It’s John Wayne’s birthday! Why aren’t you having a party? You what? You don’t like John Wayne!? Haha, funny joke! I didn’t hear that! Now I’ve already done a post on Wayne’s early B movie work in westerns of the 1930s. Today I thought I’d do the rest. Obviously, we’re omitting all his non-western work. And remember: we always include spoilers
Stagecoach (1939)
Nowadays John Ford is so much associated with westerns that it is odd to consider that for around a decade they were thought of as part of his past. He’d made his reputation making westerns during the silent era, but when talkies came in his movies tended to be comedies, sea stories and tales of Ireland. Westerns weren’t considered appropriate for A-list directors in the thirties. After the failure of Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail in 1930 (which starred Wayne), the major studios shunned them, although little outfits like Monogram Pictures churned them out as B movies by the bucketload. Stagecoach marked Ford’s return to the genre, and the start date of its rehabilitation as mainstream, serious entertainment. The great period will last another twenty years, then tapering off in the sixties.
I consider Stagecoach one of the best, most perfect movies ever, western or no, bar none. Its screenplay (by Dudley Nichols, with uncredited work by Ben Hecht) has become a sort of a template that has been copied countless times since and in many genres: the little microcosm of misfits trapped in a dangerous situation.
The film (like most of Ford’s westerns) was shot in Arizona’s gorgeous, iconic Monument Valley. The stagecoach, run by Andy Devine, is set to make its usual run, but the cavalry rides up to inform him that Geronimo is on the warpath so the army will be providing an escort. The passengers include a prostitute (Claire Trevor) and the drunken town doctor (Thomas Mitchell), both forced to leave town by a morality committee. Also on board is an oddly religious whiskey salesman (Thomas Meek) and a pregnant lady (Louise Platt). At the last second, three others get on board: the sheriff (George Bancroft), for protection; the town banker, because he has just stolen the contents of the bank’s safe (Berton Churchill); and a gambler (John Carradine), who is a son of the South and is chivalrously drawn to protect the pregnant lady, also of the south (whom he recognizes as the daughter of his old Confederate general). Just outside of town, they pick up Wayne as the Ringo Kid, an escaped convict with a heart of gold. Stagecoach was to be the breakthrough film for Wayne, who’d starred in the ill-fated The Big Trail, and had been relegated to low-budget B movies ever since.
Soon, the cavalry bails on them (“we have our orders”, a constant theme in westerns: the letter vs. spirit of the law) and they are on their own. Another major theme is honest goodness vs. hypocrisy. Very Christian in the real sense. The downtrodden, though “bad” by society’s standards, are stripped of pretension and therefore free to be honestly good. The characters in this camp are the doctor, the prostitute (who cares for the pregnant woman’s baby even though the pregnant woman shunned her) and the Ringo Kid (who treats the prostitute like a lady when everyone else treats her like a pariah. Unlike the other men, here the Kid is the REAL gentleman). The gambler is sort of in the middle. He lives by the code of chivalry, the letter rather than the spirit of the law. Though he is a gambler, we approve of his single-minded protection of the pregnant lady. Yet, he is among those who are cruel to the prostitute, and — in a beautiful, terrible moment at the climax, when it looks like they will be captured by Indians, he is about to shoot her in the head rather than let her be raped. Ford clearly disapproves of this impulse, and lets us off the hook when Carradine gets an arrow in him at the last second. The cavalry arrives anyway, but if she had been captured by Indians…well, he comes back to that question in The Searchers. The other major hypocrite is the banker, a blowhard who speechifies about the American economy, etc, while he is nothing more than a cowardly thief.
Great touches in the film : Andy Devine calling out to his team of horses (“yah!”) as they speed along: it’s magical, reminds me of Santa Claus and his reindeer. The team running (especially against the backdrop of the gigantic mesas) is a beautiful sight. And then there is Yakima Canutt’s famous stunt that made it look like the Ringo Kid crawled under the rig as it charged along — a spectacular moment.
Following the hair-raising climax, with the stagecoach chased by Indians and nearly caught, then rescued by cavalry. At this stage, you’d think the movie is over, but there’s an added prize, a climax after the climax. A showdown between the Ringo Kid and the three brothers he wants to kill. How do you think it turns out?
The Dark Command (1940)
A story about the Confederate bushwhacker Quantrill (here rendered as “Cantrell”, and played by Walter Pidgeon at his most wooden) pretending to be a solid citizen by day while doing his evil deeds by night. We know he is evil right off the bat when he makes his mother (Marjorie Main) masquerade as his housekeeper because it looks better. The more interesting angles to the film are meta, though. A) it reunites John Wayne with director Raoul Walsh, who’d starred him in his first western ten years earlier. 2) it reunites him with Claire Trevor, with whom he’d starred in Stagecoach the year before. 3) there are certain little touches that seem thrown in to take advantage of the success of Gone with the Wind, also released the year before—a manse, a rich Scottish southern patriarch, slaves, bits about chivalry etc.
It is the eve of the Civil War—Kansas is divided among Northern and Southern sympathizers. Wayne, a Texan rides into town with Gabby Hayes, his partner, a traveling dentist and bearer of comic relief. Their usual scam is for Wayne to get in scraps with locals so “Doc Crunch” can fix their teeth. Wayne wins the election for Marshall in Laurence, Kansas—beating out Cantrell who vows and delivers bloody revenge. Claire Trevor is the socialite whom the two butt heads over. Cantrell wins, but we know he’ll die bloody so Wayne will get her in the end. Trevor’s kid brother is played by Roy Rodgers in a rare real role. This was Republic’s biggest and most successful picture til that point. This despite that ridiculous title, which says nothing!
