Wayne won his only Academy Award for his tough, but humorous portrayal of U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn in True Grit.

The Best of the Duke
Listen up Pilgrim—as we stand and deliver the "top 10" picks among John Wayne Westerns.

By Dan Gagliasso

John Wayne.
The name immediately summons the image of a tough-as-rawhide man of the West, with a little bit of sentimentality thrown into the mix. At home or around the globe, no other actor or American, alive or dead, comes more quickly to mind when that single word “cowboy” is uttered.

Or have any rodeo cowboy tell you who fits his idea of a great movie cowboy. You’d be hard pressed to find one of those real hands who doesn’t pick the Duke.

Of course Wayne wasn’t a real cowhand at all, though he did own a successful cattle ranch in Arizona. But on a flickering Technicolor movie screen in a darkened theater his celluloid Westerns brought strength, dignity, and courage into our lives the way no other actor has in film history.
I make no apologies for being a John Wayne fan. I once was hired to write a Golden Boot Awards speech for Wayne’s late son Michael.

At the end of our initial conversation I asked Michael if he still issued checks under the imprint of Batjac, his father’s name for his longtime film production company. Michael Wayne grinned, said “Yes,” then inquired why that was of interest to me. “Well,” I replied. “I’d really love to be able to say I actually wrote something for John Wayne’s Batjac company.” Michael appreciated the request and made sure I was paid with a Batjac check.

Wayne made so many truly great movies that you can’t count them on the fingers of both hands. But being this is American Cowboy, I thought a look at his best “cowboy” movies might be in order. Now that doesn’t mean he plays a cowboy, trail boss, or rancher in all of these films. He doesn’t. He’s a lawman or gunfighter in several of them. And while Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Rio Grande are among my favorites, they’re frontier military films, not cowboy films.

As Wayne says to his young cowhands in The Cowboys, “We’re burning daylight”—so let’s move ’em out.

The Searchers — 1956
The Searchers was probably the greatest American film ever made, as well as the greatest Western ever produced. As directed by the legendary John Ford, Wayne’s portrayal of the obsessed Texian frontiersman Ethan Edwards is his finest performance—rough, raw, and unapologetic. His quest to find his niece, captured by the equally vengeful and driven Comanche Chief Scar, and avenge the murder of his brother’s family and the woman he secretly loved is downright frightening to watch. When Wayne witheringly stares down the “half-breed,” Jeffery Hunter, with the information that a Comanche raiding party has hit the family ranch, and there’s no saving them, his look alone was worth an Academy Award. One of my favorite scenes comes when he and character actor Hank Worden, playing Old Mose, ride up an overlook to witness the burning Edwards cabin. Wayne flings the beaded Plains Indian scabbard off of his Winchester before spurring his horse down to the flaming ruins that will change his life forever.

Red River — 1948
It was said that Hollywood didn’t really respect John Wayne as an actor until his 1948 performance as the Captain Bligh-like trail boss Tom Dunson in Red River. Wayne was always at his best with strong directors like Ford and in this case Howard Hawks. Here Hawks guided Wayne through one of his finest performances. If Wayne didn’t look right in the saddle and act like a leader of men, even if a totalitarian one, then the film would never work. But Red River does work and in grand style. The start of the cattle drive with Wayne quietly ordering, “Take ’em to Missouri Matt,” and all of the Texas trail hands raising their individual rebel yells is classic Western filmmaking.

True Grit — 1969
Wayne’s only Academy Award came for Best Actor in this wonderful adaptation of Charles Portis’ best-selling novel of 1880s Arkansas and Indian Territory. When an outnumbered Wayne sits atop his horse demanding the surrender of outlaw Robert Duval and his gang, Duval’s Lucky Ned Pepper challenges, “I say that’s bold talk for a one-eyed fat man,” to which Wayne reacts in a fashion worthy of any of his Western film characters. Sticking Old Beau’s reins in his teeth, he pulls his Colt Peacemaker and twirls the lever on his Winchester, and before he charges he shouts, “Fill your hand you son-of-a-bitch!” Few images of the Duke are as powerful and awe-inspiring as that of U.S. Marshal Rooster J. Cogburn—a real Western type who brought roughhewn law and order to a lawless frontier, political correctness be damned.

Stagecoach — 1939
John Ford made John Wayne a star in this 1939 classic after Wayne had toiled away in dozens of poverty row “B” Westerns for eight years. It was one shot that launched him as a superstar—that famous scene in which Wayne’s Ringo Kid is first encountered, awaiting the stagecoach, Winchester held in hand, saddle at his hip, hailing the six-up stage to stop. The story is a classic ensemble piece of a group of disparate travelers all sharing the same danger—in this case raiding Apaches. It really is John Wayne and not a stunt double up on top of that racing coach shooting that big “D” ring Winchester all through the fast-paced chase scene. The cast and cinematography are topnotch, and the final attack by the Apaches on the stagecoach is still the best it’s ever been done.

