Even though he never got an Oscar, I don't think he was underrated, even at his times. If you look at those films between the 30s and 50s, sometimes I think there wasn't an important picture where Ward didn't show up - even in the non-Wayne-films, for different directors and producers, like for Selznick, Capra, John Huston, Hawks. Check out Johnny Guitar, for instance. Then, at the peek of his career, he got his "own" TV series, the starring role in "Wagon Train". So they kept him pretty busy. Copies of his Last Will were for sale once, and even though I know that's morbid, I got me one - and interesting enough, there was the paragraph in which he bequethed (sorry, as Martin Pawley, I don't know how to spell that) his favorite gun to Wayne - the one with which that famous shooting accident happened and Wayne actually wounded Bond.
