Is the song Lorena on the soundtrack for the movie The Searchers?

Answer 1

The musical score for "The Searchers" was written by Max Steiner. The soundtrack includes the music just as it was utilized in various scenes within the film. A portion of the antebellum tune, 'Lorena', is incorporated, without lyrics, into the following scenes: "Ethan Returns" (1:49); "Goodbye Ethan" (0:44); and, the "End Title" (2:12); which fades into the Sons of the Pioneers singing "Ride Away". However, Steiner never utilized "Lorena" in its entirety anywhere in the musical score.

If you'd like to hear the lyrics in their entirety just as it may have sounded during the 19th century, I recommend Jay Ungar and Molly Mason's version of Lorena. It is on their album "Civil War Classics" along with the hauntingly beautiful tune "Ashokan Farewell" featured in Ken Burn's documentary "The Civil War" that debuted on PBS. Another version worth checking out is performed by the 1960's pop recording artist Gene Pitney.

Lorena was written by the Rev. Henry DeLafayette Webster about a woman in his Zanesville, Ohio congregation. Webster fell in love with Ella Blocksom. Her parents deceased, Ella resided within the home of her sister and her brother-in-law in Zanesville. Her brother-in-law was wealthy and did not wish to see Ella marry a lowly preacher. So he forced her to end the relationship. The Rev. Webster was so distraught that he left Zanesville but published his melancholy Ballad of lost love. The name selected for the love over which he pined and, thus the song title, was a derivation of Edgar Allen Poe's lamented lover 'Lenore' from his poem "The Raven". The name was changed to Lorena.

Lorena was a favorite of both Union and Confederate camps during the War Between the States. It's use by John Ford in "The Searchers" is not coincidental. There is an unspoken but implied emotional love affair between Ethan and his brother's wife, Martha. One senses the intensity of their mutual love in the opening scenes and, particularly, in the scene "Goodbye Ethan" as she retrieves his overcoat from the hope chest in her bedroom. Nevertheless, because Martha is married to Ethan's brother, one also senses their mutual anguish over a relationship that can never be consummated, reminiscent of the lyrics penned about lost love in the song Lorena.

In the early part of the film, Lorena is associated with scenes involving Ethan and Martha, representing their forbidden love. It reappears in the film's climax when Ethan, intent on killing Martha's daughter - Debbie for having been assimilated by her Comanche captors, instead has a change of heart and announces "let's go home Debbie". This line is a replacement for the words found in the original script: "you sure favor your mother". Ford's use of Lorena in this powerful and moving scene is meant to depict a transformation in Ethan. He no longer sees Debbie as the object of his intense hatred for the Comanches that murdered his beloved Martha but as a reminder of her and the love they shared. One is led to the inescapable conclusion that love conquers hate.