Hondo — 1953
Often overlooked, Hondo is one of Wayne’s best Westerns not directed by Ford or Hawks. Wayne’s performance in the romantic portion of the story with Geraldine Page, who was nominated for an Oscar for the part, should tell you how good Wayne was—an actress (Page) doesn’t receive an Academy Award nomination playing opposite a dolt. Based on a short story by Louis L’ Amour, the script by Wayne’s favorite writer James Edward Grant actually furnished the best scenes and lines, none of which appear in the short story or novel. But these touches flesh out Wayne’s hard-edged scout and gun hawk who had lived with and respected the Apaches. In fact, L’ Amour based his top-selling novel—an expanded version of his earlier effort—on Grant’s script. The final battle scenes are vintage “Duke” as he leads the wagon train, charging through the attacking Apaches and then, dismounted, knocks a warrior off of his pony with an army carbine as his club. The final line is vintage Wayne too, as a wounded lieutenant forecasts that a large force will be in the field soon, and that will be the end of the Apache. Wayne then observes in matter-of-fact fashion, “End of a way of life. Too bad, it was a good way.”

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance — 1962
A dark, somber film with Wayne again giving an incredible performance as a tough-but-decent rancher who loses the woman he loves to the more stable and civilized lawyer, played by Jimmy Stewart. The film’s coming-of-statehood plot was unique, and authentically flavored, based on a Dorothy M. Johnson short story. James Warner Bellah’s script and the casting of Wayne, Stewart, Vera Miles, Edmund O’Brien, and Lee Marvin in starring roles—Marvin as vicious frontier killer Liberty Valance—raises the ante of this John Ford-directed film to the status of a classic. The confrontation between Wayne and Marvin over a dropped steak is unforgettable. “That’s my steak, Valance… Pick it up.” This is the film that gave us the most over quoted—though brilliant—utterance from any Western film ever made. As Jimmy Stewart, whose impressive political career in the film was built upon having killed hired gunman Liberty Valance, informs the new newspaper editor that it was actually the recently deceased Wayne who secretly had performed that honor, the editor then replies, “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

The Shootist — 1976
Wayne’s last film and last Western was based on Glendon Swarthout’s excellent novel about a turn of the century gunfighter who discovers he is dying of cancer. Wayne, who had licked the “big C” in real life, could relate to the demands of this finely etched character study. Wayne’s lessons in life were delivered with conviction to a then-young Ron Howard. ‘I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I do not do these things to others and require the same of them.” Set in 1901, The Shootist is an end of the West saga that unfortunately was all too fittingly timed to the end of Wayne’s own career. The Duke would live only three more years before cancer again would catch up to him once and for all.

Youngsters played drovers in The Cowboys (1972)

The Cowboys — 1972
Wayne’s 1877 Montana ranch hands run off to a gold strike just before a big cattle drive, forcing the rancher to take on a group of youngsters as drovers. Wayne was in top form here as a tough old codger who slowly warms to the boys, while teaching them some of what it takes to be a man. The story goes that Wayne and director Mark Rydell had a huge run-in early during filming, to the point that the younger man fully expected the superstar to call the studio and have him fired. Instead Wayne invited Rydell to dinner and then proceeded to use his well-known charm and humor to apologize, though in an off-color manner not suitable for a family magazine, and even then without actually saying he was wrong. They got along famously after that. World Champion Team Roper Clay O’Brien Cooper played the youngest of the cowhands, holding his own quite well. One of the best scenes might well have been a fitting epitaph for Wayne himself. Upon passing the still-visible carnage of the Little Bighorn from the year before, one of the young waddies comments to Wayne that no one even took the time to bury the bodies very well, to which Wayne responds, “Well, it’s not how you’re buried. It’s how they remember you.”

Rio Bravo — 1959
John Wayne made three films with Howard Hawks, all derived from the same plot: Rio Bravo, El Dorado, and Rio Lobo. Rio Bravo is undeniably the best of the three with Wayne as Sheriff John T. Chance facing down the hired killers for a local rancher with the help of a drunk, a baby faced gunfighter, and an old jailer, respectively played by Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Walter Brennan. It all sounds like a silly exercise that wouldn’t work, but it does. With Wayne as the leader, the film is the ultimate Western buddy pic, with a young, feisty Angie Dickinson providing Wayne’s scrappy love interest. In a lot of ways Rio Bravo is the Western that established the latter era John Wayne persona in a formulaic, but highly enjoyable, characterization. This is the film that set the stage for many of his future, less original, Westerns for which audiences showed up just to see “John Wayne.”

McClintock — 1963
McClintock, Wayne’s best comedy Western, gives testimony that its creators also had the guts to play certain scenes straight. In a way this film is the second of an unofficial trilogy that started with Hondo in 1953 and ends with Big Jake in 1970. Wayne plays a cattle baron with an estranged wife, Maureen O’Hara, and they wage marital war over their marriage and a daughter who is returning home from school in the East. Wayne and O’Hara were so much the perfect on-screen couple that many fans thought they were married in real life. Character actor Chill Wills replaces Ward Bond as the best friend and major-domo. Michael Dante reprises his role from Hondo, here as a Ute chief instead of an Apache chief. Wills and Dante do several verbal reprises of major scenes from Hondo that fit perfectly into the story. The big mud fight in the center of the film is a classic, with O’Hara and Wayne taking just a much glee getting muddied as does the army of stunt people, involved.

Since Wayne’s death in 1979, the annual Harris Poll that ranks the popularity of movie stars has placed him consistently in the top 10 stars against current superstars like Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford. In November 2003 the Harris survey rated Wayne seventh overall and still the most popular male star among American men. Twenty-five years after his death, his final resting place in Southern California left unmarked, the Duke’s Western iconography still strikes Americans as strong as ever. “It’s not how you’re buried. It’s how they remember you.”

Documentary film director Dan Gagliasso was winner of a Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Documentary Script in 2002. He recently produced and directed The Donner Party for The Discovery Channel series Unsolved History.