Films You Wish John Wayne Hadn't Made

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  • Hi.


    We have had the best John Wayne pictures. The worst, the Best Cowboys and the Worst
    I would like to start a new topic


    Films you wish John Wayne Hadn't Made - r even films he didn't make but you wish he had.


    In another posting I got on to the subject of minor actors in The Longest Day[I] in which numerous well known and not so well known faces are visible.


    Making pen pictures of all the people who acted in John Wayne films I can honestly say that as good as his roles were in


    'The Longest Day' 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' and 'How the West was Won'[I]


    Fom a purely selfish point of view there is a cast list of about 117 people in the Longest Day most of whom like Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Harry Fowler and Norman Rossington were people that you wouldn't normally associate with John Wayne and that is only the Brits, add to that the German and French actors and it gets really complicated.


    It probably approaching the same number in TGSET


    And quite a large number in HTWWW


    So in a controversial manner I can say that these were three films I wish John Wayne hadn't made.

    Walk Tall - Talk Low

  • Every time I watch DUEL IN THE SUN (and I confess, it's often) I imagine Wayne playing the part of Lewt McCanles - which eventually went to Gregory Peck. I think Wayne could have been terrific in this good boy/bad boy kind of part. Lusting for Jennifer Jones, breaking in the horse, wrecking the train and shooting poor old Charles Bickford, and then biting the dust full of bullet-holes in a final embrace - and all in Technicolor and with Tiomkin's music. What a part! They talked Wayne about it but for some reason or another that never came about.

  • I wish he never made The Cowboys. This was not a typical John Wayne movie, and being killed off in the picture somewhere just after the middle part, just didn't make Duke the star he really is. This is not John Wayne in his best, and somehow in my opinion belittled him. How can you imagine a person like Bruce Dern capable in size and ability could kill off Duke?


    I did like the relationship he had with the boys, and the way he showed them how they had to be men, but ruined the picture with the killing.


    Cheers, Hondo B)



    Quote

    "When you come slam bang up against trouble, it never looks half as bad if you face up to it"

    - John Wayne quote

  • Quote

    Originally posted by Hondo Duke Lane@Jan 21 2004, 02:42 PM
    How can you imagine a person like Bruce Dern capable in size and ability could kill off Duke?


    The Cowboys is on my list of least liked JW movies for just the reason you mention. However, the first half of the movie was pretty darn good.


    In response to your question about Bruce Dern, it was because his character was a sleazy :angry: , disgusting :angry: creep :angry: of a human being who would shoot someone in the back :angry: !


    Another one I wish he'd never made was The Conqueror. It was just a bad movie, IMHO, and it was weird to see him with the "Oriental look". There are other JW movies with roles that are different than his usual ones that are pretty good, but The Conqueror wasn't one of them.


    Chester :newyear:

  • Hondo, I agree about the Cowboys. Was never really all that enthused with that movie. In fact to this day I still do not own it.

    Life is hard, its even harder when your stupid!!
    -John Wayne

  • I agree on the Conquerer, but for different reasons. Maybe if he had skipped it, he wouldn't have had all the cancer he had later in life, due to the radio-active dust used on the set. Could have maybe lived into the mid-to late 80s and been healthier, and maybe done 10 more films. Of course his smoking probably didn't help his health either.


    GSP

    "...all of this and General Price that baby sister makes it back to Yell county" --Rooster Cogburn, True Grit.

  • :cowboy:


    Hi Hondo,


    As an amusing aside to the Cowboys


    Bruce Dern's daughter Laura used to tell how whenever she went to college her fellow students would pick her out a say that her dad shot John Wayne in the back.
    She said it took years for her to live it down.


    Best regards


    Arthur

    Walk Tall - Talk Low

  • Hi


    With regard to 'The Conqueror'. Apparently it was originally written for Marlon Brando but at the last minute 20th Century Fox refused to lease him to RKO.


    The script writer had originally made the script with Brando in mind and written in almost old english.


    I thought that on a visit to a studio John Wayne had seen a small part of the script lying in a wastepaper bin and after reading it decided that he had to make the film. Other versions say that he picked it up off a desk.


    Apparently with his ability to learn lines very quickly he didn't read the complete script until the night before shooting began and was horrified.


    But when it came down to it was a western set in Mongolia rather than Arizona with Wayne playing Temajun rather than Stoney Brooke.


    Of the location shooting 'John Wayne American' Quotes


    Quote

    out of the 220 people Dick Powell brought to St George Utah, in 1954, 91 came down with cancer later in their lives...... Duke survived Lung cancer in 1964 but later succumbed to stomach cancer. Pedro Armendariz came down with Kidney cancer in 1959 and then committed suicide in 1963 when diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. Dick Powell fell victim to lung cancer, Agnes Moorhead would die of uterine cancer, and (Susan) Hayward ended up with cancers of the skin, breast, uterus, and brain.


