It’s John Wayne day on Tuesday, Aug. 18, as Turner Classic Movies continues with its “Summer Under the Stars” series.
One of the most popular film stars ever, John Wayne was almost invariably John Wayne (or the screen version of himself) no matter who or what he played. But then again, the same can be said of Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart and other well-respected actors of the studio era. I’m not quite sure why Wayne is generally regarded as less of an actor than those other performers, but perhaps one explanation is that Westerns and war movies aren’t perceived as settings for a real actor, and Wayne made his mark in those two film genres.
Another problem is that Wayne’s heroes were almost always one-dimensional, and the actor hardly ever made an effort to add at least a second dimension to them. (There are exceptions to this rule, most notably in The Shootist, Wayne’s last film.)
A third problem is that Wayne usually looked like he was ready to fall asleep whenever he wasn’t punching someone or blowing holes into some villainous type or other.
You can decide on Wayne’s talents – or lack thereof – for yourself, as TCM will be showing several of his most important films, including True Grit, for which he won a sentimental Oscar; the Academy Award-nominated The Alamo, a monumental bore that Wayne himself directed and produced, and that is more notable – or rather, infamous – for its aggressive and tasteless Oscar campaign than for anything that takes place on-screen; and The Green Berets (above right), which Wayne also co-directed and that perhaps more than any other movie he ever made best reflects his right-wing worldview.
Of the movies listed below, I’d recommend two that I’ve seen: The Sons of Katie Elder, a late Henry Hathaway effort that is surprisingly enjoyable, and Baby Face, a raunchy Barbara Stanwyck vehicle in which Wayne has a small role as one of the steps on which Stanwyck’s antiheroine mounts on her path to glory.
Directed by Bernard Vorhaus, the Third Reich drama Three Faces West sounds interesting, partly because Sigrid Gurie – Samuel Goldwyn’s (Brooklyn-born) “Norwegian Garbo” – is in it.
Also, the mostly reactionary comedy Western McLintock!, inspired by William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, directed by the reliable Andrew V. McLaglen, and costarring Maureen O’Hara (who gets a spanking to put her in her place), Stefanie Powers (who also gets a spanking), John Wayne’s son Patrick Wayne, and Yvonne De Carlo.
As an aside, McLaglen’s other features include Shenandoah (1965), with James Stewart; The Ballad of Josie (1967), a rare female-centered effort with Doris Day and Peter Graves; The Devil’s Brigade (1968), with William Holden and Cliff Robertson; and The Wild Geese (1978), with Richard Burton and Roger Moore.
John Wayne movies
Among John Wayne’s best-known star vehicles during his 45-plus-year Hollywood career, some of which pop up regularly on TCM, are the following:
- John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), in which John Wayne – at the time the star of B Westerns (California Straight Ahead!, Santa Fe Stampede, Overland Stage Raiders, etc.) – is not only billed below the title but also below The High and the Mighty actress Claire Trevor. Wayne and Trevor also worked together in another 1939 release, William A. Seiter’s run-of-the-mill historical adventure Allegheny Uprising, and, the following year, in Raoul Walsh’s more prestigious Civil War drama Dark Command.
- Howard Hawks’ classic Western Red River (1948, though actually shot in 1946), a major domestic box office hit ($4.2 million in rentals [the studio’s take of the gross]; or approx. $65 million in 2004 dollars). Also in the cast: newcomers Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, and Coleen Gray; veterans Harry Carey and Walter Brennan; and John Ireland.
- John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952), with Maureen O’Hara as a fiery Irish lass – one not very different from her McLintock! character – and Wayne as an Irish-born American from Pittsburgh, back in Ireland to buy his family’s former property. The Quiet Man earned Ford his record-setting fourth Best Director Academy Award. (The other three were for The Informer, 1935; The Grapes of Wrath, 1940; and How Green Was My Valley, 1941).
- Best Picture Oscar nominee The Alamo (1960), a flag-waving historical drama directed by John Wayne himself (reportedly with some assistance from John Ford), and toplining Wayne, Laurence Harvey, Richard Widmark, Patrick Wayne, and Frankie Avalon. Wayne was bypassed for the Best Director and Best Actor Oscars, but was shortlisted as the film’s producer.
