My Five Favorite John Wayne Films (Plus One)
You can’t go wrong with these movies from the Duke
When I was growing up, if there was one iconic hero who towered over the American landscape it was John Wayne. This was long before we were inundated with social media influencers (sorry Simon Dillon, there’s no other word I can use) and billions of hours of “content” on streaming sites and YouTube, when we had only three television channels and film stars were still bigger than musicians or sports figures could ever be. The Beatles were huge and everyone in America knew Jets quarterback Joe Namath, yet even they saw being in movies as the summit of the entertainment mountain.
I’ve written on numerous occasions that my idol as a child was Steve McQueen, yet even the King of Cool never came close to the cultural impact of the Duke. I wanted McQueen’s bomber jacket and motorcycle from The Great Escape partly because I knew those were achievable goals that might, in some small way, make me cool like him. I never held such illusions that a cowboy hat and boots could make me anything like Wayne.
Wanting to be like John Wayne was, simply put, a bridge too far. It was like telling my mom I wanted to grow up to be Jesus; she would have wondered if I’d suffered a serious head injury. That’s because though he was held up as the epitome of strong, silent American manhood, the most we mere mortals could hope for was to live in a way that wouldn’t disappoint him if he ever met us. Decades before “WWJD” meant “What Would Jesus Do?” it meant “What Would John (Wayne) Do?” This made perfect sense; in my family we loved John Wayne a lot more than we loved Jesus.
How much more? Unless I was scheduled to serve as an altar boy on a given Sunday, skipping Mass to watch the Dallas Cowboys play the Pittsburgh Steelers was totally acceptable (God loved the Silver and Blue, after all). Missing a John Wayne film showing on our newly installed cable TV was not. One morning when I was 18, my ex-Green Beret uncle woke me from a dead sleep by jumping on my chest and threatening to shave off half my beard. Why? Because I had failed to tell him that Rio Lobo had been on Cinemax at 3 a.m. and he missed it. So, yeah.
Recent years have not been kind to the Duke or his legacy, in no small part because we have become a society that loves nothing more than tearing down its heroes; we can’t rise to their level, so we try to pull them down to ours. Was he a flawed human being in reality, away from that screen in a dark theater? Of course he was; we all are. Was the “strong silent type” the best template for generations of young men? Not always, but also not never; it depends on the person behind that silence. Many today see all of Wayne’s films as lessons in toxic masculinity; I say, as Eric Pierce would, only a Sith deals in absolutes.
I have to admit that I had bought into the revision of John Wayne’s legacy somewhat, to the point of wondering if he even still belonged in the pantheon of American screen heroes anymore (and thank God my grandfather did not live to see me write that). Then two things happened. First, as part of my very late-in-the-game discovery of the writings of Joan Didion, I read her essay “John Wayne: A Love Story” from the collection Slouching Toward Bethlehem. In it, she captures the essence of the Duke and what made him the icon he was for so long without ever glossing over the flaws. In one short piece she restored my faith.
Second, and more importantly, I rewatched the films, or at least several of them. He had parts in at least 177 movies over the course of a 51-year career, many of them small roles in the pulp Westerns of the 1920s and 1930s that Hollywood cranked out almost daily, but from 1939’s Stagecoach on, he was the star. He was never a great actor, saying himself on several occasions: “I don’t act at all, I re-act.” His characters were often the same from film to film, but that was okay too. The bottom line was that if you put Wayne on screen at the same time as Dean Martin (Rio Bravo and The Sons of Katie Elder) or Lee Marvin (Donovan’s Reef) or William Holden (The Horse Soldiers) or Robert Mitchum (El Dorado), there was no doubt who your gaze was drawn to.
