my dad was an extra in the movie The Alamo (1960), which Wayne starred in and directed. My dad said Wayne cussed a lot. My dad played a mexican cavalry man....
My dad and many men of his era and place (we lived in west texas) always sort of lived their lives in a john wayne sort of fashion.... in the movie Hondo, Wayne, upon hearing that a young boy could not swim across the creek in front of him, grabbed him by his underwear and threw him in the creek--sink or swim. My dad did the same to me at about age 6.
Anyway, I think it was John Ford who made Wayne a real star.
These kinds of tropes are in old movies. The 49er whos struck gold and looks like a vagrant. Tuco in the Good the Bad and the Ugly who mistakes a union soldier for a confederate soldier, etc.
my father used to watch that movie at least once a month, usually with a bourbon in his hand, and alway a shit-eating grin on his face. i'm positive he wishes he could have been a mountain man when he 'grew up'.
I agree. Sort of like how Clint Eastwood redefined Westerns from the cleancut western hero to a more morally ambiguous unshaven guy with a different sort of charisma.
My what a boring media landscape it would be if all characters were goodie little “Mary Poppins” types.
Just because a minority wrongly take inspiration from an ill behaved character is no reason to temper a fictional character actions. Did Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lead to an increase in bank and train robberies?
Ware started life as a slave in the American South and ended as a respected rancher and member of the community in Calgary, Alberta. There would probably be movies about this guy if he'd stopped at Montana instead of crossing into Canada.
Any comprehensive study of the genre must include movies directed by John Ford; and movies starring John Wayne. There will be much overlap in these two sets. Wayne was not a versatile actor, but any study of The American Western without significant attention to him would be incomplete. "Stagecoach" and "The Searchers" are good examples of their early and later collaborations, respectively. Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo". Anthony Mann's westerns starring James Stewart. More recent suggestions would include Lawrence Kasdan's "Silverado" and Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven".
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