    It was also a contributary factor that most of the cancer victims were also heavy smokers.


    Another small co-incidence especially in view of films John Wayne might have done. In 1953 the government exploded two bombs which were particularly harmful one went off on April 25 and the other on May 19th.


    The name of the second bomb was 'Dirty Harry'
    The name of a film that Duke was later offered and turned down, and later turned Clint Eastwood into a star.


    However the bottom line says that although the critics lampooned it it was very popular with the public in general.


    Regards


    Arthur

    Walk Tall - Talk Low

  • Roland! Duke as Lewt McCanles? Wow!!! I confess I never thought of it. That role is such a combination of sexiness and smarminess... Duke is certainly capable of the former but I don't like to think of him doing the latter. He's just too big and rugged, I think. Gregory Peck has a taut, finely wrought kind of appeal that IMO translates better.


    Unbelievably bad but fun movie, though.


    To get back to the original topic, I guess I haven't seen enough of JW's films, because I can't think of any that I wish he hadn't made. Maybe some of the '70s cop films?

  • Jen,


    That's a pretty good point about the '70's cop movies. I always thought that he made those films because of the highly successful movies Clint Eastwood made in the Dirty Harry series. By the way Duke turned them down because of the excess violence. When he or someone saw them, they thought maybe could make something like that in Brannigan and McQ. Though I don't think they are all that bad, they seem mimic the Dirty Harry style, and of course they failed.


    But I will conceed that it probably was a mistake to go that route. <_<


    Surely Jen you've seen a lot of his movies of the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's? :rolleyes:


    Cheers, Hondo B)



    Quote

    "When you come slam bang up against trouble, it never looks half as bad if you face up to it"

    - John Wayne quote

  • Arthur, thanks for letting us know that Marlon Brando had originally been considered for the lead in The Conqueror - too bad he didn't do it! :D


    Gen, Mrs. Chester agrees with you regarding the Duke and his inability to be smarmy - sexy, yes, but smarmy - never!


    Regarding the Yucca Mountains and Area 51 nuclear tests, that's over 100 miles from where they were filming, which is quite a ways for fallout to go. Most of it would likely fall in the first 20 or 30 miles, especially those smaller bombs. I think the smoking is what did it. Almost everybody smoked back in those days, it seems. Do you remember Jimmy Stewart or Bob Hope smoking? They both lived to a ripe, old age (didn't Bob Hope make it to his 100th birthday?). I'm sure there might have been an occasional cigarette because of a part, but I don't have a clear memory of seeing them smoking. John Wayne, on the other hand, smoked in almost every movie, and frequently. It really stands out as a continuing thing over many years.


    Chester :newyear: and the Mrs. :angel1:

  • I agree that they didn't smoke all that much, but even in It's A Wonderful Life, Stewart smoked in a couple of scenes. Bob Hope smoke in movies himself, of course that could of been because of the movie and the scenes requiring smoking, and yes they could have done without a smoking scenes, but that was a different time period, and growing up in the 60's it seemed that everybody around me smoked (there were exceptions of a few people).


    The Conqueror had a common occurance that happened to almost everyone who was a part of that movie. John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendariz, Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt, Director Dick Powell, and several others on the cast have died with a cancer causing health problem. Much too early in most of their lives. Duke was later than most. It was reported that a month before the cast & crew came to location, the government was doing nuclear testing.


    Though this movie was not memorable as a John Wayne classic, and was a turing point in his career, not a good one, but one, with health related problems that would haunt him for the rest of his life.


    And yes, I agree that his smoking habits did not help matters, either.


    Cheers, Hondo B)



    Quote

    "When you come slam bang up against trouble, it never looks half as bad if you face up to it"

    - John Wayne quote

  • Just for the record: Brando, who should have played Khan, writes in his biography: that he always thought it ironic that the man who stood very much for "Nuke-em" politics became victim to that very same weapon himself.

  • I was kinda surprised to see some of you put THE COWBOYS on a list of films he shouldn't have done. Whereas everybody has his own taste of course, I still find it difficult to believe that some of you hate that movie because Wayne is killed off 20 minutes from the finale. It seems you completely miss the point when you dislike it for that reason and I would like to explain.


    The parallels of this film seem to be quite obvious and were pointed out even at his first release (critics sometimes need a couple of years to fully appreciate what a film has to give, but THE COWBOYS wasn't one of those sleepers). "Like a Christus of the Frontier" one critic wrote, and nailed it. Look:


    The obvious number of 11 (!) boys following their teacher who is eventually taken by night. The Last Supper, western style: Wayne even delivers the line "take a piece and pass it on" - with a pouch of dry meat.