The Spoilers (1942)
This is magical film. Feels like it ought to be a classic and I’m at a loss as to why it isn’t. Maybe because it has the word “spoil” in the title? Set in Nome Alaska in 1900 (and a remake of earlier films). John Wayne and Marlene Deitrich are a couple. He’s sort of a rough character, a miner with the largest mine in the area; she is a dance hall girl. They are passionately in love with each other. Then strangers come into town and upset everything, both putting a wedge into their relationship but also scheming to take their money. The beautiful part is the construction. Wayne and Dietrich are superficially “bad”, but that just means sensuous and wild. They are actually good people. They are both momentarily distracted by newcomers who are superficially solid citizens Randolph Scott as a mining commissioner; Margaret Lindsay is the judge’s daughter. But both of these characters are schemers and part of a crooked plan to take over the gold. Wayne breaks up with Diterich and his partner but in the end it all gets sewn up together. Great art direction and great staging of action. Dietrich’s dance hall girl is clearly based on her one in Destry Rides Again. (“Little Joe” is even on the soundtrack). Having her, Wayne and Scott in the same picture is a rare confluence of western icons.
In Old California (1942)
John Wayne plays against type as a pharmacist dude from Boston who moves to California to set up a shop. Any doubts about his manhood are quickly dispelled when he bends coins in his fingers. This character is my favorite kind of hero. Cheerfully unmoved by threats. Does what he sets out to do, apparently oblivious to intimidation. On the boat to Sacramento he runs afoul of the territorial extortionist when he dares to treat a man he has just shot in the hand. He and his comical sidekick Edgar Kennedy (whom he earlier befriended when, Androcles-like, he cured his tootheache) are thrown overboard, but they press on to Sacramento anyway. He is partners with the boss’s girlfriend in the shop; then encourages the whole town to band together against the boss’s intimidation. The boss schemes to get rid of him: poisons the medicine in his shop. The town blames Wayne’s incompetence and are about to lynch him when he is saved by the announcement of gold at Sutter’s Mill. Later, as he is about to close up shop for good he learns of a typhoid epidemic in the mining camp. He convinces everyone to help him deliver medicine. The bad guy schemes to steal the medicine so he can sell it at high prices. But he and his men all get sick during the gunfight. Meanwhile, Wayne hooks up with his dance hall partner who has turned out to have a heart of gold; the proper lady he was going to marry turned out to be coldly indifferent to the plight of the sick. Kennedy marries the love interest’s comic sidekick, Patsy Kelly.
Tall in the Saddle (1944)
The forties seem to be John Wayne’s (and the western’s) awkward age. Movies like this want to, and ought to, be more than kiddie matinee idol fare, but they still are somehow. This one is all about a land grab — a convoluted plot wherein Wayne is sent for by a cattle baron and arrives only to learn that the man has been killed. Gabby Hayes, the drunken stage coach driver who takes him to this remote part of the desert becomes his sidekick. He becomes torn between two women: a hotheaded spitfire who runs her own ranch and a protected and helpless Eastern niece of the dead cattle baron, whom the whole town seems to be preying upon, including her own aunt. The bulk of the plot concerns an apparent scheme to defraud the niece of her property. In the end, we are given three surprising twists: Wayne is the actual heir to the ranch; the mastermind of the scheme is the mild-mannered, bespectacled stepfather of the spitfire; and Wayne chooses the spitfire over the Eastern girl. How we get there is convoluted and torturous. the sort of plot best spread out over a serial. The movie has several memorable scenes, though, and is plenty enjoyable.
Flame of Barbary Coast (1945)
John Wayne as a Montana cattleman who shows up in San Francisco to collect a debt. He gambles at a casino and wins big and the opens his own casino. There is plenty of light comedy as Wayne romances a singing dance hall girl. William Frawley plays a professional gambler who teaches Wayne his tricks. There is a spectacular staging of the San Francisco earthquake and fire, which appears as a sort of deux ex machina, after 60 minutes of rivalry and tension. This film is one of an interesting subgenre that lies right in the middle of westerns and gangster pictures: movies set in San Francscio, old Chicago or New York City in the 19th century. There aren’t many of them . I would think they’d be expensive to produce.
Fort Apache (1948)
Fort Apache is the first in Ford’s so-called “Cavalry Trilogy”, the other two pictures being She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. It is one of the first Hollywood movies to acknowledge that Native Americans actually have a perspective and that they may often (probably more often than not) be in the right.
The story is essentially a fictionalization of Custer’s Last Stand, transplanted from Sioux country to Apache Country. Wayne is a seasoned cavalry officer with much experience in Indian relations who is passed over for promotion to commander of Fort Apache, an army outpost in the middle of the desert. The job goes to a political appointee, a by-the-book, vain martinet played by Henry Fonda, in one of his best performances. Fonda considers the assignment to be a type of exile — he’d rather be fighting “great nations like the Sioux or Comanche”. Wayne’s character knows better — he respects the Apache. The film is all about class distinction, prejudice, and the military life. Fonda’s character is a snob who won’t let his daughter (Shirley Temple) date one of his young officers (John Agar) because he is Irish, and the son of a colorful sergeant at the post (Ward Bond). And in a dispute between the Indians and the crooked federal agent with whom they have a grievance, he sees it as his duty to side with the agent. It inevitably ends in a massacre, one in which Fonda redeems himself somewhat by choosing to die with the men he has incompetently sent to their deaths.
It’s hard to pick my favorite Ford film, but this one is way up there — I think every American schoolkid should see this movie. My only quibble is a coda at the end where Wayne’s character pays lip service to duty, probably obligatory to keep the movie from seeming too seditious. But this is a Hollywood movie after all — our eyes are wide open to the politics that inform and complicate its products.
