Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here.
I know the DVD coverage has been a little slow around here lately, but at least on my end, I’m going to try to change that. I’ve got a ton of things to cover, and one of the most enjoyable recent experiences I’ve had on DVD has been working my way through that giant stack of John Wayne titles that both Warner Bros. and Paramount put out to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Wayne’s birthday, May 26th.
Which, as it happens, is my birthday too, yeah.
I was raised on John Wayne movies. My dad’s a huge fan of Westerns in general, but Wayne specifically. I remember one of the few times he took me to a reparatory screening of something, it was so we could see RED RIVER on the bigscreen together. Considering I’m adopted (in the movie, Wayne’s the adoptive father of Montgomery Clift), it made a hell of an impression on me.
Like many of the great movie icons, Wayne played himself more often than not. Or the idealized version of himself, anyway. And over the course of my life as a filmgoer, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with that iconic version of Wayne. There are times where I’ve really hated what I saw him as a symbol of, this sort of brute force Americana, all swagger and might-makes-right, intolerant and violent. But as I’ve grown older and really dug into his filmography, I find that many of his best films are examples of smart writers and directors taking that iconography and playing with it, suberverting it or using it to make powerful comments about the Western genre or about America at the time the films were made. Wayne controlled his own fate in a way that many actors never did, thanks in large part to the rich production deal his company Batjac struck with Paramount.
By the time 1972 rolled around, Wayne’s career was on the decline. He was still a giant movie star, no question about it, but the films he was making just weren’t connecting with audiences. CHISUM and RIO LOBO both proved to be disappointments with critics and audiences alike, and when he made BIG JAKE, it was a departure from the types of films he was known for, more in line with the violent action movies of the day.
THE COWBOYS gave Wayne one of his very best late-era roles, in my opinion, and the script by Irving Ravetch, Harriet Frank Jr., and William Dale Jennings is a smart, sentimental adaptation of the novel by Jennings. Mark Rydell and his cinematographer the great Robert Surtees (who shot classics like THE GRADUATE, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, THE STING and BEN-HUR) use every inch of their full scope screen to great effect here, and the new Warner Bros. release of the film is gorgeous.
The story is incredibly simple. Wil Anderson’s ranch is in trouble because people are getting gold fever and leaving the area, determined to go find their fortune elsewhere. Anderson’s got a cattle drive coming up, and no one to run it with him. Even so, he refuses to compromise his own personal ethics, and when a group of recently-released convicts led by Long Hale (Bruce Dern) shows up and offers their services, he turns them down cold. He gets a crazy idea, though, and recruits eleven boys from area to work the drive with him, the oldest of them only fifteen. Add a black cook to the mix, played with wry wit by Roscoe Lee Browne, and what unfolds is a solid, smart coming-of-age story that plays surprisingly rough.
Wayne was already an old man by the time he made this, and every single day of his 60-plus years shows on his face and in every move he makes. The kids look even younger next to him, but there’s something genuine about the way they bloom under his attention and the way they look up to him, awed by his experience. Robert Carradine made his screen debut as one of the kids, and you can see how much they all look up to Wayne as an actor. Browne makes a great foil for Wayne in their scenes together, and one of the best scenes in the film involves Colleen Dewhurst as a madam of a wagon train brothel that crosses paths with the cattle drive. The kids all do excellent work, and as far as Bruce Dern goes... he does exactly what he’s hired to do, and I can only imagine how much audiences hated him at the time.
If you’ve seen this film, you remember the ending, and if you haven’t, I won’t ruin it for you. I’ll just say that it took enormous courage for Rydell to not only shoot the ending, but to stage it the way he does. It’s a refutation of much of Wayne’s career in one way, but a confirmation of his iconic character in another.
It’s impossible to forget you’re watching John Wayne, and Rydell takes full advantage of that, making THE COWBOYS far more affecting than one might expect.
THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER is probably best known to younger audiences thanks to the recent remake, FOUR BROTHERS. Henry Hathaway’s 1965 film is a confident piece of Hollywood entertainment, and part of the charm is the reunion of Wayne and Dean Martin, who were so great together in RIO BRAVO. When ranch owner Katie Elder dies, her four sons return home, each of them having taken very different paths in life. John Elder (Wayne) is notorious, feared by everyone, while Tom (Martin) is a gambler. The younger sons, Matt (Earl Holliman) and Bud (Michael Anderson) have made decent lives for themselves, but they’re all connected by their love for their mother. When they learn that Katie died with no money, having sold the ranch off, they begin to suspect that something happened to their mother that needs to be avenged.
I’m not going to make the case for THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER as a classic or a masterpiece, but Hathaway was one of those filmmakers who could put it all together and make compelling entertainment. Between this and NEVADA SMITH, the Steve McQueen film he made the following year, he obviously knew how to get maximum tension from the revenge sub-genre. Wayne and Martin sort of overpower Holliman and Anderson as the younger brothers, but that’s fine. It’s the action set pieces and the tension that really carries the film and makes it hold up.
THE COWBOYS is available from Warner Home Video, and is also available as either an HD-DVD or a Blu-Ray release. THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER can be purchased from Paramount Home Video either as a standalone title, or as part of the John Wayne Centennial Collection.
I’m going to continue to discuss Wayne’s films here and over on my DVD blog, but there’s a lot of other stuff I want to feature here on the site in the next few weeks. Right now, I’m going to go work on finishing up part one of the set report for a film that I think is going to surprise a lot of people next spring.
Have you checked my DVD Blog Today?
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Have you checked my DVD Blog Today? Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