    "Carrying his cross" stoically and "going down" three times.


    Even the little Judas is forgiven.


    His followers carry out the testament of the Old West - Wayne-style.


    The resurrection: When they are looking for his dead body - it's not there anymore. But his followers will carry on his gospel: "Saddle up - We're burnin' daylight" is the last line of the picture, and "saddle up" of course is a Wayne trademark line.


    Apart from that, The Cowboys stands out as one of the few productions late in his life NOT made by Batjac, and it had a much bigger budget and better production values. Of course, we all love what those Batjac films give us, but to be honest, they were economically made (that's the way Wayne liked it, very much like Eastwood does his Malpaso films, in a stark style, and Wayne even complained at one point of "over-spending" at The Cowboys) but they often just used Wayne as Wayne, not giving him much to do as an actor, just using the image. Like Allen Eyles pointed out in the case of TRAIN ROBBERS: "just using Wayne for what he stands for". As every book about the genre testifies, "The Cowboys", along with "The Shootist", stands out as one of the great and last "old-fashioned" westerns in the final decade of the western.

  • Hi
    It was also said that personally Wayne was very uncomfortable with the Cowboys because of the blooding up. But at the end accepted it as a sign of the violent times that films were going through in the sixties and seventies.



    Regards
    Arthur

    Walk Tall - Talk Low

  • Hiya Hondo ---


    Yeah, the cop film thing just didn't seem to be a natural fit for Duke. I don't like to think about him doing it because of Clint Eastwood, either. I understand it, to some extent, but I just wish he had remained true to his own calling... if that makes any sense.


    Anyway, just to show all of you how pitiful I am compared to some of you, below is a list of all the Duke films I've seen. I might be forgetting some but this should be pretty complete. I don't mind any of them, really!


    1975 Rooster Cogburn
    1975 Brannigan - didn't see all of it, actually...
    1969 True Grit
    1967 El Dorado
    1965 The Sons of Katie Elder
    1963 McLintock!
    1962 Hatari!
    1962 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    1959 Rio Bravo
    1959 The Horse Soldiers
    1956 The Searchers
    1953 Hondo
    1952 The Quiet Man
    1951 Flying Leathernecks
    1949 Wake of the Red Witch
    1949 The Fighting Kentuckian
    1949 Sands of Iwo Jima
    1949 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
    1948 The Three Godfathers
    1948 Red River
    1946 Without Reservations
    1945 They Were Expendable
    1945 Flame of Barbary Coast
    1943 A Lady Takes a Chance
    1942 The Flying Tigers
    1941 Tall in the Saddle
    1940 The Dark Command
    1939 Stagecoach


    Okay, so if I had to pick a couple that I didn't like quite as much, I'd probably pick McLintock! (I'm not a feminist but, still!), Flying Leathernecks (the war films aren't always my favorite), The Flame of Barbary Coast, and The Flying Tigers. (These last two I quite liked, I just didn't care at all for his female leads!)

  • Regarding smoking in films...


    I am very much against cigarette smoking for what it does to a person. My dad smokes and I hate it!!! I wish he'd quit. On the other hand, I admit that it looks pretty danged cool sometimes in a movie. Imagine The Quiet Man without Duke and his pensively smoked ciggies. It's always interesting to watch people's hands and the cigarette is a handy little prop that invites us to look at them.


    Another star who went too early (and I think we can probably blame it on cigarettes) is Humphrey Bogart, of course. Too bad it looked so cool. I feel like such a hypocrite! :rolleyes:


    Oh... one more thing. I am very glad to hear that Mrs. Chester agrees with me about Duke's lack of smarminess. :) Nary a smarmy cell in him.

  • Jen,


    It would be easier for me to tell you what Duke moviesI haven't seen. I have never seen, Shepherd in the Hills, Island in the Sky, almost all his "B" movies, and to tell you the truth, How the West was Won. I did see the scene with Duke and Harry Morgan, but not the whole movie.


