I'm watching El Dorado now. Just watched the Sons of K.Elder. This is one of my all time favs, but how can you pick. Dating back to his war movies and all his westerns, the Duke was one of the best of all time! Long live " Pilgrim ".
shareI am a much bigger fan of both the younger Duke and the older Duke. Angel and the Bad Man, Stagecoach, The Searchers and The Shootist are probably my favorite John Wayne films. I especially love the vulnerability he shows in his relationships with Claire Trevor in Stagecoach and with Lauren Bacall in the Shootist.
John 3:16
John Wayne deliberately chose to narrow his range of characters. He rose to stardom at a time when stars belonged to studios and he was an early supporter of stars becoming independent. 'Duke' Morrison's approach was to create a product called "John Wayne" and allow him to be used only in movie roles that he considered suitable.
As a result, his detractors have always used his narrow range of character or personalities as an excuse to overlook his acting ability. He spend a couple of decades learning how, but did learn to display a full range of emotion simply with the look of his eyes.
It is unfortunate that he became a target for so many lefties to hate. If movie fans of the right were as thin skinned as some on the left are, or pretend to be, there is a long list of actors who would not be able to get hired.
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.
Yes. If politics did not prejudice so many people, Wayne would be recognized for the great actor he truly is. As you note, his eyes were unusually and sublimely expressive. Even at a young age in Stagecoach, his range is very impressive. His naive, genuine gentlemanly treatment of Claire Trevor's "soiled dove" really gets me every time. They are just great together.
The atypical Duke film that is also among my very favorites is The Quiet Man. Caught between trying to forget/hide his past and having to ultimately come to grips with it, Wayne does a wonderful job of showing that internal conflict. (Plus TQM has Maureen O'Hara - light years beyond Angie Dickinson in beauty as well as talent!)
John 3:16
I agree with the posts above. Wayne is my favorite actor and has always been, although for different reasons now that I'm near 30 than when I was a kid. That's part of his greatness, he can appeal to such a wide range (if you leave out the politics).
That said, it is very hard to pick out his best. I would say my favorite would have to be She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, which is not only my favorite but I also think one of his best performances and I think he should have been nominated for the Oscar that year (1949) for it instead of Sands of Iwo Jima (which I think is also really good just not quite as good as Ribbon). I may be biased a little bit too, since I really like the music in Ribbon and also my favorite character in the movie is actually not Duke, but Ben Johnson as Sgt. (ex-Confederate Captain) Tyree. I've used his quote "My momma didn't raise no son to be makin' guesses in front of Yankee Captains" in real life to my CO a few times (as a joke, of course). Anyways, Duke's moving performance as Captain Brittles in Ribbon is Oscar-worthy and his best.
My second would have to be his extremely deep performance in The Searchers. After that it's hard to rank, but Rio Bravo and El Dorado are both up there, along with many non-Westerns. Like you said, there's just too many to pick from!
"Courage is being scared to death- and saddling up anyway"