Three Godfathers (1948)
This one is a remake of his own 1919 silent Marked Men, and is dedicated to one of the stars of the original film Harry Carey, who had died the previous year.
This is one of my favorite Ford films, yet I had never heard of it til I started my westerns project in 2007. It seems to me vastly better than the better-known Cavalry Trilogy or My Darling Clementine for example. Full of breath-taking, jaw dropping photography, it is a tale of redemption, based on the story of the Three Kings in the Gospels, but with a twist.
John Wayne and his two buddies (a Mexican played by Pedro Armendariz and a kid played by Harry Carey, Jr.) are cattle rustlers. They decide to rob a bank in a small town. Before they do, they meet a guy (Ward Bond) tending his flowers in the front yard and tease him about his name: “B. Sweet”. But they hit it off with him. His wife (Mae Marsh) makes them coffee. Just as they leave, they learn that he is the sheriff. He is suspicious, but just as he digs out their wanted posters, he hears them rob the bank. The sheriff and his men shoot at the departing crooks, winging the kid.
The three hightail it into the desert. They don’t have much water. What little there is they reserve for the kid. They elude their posse of pursuers for awhile, but wherever they expect to find water, they can’t get it. At a certain stop they find a wagon that has met distress. It happens to have been the wagon of some relatives of Ward Bond. The husband was a greenhorn who accidentally destroyed the water hole with dynamite, lost his cattle, and killed himself. His suffering wife (Mildred Natwick) is now going into labor. With the men’s help, she delivers the baby. Then she dies, making the men godfathers and giving them the responsibility of caring for the baby.
There is a brief comical section that seems to be the inspiration for Three Men and a Baby. But it gets quite serious. They have a tiny amount of water and condensed milk. Their horses were lost during a sandstorm. They seem likely to die. But the kid believes a passage in the open Bible will give him direction. So they start to head out on foot for New Jerusalem. They literally follow a star.
It is a tough ordeal. First the kid collapses and dies. Then the Mexican trips and breaks his leg. As Wayne departs with the baby, the Mexican shoots himself, the only option. Wayne is really dragging at this point. He lets himself give up. But the ghosts of his friends (whether they be angels or hallucinations is left up to the viewer) rally him. He makes it all the way to town and goes into the saloon where the piano player is playing “Silent Night”. Then he collapses. The sheriff catches up to him here. Along the way he has gone from admiring Wayne’s ingenuity to being ready to kill him on sight (he thinks he murdered the family and dynamited the water hole). But the story of the baby changes everything. The two men become buddies as he originally predicted. But Wayne will have to do some time (about a year). And he will get custody of the kid when he comes out. The town (Welcome, Arizona) is ready to welcome him with open arms, and he even has a girl waiting for him. Not bad!
Red River (1948)
Howard Hawks’ best western without a doubt, and one that would rate inclusion on a very short list of best westerns ever. It is an epic, “true story” describing the first cattle drive along the Chisholm trail. John Wayne plays Thomas Dunson, an Ahab-like figure (one of many he played in his career) insanely driven to finish the drive. Montgomery Clift is his adopted son Matt. Brennan is of course the sidekick — in a characterization so out-there and indelible it would remain hugely in demand for the next quarter century.
The three are the sole survivors of an Indian attack on a wagon train. They get to Texas and usurp some land from its rightful Mexican owner and start a ranch. 15 years pass. Much has changed. Dunson has built a huge ranch. Matt has just returned from the Civil War where he fought for the Confederacy. Since the south is destroyed, Dunson is cash poor and has no place to sell his beef. He decides on a cattle drive all the way to the railhead in Missouri: 1000 miles. Many have tried but no one has succeeded. But he is uniquely driven. He has changed. he is no longer the young man who loved a girl in the wagon train. He is hard, relentless, uncompromising. A couple of things jar us right away. One is his relationship with Walter Brennan. In the earlier scenes they seemed to be partners of a kind. Now the status has changed dramatically. Brennan is now just the cook for the huge ranch. To him, the John Wayne character is now “Mr. Dunson”. The gulf between them now seems huge. Second, Dunson’s new ruthlessness becomes apparent when we see him brand cows belonging to other ranches that have gotten mixed up with his herd — an expediency of unqualified moral dubiousness. Its just plain theft. The meat of the story seems influenced by Mutiny on the Bounty. Dunson as the cruel Captain Bly figure. Matt as the Fletcher Christian figure or the Brutus. Eventually Matt ousts Dunson, who vows revenge — and tries to get it.
The Fighting Kentuckian (1949)
Wayne self-produced this one for Republic. Surprisingly, a love story is at the heart of this one, too. This is less a western than a “southern”. A very strange milieu. A small colony of post-Napoleonic French live in Alabama as refugees. A regiment of Kentucky soldiers marching back from New Orleans battles with General Jackson (War of 1812) passes through. Wayne falls in love with a French girl who is engaged to marry a businessman with a mustache (tell-tale earmarks of villainy in a western). Lots of shenanigans about land swindles. A bunch of sharks have moved the stakes marking out the land that was granted to the Frenchmen by the U.S .Government, invalidating their claims. Wayne straightens it all out and wins over the girl’s parents (he’d already won over the girl in the first 15 seconds).
Oliver Hardy is predictably terrific as the sidekick, a job he took reluctantly while Stan Laurel was laid up with an injury. Everyone ought to see this.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
This is the second film of Ford’s so-called Cavalry Trilogy. To me, the human drama is less strong in terms of conflict than in the other two (Fort Apache and Rio Grande), but it has some of the prettiest color cinematography I’ve ever seen (indeed TCM is showing it tonight in salute to the 100th anniversary of the advent of Technicolor). The film, shot in Monument Valley, won an Oscar for Best Cinematography in 1950.