    Cheers, Hondo B)



    Quote

    "When you come slam bang up against trouble, it never looks half as bad if you face up to it"

    - John Wayne quote

  • Hello Everyone


    I go away for a few days and it seem like I've missed an entire conversation. :D


    First of all when the question mentioned indicating our least favourite Duke movies I had the sinking feeling that two of my favourites were going to be mentioned and I was proved right and these movies are 'McQ' and 'Brannigan'. Now I know that Duke more or less copied Clint via these two movies but one cant help thinking that Clint copied an awful lot from the Duke and that Rooster Cogburn in True Grit was basically a template for Harry Callohan. Regarding Dukes cop movies I feel Duke adapts himself nicely to these movies and that they were a refreshing change of pace after some of his westerns went a little stale such as Train Robbers and Cahill. I only wish he made a few more cop movies but I am more than happy with what he did make that is why I am so fascinated about any information regarding deleted scenes within these movies. Lets face it its 1970 and there is need for a tough guy to play a cop who do you think of 1st and it aint Mr Eastwood. Duke has some excellent one-liners in his cop movies as well as some superb action especially the car chase in Brannigan and the one along the beach in McQ. The plots in both movies are well written and there is virtually no bad acting, the action is slick and well directed and despite what most say Duke looks comfortable and his acting is as good as ever. People accuse Duke of racism and Sexism but by claiming he was too old for these cop movies these same people are responsible for discrimination against older people. The fact that Duke was older in both these movies brings more interest to the character, inspiration to other people whom may feel getting older and whom feel it is a hindrance and it is also very admirable of the Duke himself when one considers he did most of his own stunts and at his age he decided to broaden his horizons rather than give up as so many other people have done when they reached their sixties. Clint himself has made few movies in the 90's and has turned to direction because of age and poor old Jimmy Stewart was reduced to roles as a granddad etc when he reached his sixties. Also the fact that McQ was an enormous box office hit is also proof of its worth although Brannigan the superior of the two movies was not such a big hit. In conclusion give these two movies at least one more try I'm confident you wont be disappointed.


    A surprise occurrence on the list of bad movies by the Duke for me personally was the cowboys. In my opinion it is an excellent modern day western that boasts great acting, direction, acting, scenery and a great storyline. I think Dukes acting in this movie is better than it was in True Grit and boy does the big man really flex his acting muscles in this great movie. However being the John Wayne fan that I am I do feel that his death was inappropriate despite Rolands great comparison with the life of Jesus. It is difficult to watch him being shot five times however despite what most say he wasn't shot in the back. I am curious to know why big John took on this role when it did require him to be killed and I did feel that after his death there was certainly a void in the movie, which brought it down just a little. I found some great aspects of the movie they are


    1. Duke breaking in that horse at the start.
    2. Duke being a little cruel to one of the boys and then admitting to Mr Nitlinger that 'I guess I don’t always decide right'
    3. The look of worry in his eyes the night before the big cattle drive.
    4. Some of the snappy dialogue between Duke and Dern.
    5. Duke and Mr. Nittlinger finding the boy drinking.
    6. Dukes very touching and well acted little talk over the grave of one of the boys
    7. The look of hurt in his eyes looking at the graves of his two sons.
    8. Duke kicking Bruce Derns sorry little ass.


    I am actually interested in these two off set how did they get along with each other but all in all The Cowboys is an excellent movie and certainly not a negative in Duke portfolio although I do wish that he didn’t have to be killed in it.



    Movies that I wish Duke didn’t make


    1. Legend of the Lost, a truly atrocious movie one of the worst I have ever seen.
    2. Flame of Barbarry Coast, this movie is badly acted and goes nowhere.
    3. Donavans Reef, Duke only made it out of loyalty to Ford.
    4. The Magnificent Showman, a very stale movie
    5. The Horse Soldiers- a big letdown


    Movies I wish Duke did make


    1. Dirty Harry
    2. The Magnificent Seven as Chris
    3. Where Eagles Dare


    Regarding smoking in movies I do feel that if it was eliminated completely it would be a little silly as it adds to the authenticity of the characters and of real life and I don't believe that Dukes cancer came from the testing site of nuclear bombs where the Conqueror was made I feel this just a Hollywood legend like the one in which a muchincan can been seen hanging himself in the wizard of oz when in reality it is simply a giant bird. Finally I think Brandos comments were disgusting but then again this was a troubled nobody who’s movies I have little time for.

    Regards
    Robbie

  • Quote

    Originally posted by Robbie@Jan 25 2004, 11:29 AM
    I found some great aspects of the movie they are . . .


    8. Duke kicking Bruce Derns sorry little ass.


    Robbie,


    I guess Brits and Yanks do actually speak the same language after all! :D
    And I do enjoy that part of the movie!



    BTW, the rest of your post was awesome! Some really good points. Just so you know, I don't dislike the movie The Cowboys, but it is among the least liked. I have many of the same thoughts that you and Roland have expressed here. It is a good quality film, good plot, great acting, but I find the Duke's death disheartening, especially at the hands of a creep :angry::angry: .


    Roland's comparison between The Cowboys and the Last Supper was an intriguing one that my wife and I had not even considered previously.


    So . . . Marlon Brandon's not one of your favorites, I take it . . . ;) .


    Chester :newyear: