Family Plot and The Shootist

SPOILERS for The Shootist, Family Plot, Marathon Man, and The Cowboys


1976 was a significant year for American movies, and a diverse one. Important or major films like "Taxi Driver," "Network," "All the President's Men," "Marathon Man," "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and even the heart-felt hit and Best Picture winner "Rocky" made it a memorable year.

But I'll always remember 1976 first and most as the year of "The Shootist" and "Family Plot."

The last films of John Wayne and Alfred Hitchcock, respectively.

You could say those two were different, and you'd be right. But they had similarities, and so did their last movies in 1976:

1. Both were iconic "symbols" of a type of movie (the Western, the thriller), and both had dominated the American movie landscape in their specialty from the 40's to the 70's (with both of them starting in movies in the 20's.) Hitch and the Duke were of an era that came to a close in the seventies, and it was the last corral at the old graveyard for them in 1976.

2. With both "The Shootist" and "Family Plot," Wayne and Hitchcock swore that they would do other movies after. But both men were very ill while making these films. Hitchcock was so ill he almost couldn't finish directing "Family Plot." Wayne was so ill he had to leave the final barroom-shootout set for the hospital for a few days and almost didn't finish "The Shootist."

When both of those movies came out a few months apart, the feeling about them was the same: these ARE the last movies of these legends. And it was true.
Moreover, the two men died pretty close in time, a few years later, Wayne in 1979 and Hitchcock in 1980, less than a year apart.

3 Wayne's was the more "perfect final film": he played a gunfighter dying of cancer while he really WAS (slowly) dying of cancer. "Time" magazine wrote of "The Shootist" in 1976 that "It's a little early for John Wayne to be acting in his own eulogy" -- but the truth of the matter was, he was.

For its part, "Family Plot" was more laid back and mellow a movie than Hitchcock had done in a long time, with the heroine winking out at us at the end. Possibly Hitchcock's way of saying goodbye, and leaving us with a nice memory.

4. Because "The Shootist" had a younger director in charge (but not that young; Don Siegel was a veteran guy), it was a more crisp and professional-looking movie than old man Hitchcock's sluggish "Family Plot," but the two movies rather "switched energies": "The Shootist" featured older actors like Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Lauren Bacall, and John Carradine. "Family Plot" featured young actors like Bruce Dern, Karen Black, and Barbara Harris.

5. Cross-overs: "The Shootist" featured Hitchcock player James Stewart and that opulent barroom was designed by Hitchcock's sometimes art director Robert Boyle ("The Birds.") "Family Plot" starred Bruce Dern in an uncharateristically light and heroic role -- hard to pull off only four years after he gunned John Wayne down in the back in "The Cowboys."

6. Wayne was an actor who dabbled in directing ("The Alamo," "The Green Berets.") Hitchcock was a director who dabbled in acting (making cameos in all his movies, hosting a TV show and his trailers.) And just one time, the two men crossed paths in the field: in 1960, Wayne's "Alamo" was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but Wayne didn't get a Best Director nomination. Wayne's directing nomination went to Hitchcock for "Psycho"...which didn't get a Best Picture nomination. Cruel fate. (Billy Wilder and "The Apartment" won both categories.)

7. Because neither John Wayne nor Alfred Hitchcock were top box office anymore, their final movies in 1976 were small, low-budget affairs. The big Western that year was Eastwood's "Outlaw Josey Wales" -- he was the hot cowboy of the time. The big thriller that year was the very expensive, star-studded "Marathon Man" (with William Devane, the "Family Plot" main villain, as the secondary villain behind Laurence Oliver. Roy Scheider turned down the villain role in "Family Plot" to do a cameo as Dustin Hoffman's brother here.)

But it really didn't matter that there were bigger, more important, more popular movies in 1976. If you'd grown up on John Wayne and Alfred Hitchcock -- whose worlds of the Western and the Thriller weren't all THAT different (death solves conflicts in both) -- then 1976 was the year of "The Shootist" and "Family Plot."