In this film, John Wayne does something he almost never does — play a character other than John Wayne. He dons make-up, mustache (and occasionally eyeglasses) to age himself 20 years to portray a retiring cavalry captain. This character is mellower, even nicer than most of his famous roles. He is a beloved figure at the frontier outpost where he’s stationed. It’s 1876, we are in the southwest someplace, in the wake of Custer’s Last Stand. All the major Indian tribes of the west are banding together for one last decisive battle. Wayne is supposed to take his unit out for one last patrol, on which he is also escorting two ladies (his commander’s wife and niece, playued by Mildred Natwick and Joanne Dru) from the post to the stagecoach to get them to safety. But there is peril all along the way; he must return to the fort with them. Wayne wants to return to the detachment he left out in the field and finish the fight with the Indians, but his commander (George O’Brien) doesn’t let him as he is technically retired. Wayne does it anyway and receives a promotion to chief of scouts.
The title of the film comes from song of course, and the cavalry tradition of sweethearts wearing a yellow ribbon for their soldiering beaux. The niece in the story is a coquette, playing one young lieutenant (John Agar) off another (Harry Carey, Jr), and even flirting with Wayne. She wears the ribbon for all three. (Eventually she chooses the worthier of the two lieutenants). The story’s human drama is supposed to come from that triangle, but with the exception of Wayne the actors are all too weak. This is a frequent weakness is Ford’s films. He seems either not to give a hoot about casting, or to know or care too little about the actor’s art, in comparison with his genius for shooting, editing and story construction. Very few of his films don’t have that flaw. To offset his trio of generic mannequins, however, the film at least gives us Ben Johnson as Tyree, a knowledgeable and humble southern sergeant, and Victor McLagen as the usual Irish drunken comic relief.
Rio Grande (1950)
A terrific movie. The third in the so-called “Cavalry Trilogy”. Like all the best ones, is not just a movie about Indian fighting, but is also a drama about the people in that situation. And not just a drama, but an INTERESTING DRAMA, an INTERESTING situation, otherwise why bother to write and film the damn thing? In this one, John Wayne is the commanding colonel of a very rough cavalry fort in West Texas Apache country. The post is undermanned. The men live in tents inside the stockade. A new group of recruits shows up. There are 18 of them; Wayne had asked for 180. One of them turns out to be his son, very young and recently thrown out of West Point for having flunked math. Wayne hasn’t seen him in 15 years. This is the compelling hook for this whole film, and feels surprisingly grown-up, the way it is handled. Wayne and the boy’s mother (Maureen O’Hara) split up during the Civil War. She was a Virginian. He, a Union officer, under Sheridan. His worst crime in her eyes was, under Sheridan’s orders, participating in burning everything in the Shenandoah Valley, including her family plantation. Now she comes to the fort and tries to get his son out of the army. Both father and son refuse to comply. One of the many strands of the story is the father-son relationship, which we admire. Neither father nor son believe in privilege. Wayne treats the boy like any recruit, talks to him the same, doesn’t break up a fight he has having with another man. We admire this. This is American–democracy. And the absence of this spirit is un-American!
The action plot is a little more run-of-the-mill, but interesting enough, the way Ford handles it. The Apaches are preparing to go on the warpath. They keep attacking and retreating into Mexico over the Rio Grande where the American army can’t pursue them. Now Sheridan gives Wayne’s character unofficial permission to take the fight over into Mexico. Wayne sends the women and children out in a separate wagon train to safety, but this wagon train gets attacked. The Apachees take the children as hostages. (The scene is sanitized of course. No massacre, no deflowering of women, and only four troopers dead.) Wayne’s troops arrive. They send three men including Wayne’s to infiltrate the Apache camp and protect the children for the main camp. They are successful. The kids are rescued. Wayne is shot by an arrow. The son pulls it out. Wayne now — finally — calls him “son”. Then they all get medals pinned on them by Sheridan.
Angel and the Badman (1951)
A Republic picture, much better than their usual fare, because produced by and starring a now powerful and well-seasoned John Wayne. The plot anticipates the better known High Noon, the tension between Quaker pacifism and Western style justice with a gun, tension brought to the fore because a gunslinger loves a Quaker woman. In this story, Wayne plays Quirt Evans, a former deputy of Wyatt Earp and now somewhat-fringe-character, who collapses, gunshot, on the property of a family of Quakers on their Arizona farm. They nurse him back to health for several weeks, with help of cynical and atheistical but good-hearted doctor. The completely foxy Quaker daughter (Gail Russell) falls in love with him, despite the fact that he talks about other women in his sleep.
A Quartet of bad guys, led by one “Laredo” comes looking for him. A stand off. He sells his claim to them. Quert stays on at the ranch at the instigation of the girl. He convinces a mean neighbor to release the water he’s been withholding. When the mean neighbor meets the Quakers (who heal his boil and give him pie) he becomes nice. This influences Quert. Two inciting incidents cause him to backpeddle and flee. When he goes to meeting with the family though and meets a rival suitor who is just the sort of milktoast he doesn’t want to become. Also, his old buddy has shown up with a proposal to foil Laredo in a cattle rustling. This they do, then go to a saloon, get in a big brawl and cavort with chippies. But this strikes him wrong, too. He goes back to the Quaker farm. He proposes to the girl, and stops carrying a gun. Of course the gang comes after him then and chases him and the girl on a wagon, and drive them over a cliff into the river far below. She seems to be dying of pneumonia. Quert goes to kill the gang in the center of town. At the last second, the Quakers drive up in their wagon, with the girl very much alive. He puts down his gun. The bad guys are about to shoot him anyway—then out of nowhere, the marshall shoots them. Quert will now be a farmer.
