years, so that at any moment from 1873 to 1886 the number of hostile Apache men, women, and children on the loose might be anywhere from zero to over five hundred.

Not that the makers of westerns were ever careful to restrict their depictions of peace or war with various tribes or nations to the years when there actually was peace or war with those groups.

[–] MAGolding (1096) 5 years ago

I saw Four Guns to the Border(1954) again this morning.

June, 1881 began on a Wednesday and ended on a Thursday. https://global.generalblue.com/calendar/june-1881/

Back in the 1950s, a set decorator could have looked up the calendar for June, 1881 in a perpetual calendar, published in many almanacs, so if the script said 1881, and if the set decorator cared about authenticity, he could have made the correct calendar page for June, 1881.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_calendar

As near as I could tell the June, 1881 calendar in Greasy's store that Yaqui knifed had June 1 on Tuesday and had only 30 days. But possibly it could have shown June 1 on Wednesday and thus have been the correct calendar for June 1881.

I glimpsed a calendar in the background of Sheriff Jim Flannery's office and couldn't read it. But it looked like the first day of the month should have been a Tuesday or a Wednesday and the last day of the month should have been a Wednesday or a Thursday.

Thus it is possible, but not certain, that Greasy had the calendar for the current month and year in his store, since the calendar in the sheriff's office, more likely to show the current month, seemed to have a similar or identical arrangement of days.

Of course it is always possible that the set decorators working on Four Guns to the Border(1954) weren't told by the director, scriptwriter, or producer what fictional year the story happens in and just arbitrarily picked 1881 to mark on a calendar, so one can wonder how official 1881 is as the fictional date for Four Guns to the Border(1954).