Wayne has even made his way into the music of that other great idol of mine, Bruce Springsteen. In his 2019 album Western Stars, the title track contains the following lines:
Once I was shot by John Wayne, yeah, it was towards the end That one scene’s bought me a thousand drinks, set me up and I’ll tell it for you, friend
But don’t take my (or Bruce’s) word for it. Watch the five films below, which are my favorites of his (it was hard to get it down to five), and see for yourself. I only include a brief comment for each because they speak for themselves. And watch them for what they are: a good story with clearly defined lines of right and wrong, good and bad, hero and villain. I know the world is not a black-and-white proposition, and the amount of gray seems to increase every day. That’s the comfort in watching a John Wayne movie, maybe more so today than ever. In the end, there’s nothing wrong with a story where the good guy wins, gets the girl, and rides off into a magnificent sunset.
Rio Bravo (1959). My favorite John Wayne film is one of five classics he made with director Howard Hawks. Wayne plays a sheriff surrounded by outlaws working for a robber baron determined to free his murderer brother from jail. Wayne’s crew consists of Dean Martin and a teenage Ricky Nelson (who sing together without it seeming forced into the narrative), as well as Walter Brennan, who adds a comic touch as Stumpy. There is definite romantic chemistry between Wayne and Angie Dickinson (a rarity for a Wayne film), and their scenes together are among the best in movie. In the end, however, this is the Duke being the Duke. You can never go wrong with that.
True Grit (1969). If you’ve only seen the 2010 remake starring Jeff Bridges, you need to see this one as well. Wayne won his only Oscar for his portrayal of U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn, and though some claimed it was more of a lifetime achievement award than for this performance, they were both stupid and wrong. This film is special to me because it’s the only time I came close to being anything like the Duke. When the retina in my left eye detached a few years ago I had to wear an eye patch for a while, which made me, like Rooster Cogburn, a one-eyed fat man. I still have the patch.
The Searchers (1956). Most critics consider this both John Wayne’s best film and the best Western ever made, and with good reason. It was surely the greatest film that John Wayne and director John Ford made together (from Stagecoach in 1939 through Donovan’s Reef in 1963 they collaborated on 14 films). As Ethan Edwards, an ex-Confederate soldier consumed with and driven by hatred for the Comanches who killed his brother and kidnapped his nieces, Wayne tackles the most complex and interesting character of his long career. It’s a visually gorgeous film, and the “doorway scene” at the end remains one of the most iconic scenes ever shot.
The Longest Day (1962). Wayne is not the lead in this ensemble film about D-Day (which, with apologies to Steven Spielberg, is my favorite World War II movie). But in an epic that featured nearly every major star of the time he towers over all of them in every scene he’s in. Also, though the end credits say they list all of the actors alphabetically and several had names that would have fallen after his, the credits conclude with “AND John Wayne.” Indeed.
The Quiet Man (1952). Wayne teams up with John Ford again here, but this time they are about as far from the Old West as you can get. Wayne plays a former boxer with a secret past who returns to his hometown in Ireland to buy back his family’s farm. While there, he falls head-over-heels for Maureen O’Hara (and who wouldn’t?) and also runs afoul of her brother (played by Victor McLaglen), who staunchly opposes their marriage. The scenery of the Irish countryside is some of the most beautiful you’ll see on film, but it’s the epic donnybrook between Wayne and McLagen that steals this picture.
Bonus: Hatari! (1962). I know I said five, but this one’s just too much fun to leave off. Another of the John Wayne/Howard Hawks collaborations, this time not a Western but rather the story of a motley group of adventurers who capture African wildlife to sell to zoos (the PETA types are screaming at me right now, but how did you think that cute hippo at your local zoo got there?). There’s no real plot to this one other than their quest to fill their quota by season’s end, but scenes with some baby elephants and Red Buttons’ hilarious attempt to capture a tree full of monkeys make this a film I’ll watch every time it’s on.
I realize that in limiting my list to five (plus one), I left off films like Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Sons of Katie Elder, and many others. This list could as easily have been 50 as five, but you probably wouldn’t have read it then. Start with these; they’ll lead you to the others. And as for the talk of heroes I started this piece with, I’ll let the Duke have the final say on that, in his own words:
“Nobody should come to the movies unless he believes in heroes.”
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