The Searchers (1956)
John Ford’s masterpiece. Texas 1868. John Wayne is a Confederate vet (and outlaw). His family is massacred by Comanches. (The film’s most memorable scene: the horrible tension when the family realizes Indians are coming and they’re all alone. They put the lights out. The daughter screams, goes into hysterics. They hide). Wayne takes a large posse out to look for her, led by Ward Bond, who is both a reverend and a captain in the Texas Rangers. Also along is Wayne’s adopted nephew (Jeffery Hunter), who is an Indian or half-breed.
They keep on the chase long after the rest of the posse quits. One niece is raped and killed. (Wayne is called upon to do some of the most emotional acting of his career in the scene where he finds her. He doesn’t quite pull it off but he gets an A for trying). Another niece (Natalie Wood) is kidnapped. Wayne is mean to the boy the whole time though he has more reason to want his sister back than Wayne does. Wayne is merely an angry man who wants blood payment. In time, the posse drops out and it’s just Wayne and the young man. When they finally reach the girl, several years later, she is now a squaw, the wife of a chief. Wayne wants to kill her. The kid won’t let him. They bring the girl back to live with another family. The film has a lot in common with Red River: an epic cross-country quest led by Wayne with an Ahab-like obsessiveness, and countered by a younger, more reasonable young man, who’d been raised as a son from infancy as an adopted foundling. Wayne’s catchphrase: “That’ll be the day”. The film has Ford’s most famous shot, going from the inside of the cabin to the gorgeous outside of Monument Valley. And the reverse, at the end of the picture. The theme song puts a chill up my spine. This picture makes me wanna bawl just thinkin’ about how great it is.
Rio Bravo (1959)
In essence this is Howard Hawks’s last truly great film. The next one, the African safari picture Hatari (1962) is okay, but badly dated, and his last two westerns El Dorado (1966) and Rio Lobo (1970) give diminishing returns.
Rio Bravo isn’t perfect either, but what it lacks in formal perfection it makes up for in chemistry. This is the ultimate multi-generational male bonding picture, with Wayne as a sheriff, Dean Martin as his alcoholic deputy, Walter Brennan as his old, gimpy other deputy and Ricky Nelson as a kid named “Colorado”, a hired gun who comes in to help out when his boss Ward Bond is murdered. Angie Dickinson is Wayne’s naughty love interest, so all the bonding isn’t male (really, without her the picture would be downright gay).
Claude Akins is a bad guy whom Wayne has placed in the pokey. The bulk of the movie is spent in preparation for a showdown with Akins gang, which is going to come free him. The easiest thing for Wayne to do would be to let his prisoner go free. But well, he’s the Duke. He just can’t do that. The majority of the film is about the tension of waiting for the big showdown, with our small handful of heroes hunkered down in the tiny jail, waiting for an army of bad guys to ride in.
And while they wait, they have conversations. This is the aspect its hard to have patience with. To the modern sensibility it feels way too talky, the film feels downright padded with talk. I’ve heard it said that Hawks was responding to the challenge of television and its more intimate aesthetics. TV, with its smaller screen is much more dialogue based than cinema. A lot of the dialogue feels sparkling and magical, and kind of the capper on the Hawksian tradition of playful screen banter, but I still find myself wanting to snip about a half hour out.
At any rate, can these four dudes and one lady (each with their own vulnerabilities) take on ten times their number and emerge victorious? What do you think?
The Horse Soldiers (1959)
I give this one honorable mention here, though technically it is a Civil War story as opposed to a western. John Wayne (doing some of the best acting of his career) is a Union colonel, leading his troops deep into Confederate territory to meet up with Grant’s army at Vicksburg. There will be no support the whole way; they are completely on their own. William Holden is an army doctor who’s been assigned to the unit. Wayne has an irrational hatred of him, which we later learn is because a sawbones had killed Wayne’s wife years ago, and she hadn’t even been sick. At one point Holden loses a patient and the two men have a terrific fistfight. At another point, Holden removes a bullet from Wayne’s leg without anesthesia and Wayne actually acts the moment well! Denver Pyle and Strother Martin play a couple of reb deserters. Hoot Gibson also has a role as an elderly soldier. Terrific movie.
North to Alaska (1960)
A sort of remake of the Spoilers. Less a western than a romantic comedy with a Far North setting. John Wayne and Stewart Granger are partners in a gold mine near Nome Alaska in 1900 (Alaska had just become a state when this film was made, perhaps arguing for the bankability of this setting). Fabian plays Granger’s kid brother (naturally, he is a terrible actor, and the song he sings is boring.). The partners have struck it rich, are millionaires. Granger sends Wayne down to Seattle to retrieve his bride so he can marry her. But Granger has taken too long to summon her. When Wayne gets there, his girl is already married. So Wayne brings back another french girl from the whore house, played by the gorgeous Capucine. Of course, the movie is about how Wayne and Capucine are actually in love but don’t admit it. They eventually do.
There really isn’t much more to it than that. The more conventional western elements are just kind of tacked on. Ernie Kovacs is terrific as a swindler. It isn’t until an hour into the film that we hit some conflict about claims jumpers. And the film is bookended by two huge, epic shameless slapstick brawls complete with cartoon sound effects and sight gags. It’s not as embarrassing as it should be. It comes across more as perplexing, even intriguing. What was the genesis of THAT choice? At any rate, the VERY best part of the film is the theme song at the top of the film. If one saw no more of it then that, one would not have wasted ones time.
