With a few movies exceptions the late 60's early 70's are mostly bad. Itb seems the bad ones are made through waynes own production company. Big Jake being a real stinker.
Except for True grit and The Shootist these movie pale in caompaersion to classic 50's Wayne movies.
If that is the case then what about later films of Richard Burton and Rod Steiger as well.
shareBig Jake a real stinker ? Quite the contrary, one of Duke's very best films !
And his true last hit which allowed John Wayne to be #1 at the US box office for the last time.
Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. I'm sitting here looking at the framed Style B one sheet poster on my office wall. If only allowed to pick one "favorite" movie of all time, Big Jake is it.
If you think Big Jake is a stinker you obviously know nothing about John Wayne movies.
shareIt was funny:
When the Oscar Academy finally voted John Wayne a Best Actor Oscar in 1970 for his work in 1969's "True Grit," as I recall the feeling was: "Thanks for everything, Duke -- now go away." New Hollywood was taking over.
But it didn't work out that way.
After True Grit, Wayne went on to make ELEVEN movies in only SIX years.
The Undefeated(with Rock Hudson)
Chisum
Rio Lobo(final film of Howard "Rio Bravo" Hawks)
Big Jake
The Cowboys
Cahill US Marshal
The Train Robbers
McQ(modern day cop like Dirty Harry)
Brannigan (modern day US cop in London)
Rooster Cogburn (weak True Grit sequel with Kate Hepburn)
The Shootist(final film)
Wayne then died three years after The Shootist, in 1979.
Of those 11 films, many of them were pretty much "programmers"(better than Bs because Wayne was in them, but nothing special) but three were better than the rest:
The Cowboys (a very serious story an aging rancher taking on a group of boys on a cattle drive)
The Shootist(a very serious story about a gunfighter dying of cancer)
"Something special" happened to the Wayne character in those two movies that made them historic in their own way.
CONT
1. The Cowboys
2. The Shootist
and:
3. Big Jake. This one was "fun" but in many ways the most violent Wayne Western ever made to that date("The Cowboys" and "The Shootist" would beat that, though) . It followed 'The Wild Bunch" by two years and had a script partially written by the "Dirty Harry" writers. And it had Richard Boone - one of the great unsung movie stars of his era -- as a great villain to go toe-to-toe with Wayne. Some of this was a little "plastic" -- like the barroom shoot out in a too-well lit saloon set -- but the rest of it felt very satisfyingly "real." Boone as the villain; Maureen O"Hara as the estranged wife ("It is, I think, going to be a very harsh and unpleasant kind of business, and will, i think, require an extremely harsh and unpleasant kind of man to see to it.") Wayne's son Patrick as one of his sons. Wayne's son Ethan as his GRANDSON. Robert Mitchum's son James Mitchum as another Wayne son. A family affair with a lot of good revenge action, a great bad guy, and a fine finish.
I see Big Jake, The Cowboys, and The Shootist as really the only solid movies Wayne made after True Grit. And The Shootist was simply one of the most fitting "final movies" any star every got.
As for the others, they have their fans, but they all have flaws. Saddest is "Rio Lobo" where Howard Hawks tries to make Rio Bravo and El Dorado one more time, but runs out of gas (and has no co-star for Duke on the order of Dino or Mitchum.) Hawks retired after that one.
Also not too good is "Rooster Cogburn" where Wayne rather cheapens his famous True Grit character and joins Kate Hepburn in a quasi-remake of HER classic The African Queen (here a river raft fills in for the boat) with Hepburn just too old for her part (yeah, Wayne was old too, but rather ageless.) The movie stands for the only time Wayne and Hepburn worked together, but its not worthy of them.
CONT
The rest? Varying forms of OK
The Undefeated: Handsome Rock Hudson as a post-Civil War Confederate officer stuck with ex-Union man Wayne...they're pretty good together. A nice stampede. That's it.
Chisum: "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," John Wayne style. Chisum is a minor character and even a villain in other versions. This one's a little too square. And villain Forrest Tucker is no Richard Boone.
Cahill: George Kennedy is a good, oafish villain...but no Richard Boone.
The Train Robbers: John Wayne, Ann-Margret, Ben Johnson, Rod Taylor...and nothing happens. Rod Taylor as "just a sidekick," (he was once a star) was particularly sad to see.
McQ: Wayne said he turned down Dirty Harry. Who knows? He tries his hand here as a tough modern cop. A real BIG, old modern cop. One critic said "Wayne shouldn't wear a sportscoat in his movies. It looks like a monkey jacket." Interesting: the Seattle location, the car chase on the beach through the crashing ocean waves, a really big gun. But...no Dirty Harry.
Brannigan: More Dirty Harry. London fish out of water tale. (I oddly often compare this to Hitchcock's London-based thriller Frenzy of 1972; they have similar locations and atmosphere.) Interesting to see Richard Attenborough play it straight as a Scotland Yard man(though he soon quit acting for years.)
So that's Wayne's 70s movies. Two serious classics(The Cowboys and The Shootist.) One pop classic(Big Jake). And the rest kept him on the Top Ten or so lists to the end.
I’m not even a big John Wayne fan but I still enjoyed this posting. It’s very cool of you to have taken the time to do it.
shareThank you.
I think the main thing I was trying to impart is that even though Hollywood THOUGHT they were done with Wayne when they gave him the Oscar for True Grit at the end of the 60's...he just kept right on working in the 70's... until he couldn't.
And gave us at least three great-to-good movies for his resume.
Damn fine post, sir.
sharethe cowboys is an underrated movie of his.
shareSome of his most entertaining movies were made in the 60s--North to Alaska, El Dorado, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, McClintock!, and the highly entertaining The Comancheros.
shareI ENJOY THEM ALL.
shareSeveral of Wayne's '60s movies are very entertaining (all I ask of them), and they're all watchable at least once. There's only one I haven't been able to get into, and that's "Donovan's Reef", but I feel I need to give it another chance.
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