A new Collider feature revisits Broken Arrow, the 1950 Western starring James Stewart, highlighting how it broke ground for its era by portraying Native American characters with far greater depth and sympathy than earlier Hollywood Westerns. The film's acclaim, including three Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe for promoting international understanding, led ABC to adapt it into a television series in 1956, though without Stewart reprising his role.

Based on Elliott Arnold's novel Blood Brothers, the story dramatised the real-life friendship between US Army scout Tom Jeffords and Apache chief Cochise, played in the film by Stewart and Jeff Chandler respectively. While the film still cast non-Native actors in Apache roles, a common practice at the time, it stood apart from contemporaries such as Stagecoach and Drums Along the Mohawk by giving Indigenous characters genuine voice and complexity. The subsequent TV adaptation ran for two seasons and 72 episodes.