The Alamo (1960)
Boy, if you think about it, how ballsy, to make your first directorial effort this large scale, big budget epic about an important chapter in American history. I feel like it paves the way for later guys like Mel Gibson, George Clooney, Kevin Costner — nothing to do but to do it, so they do it. The quality of this film and those more modern stars to me is similar. It is not disgracefully executed, but it is somehow impersonal. As though it is the Hollywood machinery that is truly getting the job done; the actor turned director is just barely, breathlessly, keeping his hands on the wheels and grateful in the end to be able to park this complicated vehicle without crashing.
The sets are gorgeous and realistic, and we are — not surprisingly — reminded of Ford. An all star cast: director/producer/star John Wayne as Davy Crockett (who shows up with a band of drunken Tennessee volunteers), Richard Boone as Sam Houston (general of the Texican army), Laurence Harvey as Col. Travis (the martinet commander of the Alamo whom I happen to be named after), Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie, and Frankie Avalon, as yet another young 50s pop singer who can’t act but is stuck into a western anyway.
The three hour plus length is appropriate to this subject, but Wayne doesn’t make the best use of those hours, sending us down detours about fictional love interests and some fairly embarrassing speechifying about ideals. The battle scenes are quite impressive, though, and worth waiting for. In the end, though, we are curiously unmoved about this amazingly heroic and somewhat quixotic act by a handful of men. The emotional heart of the story feels somehow neglected even as the events are technically depicted. A lesson there.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
One of Ford’s best films — a literal argument about justice: guns vs. laws. You might say it’s a little TOO literal, the characters overtly have the conversation many times. It might be more rewarding and more cinematic to just tell the story and have the audiences draw their own conclusions. But that’s a tricky business. I have found that you cannot underestimate the obtuseness of audiences. Sometimes the way of the sledgehammer is best.
The story is told in flashback. Jimmy Stewart, as an important senator (rehearsing the way he’ll actually talk in 15 years), and Vera Miles, his wife, return to the fictional town of Shinbone for a funeral. The editors of the local paper are perplexed that this important man has come back for a pauper’s funeral for a man they never heard of, so Stewart tells his story. The bulk of the film takes place in flashback.
A stagecoach robbery. Stewart, as Ransom Stoddard, a young lawyer is among the passengers. He defends a young lady and is brutally beaten for his pains. He vows to put the men who did it in jail. The crooks literally rip his lawbooks, in one of the film’s many symbolic gestures. John Wayne as Tom Donovan, a healthy, good-natured (and good hearted, but tough) rancher, finds Stewart and brings him to his sweetheart Hally’s (Miles) house. Hally and her Swedish parents nurse Stoddard back to health. Stoddard is appalled that everyone knows that the robber is Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), and that this Valance character is allowed to roam about to commit his crimes with impunity. He vows to try him in a court of law. Wayne insists that guns are the only way to deal with Valance. Stewart vows not to carry a gun. [Sidenote: the actors are both about 50 here, playing men 20 or 30 years their junior. This makes it singularly strange that in only 7 years Wayne will play Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, as though he’d aged 6 times that span in the intervening time.]
The name “Liberty” seems symbolic. Invariably spoken of as a good thing in our culture, in its pure form it can also be a negative: anarchy, crime. And Valance (which you must admit is a weird name) sounds awfully like “violence”.
To earn his keep, Stewart helps in the restaurant. In the old west this is woman’s work. Liberty and his gang come in, and steal some other guy’s meal. Liberty is one of the best (i.e., worst) villains in movie history. A mean son of a bitch who never has a single redeeming moment. Every gesture is rude and violent, he literally smashes every object he touches. His gang is also the best (worst) gang ever, including Lee Van Cleef (later a major star in spaghetti westerns) and Strother Martin as a loathsome, sadistic, giggling weirdo. They call Stewart a “waitress”, then trip him for sport. Unfortunately, he was carrying John Wayne’s meal, which allows Wayne to defend Stewart without seeming to. There is a standoff between Donovan and Valance. Stewart yells at them both and picks up the steak. He is good and humiliated.
At the same time, Stewart becomes a prominent citizen in the town. He strikes up a friendship with the drunken newspaper editor (Edmond O’Brien) and hangs his shingle as a lawyer there, and also teaches school to both children and grownups, merging lessons in reading and writing with civics. He is an idealist and a born politician. Now it emerges things are getting worse. There is a looming political battle between big free range cattle ranchers who want to maintain territorial status (in this fictional, unspecified territory), and small farmers with fences who want statehood and law and order. The cattle ranchers hire Valance to terrorize the little guys. Nevertheless, the town elects Stewart and the editor to be their delegates. Valance vows to kill them both. It looks like Stewart will escape (Wayne encourages him to do so but he may have an ulterior motive beyond goodness. He’d like to get him away from Hally, his girl). The bad guys beat up the editor and destroy his office. This enrages Stewart, giving him courage to stay. He takes a gun and intends to shoot it out with Valance. Valance plays with him, shoots around him, shoots him in the arm. Just as he is about to kill him, Stewart shoots, apparently killing Valance.