- The episodic, all-star, MGM-released Cinerama Western How the West Was Won (1963), also featuring, among others, Debbie Reynolds, Carroll Baker, Gregory Peck, Thelma Ritter, George Peppard, Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Carolyn Jones, Robert Preston, Eli Wallach, James Stewart, Lee J. Cobb, and Karl Malden. Spencer Tracy narrated. Henry Hathaway directed three of the film’s five segments and its brief epilogue; John Ford handled “The Railroad” (shades of his 1924 Western The Iron Horse); and George Marshall “The Civil War,” featuring Wayne as Gen. William T. Sherman. Nominated for eight Oscars – including, head-scratchingly, Best Picture – How the West Won proved itself to be a costlier, more grandiose, more expansive, and more financially successful version of Wayne’s B movies of the 1930s. Admittedly, this otherwise audaciously conventional Western has a special place in cinema history, as it’s one of two narrative features – the other being another 1962 MGM release, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm – shot in the three-camera Cinerama process.
- Don Siegel’s Western The Shootist (1976), also featuring movie veterans Lauren Bacall (who had starred opposite Wayne in William A. Wellman’s clunky, 1955 anti-Communist political drama Blood Alley) and James Stewart (Wayne’s costar in John Ford’s – now considered a classic – 1962 Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance). Wayne’s final movie, The Shootist features what is surely his finest performance.
John Wayne in True Grit 1969.
John Wayne Oscar nominations
John Wayne was nominated for two Best Actor Academy Awards:
- Allan Dwan’s flag-waving World War II drama Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), with John Agar, Adele Mara, Forrest Tucker, and Arthur Franz. Wayne plays a tough marine sergeant, training his men for the upcoming Battle of Iwo Jima. Broderick Crawford was that year’s winner for Robert Rossen’s political drama All the King’s Men.
- Henry Hathaway’s Western True Grit (1969), with Wayne as the one-eyed U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, hired by a tomboyish Kim Darby to find her father’s murderer (Jeff Corey). By then in Hollywood for more than four decades, Wayne – panned in some quarters because of his ardent support for the then-raging Vietnam War – won a sentimental Oscar for his work in True Grit, even though his U.S. Marshal is no less a by-the-book Wayne-esque creation than anything else he had done before. That year’s losers were Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman for Midnight Cowboy, Peter O’Toole for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and Richard Burton for Anne of the Thousand Days.
One of cinema’s most iconic and longest-lasting movie stars, John Wayne died at age 72 in 1979.
John Wayne films on TCM: ‘Summer Under the Stars’ schedule (PDT) – Aug. 18
3:00 AM Flying Leathernecks (1951)
Director: Nicholas Ray.
Cast: John Wayne, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Jay C. Flippen.
102m5:00 AM The Wings of Eagles (1957)
Director: John Ford.
Cast: John Wayne, Dan Dailey, Maureen O’Hara, Ward Bond, Ken Curtis, Edmund Lowe, Kenneth Tobey, Sig Ruman, Barry Kelley, Henry O’Neill, Dorothy Jordan, Veda Ann Borg, Mae Marsh.
110m7:00 AM 3 Godfathers (1948)
Director: John Ford.
Cast: John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz, Harry Carey Jr., Ward Bond, Mae Marsh, Mildred Natwick, Jane Darwell, Guy Kibbee, Ben Johnson.
106m9:00 AM The Alamo (1960)
Director: John Wayne.
Cast: John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, Frankie Avalon, Chill Wills.
203m12:30 PM McLintock! (1963)
Director: Andrew V. McLaglen.
Cast: John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Stefanie Powers, Yvonne De Carlo, Patrick Wayne, Jack Kruschen, Chill Wills.
127m2:45 PM The Horse Soldiers (1959)
Director: John Ford.
Cast: John Wayne, William Holden, Constance Towers.
120m5:00 PM The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)
Director: Henry Hathaway.
Cast: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Martha Hyer, Michael Anderson Jr., Earl Holliman, Jeremy Slate, James Gregory, George Kennedy, Dennis Hopper, John Litel, John Qualen.
122m7:15 PM True Grit (1969)
Director: Henry Hathaway.
Cast: John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Kim Darby, Jeremy Slate, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Strother Martin, Jeff Corey, John Doucette, Donald Woods.
128m9:30 PM The Green Berets (1968)
Directors: John Wayne & Ray Kellogg.
Cast: John Wayne, David Janssen, Jim Hutton.
142m12:00 AM Three Faces West (1940)
Director: Bernard Vorhaus.
Cast: John Wayne, Sigrid Gurie, Charles Coburn.
79m1:30 AM Baby Face (1933)
Director: Alfred E. Green.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook, Henry Kolker, Alphonse Ethier, Margaret Lindsay, Arthur Hohl, John Wayne, Robert Barrat, Douglas Dumbrille, Theresa Harris.
76m
“John Wayne Movies” notes
John Wayne The Alamo image: Courtesy Turner Classic Movies.