 Several reasons have been put forward for the film being in black  and white. John Ford (I) (qv) once claimed it added to the  tension, however others involved with production said Paramount was  cutting costs and so they had to make the movie on sound stages at  the studio. Without the budget restraints, Ford would have been in  Monument Valley using Technicolor stock. It has also been suggested  that since both John Wayne (I) (qv) and James Stewart (I) (qv)  were playing characters thirty years younger than they actually were  (Wayne was 54 when the movie was filmed in the autumn of 1961 and  Stewart was 53), the movie needed to be in black and white because  they would never have got away with it in color. The age difference  was particularly noticeable in Stewarts case, since he was playing  a young lawyer who had only just graduated from law school and had  moved West without even practicing law back East.