On the reputation of this, combined, almost superficially, with his gifts for law and politics, Stewart is renowned throughout the territory and going to be made a congressman. (He runs against John Carradine as a hilarious windbag of the old school). Stewart is in a bind. He doesn’t want to glorify killing, or be highly regarded for being a killer (he wants the law to prevail). Furthermore, he is open to criticism, justifiable if true, for being a killer. He is about to bow out when Wayne puts him right. He himself had killed Valance from the shadows. Ironically, now Stewart feels it’s alright, and goes in and excepts the nomination. But most importantly (a point Ford doesn’t stress enough til later) he doesn’t announce he wasn’t the real killer. He lies. He uses the reputation to become an important man. Meanwhile, Wayne, heartbroken at his loss of Hally (which he perceives as she tenderly tends the wounded Stewart in the earlier scene) gets drunk and goes and burns down the house he was building for them to move into when they are married. There is great irony here. Somehow every good gesture Wayne does enriches Stewart and hurts himself. This is what makes it a great, rich story and not just an argument about justice. At any rate, in the end, Donovan (Wayne) dies unknown in the town he helped save, and Stoddard (Stewart) is one of the most important men in the country, and a bit of pettifogging fool, besides. His wife knows the truth and so does he. And the lie will go on: “When the legend becomes truth, print the legend”. Irony– “Nothing’s too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance”.
How the West Was Won (1962)
This is a movie that I have great affection for, despite many failings. For my full write up on it, go here. The portion that Wayne is in occurs during an interlude when the film detours from the west, where it has hitherto been focused: (America also has a “north” and a “south”, as the narration helpfully tells us) for a digression to the Civil War. We have a single shot of Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln, sagely signing a paper. We catch up with Carol Baker on her farm. Jimmy Stewart is with the Union Army as a Captain. Andy Devine comes around as a neighbor now in uniform and encourages her son George Peppard to join. Stewart dies at Shiloh. Peppard kills confederate Russ Tamblyn at Shiloh when he is about to assassinate General Grant (Harry Morgan) while he talks with Gen. Sherman (John Wayne, in a cameo). Then he returns home and learns both parents are dead so he will re-enlist and fight Indians.
McLintock (1963)
I am tempted to call this movie best non-spoof comedy western. It’s definitely John Wayne’s best comic performance, although that’s not saying much. His comic scenes in John Ford’s and his own movies are usually irritatingly bad, just self-conscious and clumsy. Here it’s a bit of self-mockery and works really well. His comical foil is Maureen O’Hara, his traditional leading lady, also here at her best. Like Wayne, she is not really an actress but more a force of nature. Very little real subtlety. But neither does a freight train possess much subtlety and it can be beautiful nonetheless. O’Hara seems to me the person the phrase “you’re beautiful when you’re angry” was devised for.
In the film, Wayne plays the title character, and the founder of the fictional town that also bears his name. He is a big man in every sense of the word. The whole town loves him, not just because he is the most powerful man in town but because he is a straight up guy to boot — and nice. He lets Mexican kids climb up his trellis. His best friend is the Jewish merchant from town. His ranch is in the Cherokee Strip and they are about to let settlers in (it’s the 1895 run), but his run-ins with them are all humanitarian. Unlike a neighboring rancher he doesn’t vow to “run ‘em out”. He explains to them that the land they’ll be getting is bad. And he stops the lynching of an Indian by settlers. He even hires one of the young settlers (played by his actual son Patrick Wayne) for a cowhand, and his beautiful mother (Yvonne DeCarlo, va va voom) for a cook.
McLintock’s utopia is upset when his wife (O’Hara), from whom he has been separated for two years, returns to town from back east. She wishes to prevent their daughter (Stephanie Powers, again with the va va voom) from moving back home. The wife and daughter are both snobs, despite the wife coming from the same upbringing as McLintock did it. She puts on airs, bosses people around. The fact of the couple’s separation seems to recall their earlier film together Rio Grande, as does the fact that they really love one another. Bit by bit O’Hara starts to melt as she begins to remember who she is. (This is egged along by an astounding Taming of the Shrew scene, where McLintock pursues his wife through the town in her underwear. She and one of the town prostitutes are dunked in a water trough, in a somewhat problematic and sexist scene that climaxes with a good, hard spanking. Meanwhile the daughter falls in love with the ranch hand and they live happy ever after. There must be ten recognizable character actors from westerns in the film, including Strother Martin as a dude Indian agent in spectacles. Jerry van Dyke as the daughter’s dude boyfriend from college who does a hilarious cakewalk “it’s the latest thing!” A minor classic of the genre.
The sons of Katie Elder (1965)
A cool film for the simple reason that it manages to have an original story–so few of them do. Four ne’er-do-well brothers return to their mother’s funeral in a southwest (Texas) town: John Wayne (a gunfighter), Dean Martin (a conman and gambler), Earl Holliman (just a loser I guess), and the always irritating Michael Anderson (a college student who was supposed to be the mother’s hope, but doesn’t want to be in college). Most people in the town revile them for not having been worthy of their sainted mother–never wrote, never sent money. They learn that the father (a sort of lowlife whom they all take after) was also killed, shot in the back after being swindled out of his ranch in a card game. The four get to the bottom of the mystery (whom everyone in town is reluctant to divulge). The always excellent James Gregory is the villain, with Dennis Hopper as his son. It ends with massive shootout as always. Earl Holliman is killed. Dean Martin shot in the back, and the bad guy killed.
El Dorado (1967)
One of Howard Hawks’ last pictures. It’s about two warring ranchers, one of whom is an evil cattle baron played by Ed Asner. John Wayne is a hired gun. On the advice of his old friend the sheriff (Mitchum) he decides not to work for Asner. On his way back, he accidentally shoots the young son of the neighbor. In retaliation, the daughter shoots Wayne. The bullet lodges near the spine, threatening paralysis. Wayne leaves for a time (to Mexico), where he hooks up with one “Mississippi” (James Caan) who is adept with knives, but can’t shoot. They hear that Mitchum has become a drunk, and Asner has hired some very bad killers. Wayne and Caan ride back to help the sheriff.
We are now at the very same formula that made a success of Rio Bravo. In fact, it’s almost exactly identical to that earlier picture. Asner gets thrown into jail and the bad guys are going to spring him (just like in Rio Bravo). And we have the same quartet of good guys. A drunk (now Mitchum as a sheriff, instead of Dean Martin as a deputy), John Wayne, a kid (now James Caan instead of Ricky Nelson), and the sidekick — here an old Indian fighter (Arthur Hunnicutt) in buckskin and carrying a bugle, instead of Walter Brennan. The movie sort of unravels and becomes dull. Lots of business about trying to sober up the sheriff. Lots of shoot outs. But Wayne’s paralysis keeps kicking in, gumming up the works. The end looks hopeless (Mitchum has been shot, too), but they manage to pull it off anyway.
The War Wagon (1967)
A fairly dumb movie. Wayne for once is cast a little against type as a guy who gets out of prison to seek revenge on the man who swindled him out of his ranch and framed him. To do it, he devises an ingenious caper . (this is what’s against type. The Wayne we all know would just walk right up to his enemy fearlessly and call him out right then and there. Stealing is sneaky — and somewhat cowardly, when you think about it). To help him with his plan, he enlists Kirk Douglas, a top gunslinger AND safecracker (a rather unlikely combination); Keenan Wynn as a cranky, thieving old nut who’s the “inside man”; Howard Keel as a half-breed who enlists the help of some Indians; and the always terrible Robert Walker Jr. as a drunken young (another unlikely combination) explosives expert. (where did he get such expertise at age 18? And a teenage alcoholic is unqualifiededly sad — no shoehorning that into a light comedy as they try to do here). They devise a plan to steel the robber baron’s gold shipment (gold on Wayne’s property is what prompted the swindle). The bad guy’s pride and joy is a special armored stage coach, the real star of the film. The ironclad coach has a gatling-gun turret and is guarded by 33 armed guards. The film’s ostensible reward is seeing how these five mildly amusing misfits take the stage. In the end, they do. And that’s about it!
There is a really hokey theme song — hokey enough that you wonder if it’s for real. Since this movie is semi-comical, makes me wonder if they were trying to do a bit of a Cat Ballou. (the fact that it’s about a good guy doing a crime in order to right a wrong also reinforces that idea). Bruce Dern has a bit part as a lackey but is shot dead early in the picture.
True Grit (1969)
An absolutely terrific movie in nearly every respect. I believe it has the best written dialogue of any western. I’m not aware of any better. It has that incredible 19th century music to it, and is written with a wit and charm–almost every line is somehow priceless. This is the film that defines late Wayne. His last few pictures will be variations on this character, Rooster Cogburn. An old man, but still vigorous and tough (although in this case with a drinking habit and a patch over one eye).
There is a bit of social commentary in it, an acknowledgment that times are changing, and so is the audience. The engine for the plot is a single-minded girl, played by Kim Darby. Her father has been murdered and she wants to get the killer at whatever cost. Hard to tell how old this short-haired tomboy is supposed to be — maybe 15 or 16. But she has been her father’s book-keeper and business manager on the ranch. She is a tenacious and uncompromising negotiator and always gets what she wants. It is a terrific character, extremely likable because of how unlikable she is. We admire her although we would not want to have to deal with her, and there is much comic business about how she bests everyone she encounters, mostly men of experience who begin to regard her as a kind of plague. (most hilarious is a horse dealer, played by Strother Martin). With feminism in the air, there is a kind of statement here. The girl is as strong as the men (“She reminds me of me!” says Wayne). It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just a fact. It’s a far cry from the usual painted damsels who adorn most westerns. She hires US Marshal Rooster Cogburn, reputed to be fearless, to find her father’s killer. Cogburn — like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, originally written for Wayne, as well — is a statement. A courtroom scene makes it plain. He is a shoot ‘em up guy, and the courts are getting too liberal. But we know he’s an alright guy—his room-mate and best friend is Chinese: again, just a fact. Also along for the ride is Glenn Campbell as a vain, self-important Texas Ranger. (Campbell is a terrible actor but he sings the title song).
They start out in western Arkansas and head into Indian territory (Oklahoma) where the killer has hooked up with a band of outlaws led by Robert Duvall. They trail the men (much violence) with a climax in which Cogburn single-handedly rides up to the remaining four outlaws, guns blazing, and kills them all. Meanwhile, Campbell has been killed and the girl has a broken arm and a rattlesnake bite. Cogburn rushes her back to safety.
The Undefeated (1969)
A new phase John Wayne western. More violent than its predecessors. It’s the end of the Civil War. Wayne is a colonel who musters out out the ten men left in his outfit, to round up some horses to sell to the army at a profit so they can return to their native Oklahoma to start their new lives with some capital. Among his men are Ben Johnson and Dub Taylor as the cook. Parallel to this, Rock Hudson is a Confederate colonel who is taking what remains of his regiment, along with their families down to mexico to regroup and to continue the war. The two groups cross paths during the journey when Wayne decides to sell his horses to the Mexican emperor rather than the U.S. (the bureaucrats wouldn’t meet his price). Unfortunately, rebel Juaristas kidnap Hudson’s people and threaten to kill them unless Wayne gives them his horses. He does. A kind of uninteresting (if nice) ending to a rambling story. You could probably cut 20 minutes out of it. Interminable scenes of “bonding”, and a yawn inducing brawl at the Fourth of July picnic. In addition to more graphic violence, the film is also racy in depicting a romance between a white girl and Wayne’s full Cherokee ward.
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