Posts Tagged John Wayne

Let’s face it, you knew a poem about John Wayne was inevitable. So here it is.

Enjoy!

_____

The quotable Duke

Today at MontanaWriter we begin a new feature: Western Wednesday. Each Wednesday we will highlight all things western: movies, books, art, blogs, history.

For the inaugural Western Wednesday, what better place to begin than highlighting some of the best quotes from John Wayne… beginning with my all-time favorite Duke quote from his last film, The Shootist.

If I missed any of your personal favorites, please let me know.

Enjoy!

“I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”  – The Shootist

“Well, there are some things a man just can’t run away from.” – Stagecoach

“Sorry don’t get it done, Dude.” – Rio Bravo

“Don’t apologize—it’s a sign of weakness.” – She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

“Out here a man settles his own problems.” – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

“Whoa, take ‘er easy there, Pilgrim.”  – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

“Now you understand. Anything goes wrong, anything at all… your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault… it don’t matter…I’m gonna blow your head off. It’s as simple as that.” – Big Jake

“All battles are fought by scared men who’d rather be some place else.” – In Harm’s Way

“I haven’t lost my temper in 40 years; but, Pilgrim, you caused a lot of trouble this morning; might have got somebody killed; and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth. But I won’t. I won’t. The hell I won’t!” – McLintock

“Well, son, since you haven’t learned to respect your elders, it’s time you learned to respect your betters.” – Big Jake

“We’re burnin’ daylight.” – The Cowboys

“I’m thirty years older than you are. I had my back broke once, and my hip twice. And on my worst day I could beat the hell out of you. “ – The Cowboys

“I’m lookin’ at a tin star with a… drunk pinned on it.” – El Dorado

“ I don’t believe in surrenders. Nope, I’ve still got my saber, Reverend. Didn’t beat it into no plowshare, neither.” – The Searchers

“If anyone tries to cross that river before we’re out of sight- baptize ‘em.” – The Train Robbers

“Life’s hard. It’s even harder when you’re stupid.” – (source unknown)

“Talk low, Talk slow, and Don’t say too much.”  – (advice on acting)

_____

If John Wayne were still living, today would be his 105th birthday. (Just 6 years younger than Bilbo Baggins was when he celebrated his “eleventy-first” birthday at the beginning of Lord of the Rings.)

Like the fictional hobbit Bilbo Baggins,”The Duke”  is ageless. Icons after all do not age. Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet, Don Juan, Zorba the Greek, and John Wayne all stand ever and always outside of time. They are indelible and indestructible.

As has been mentioned here before, google searches for “John Wayne” bring more new visitors to MontanaWriter than any other search combination. The numbers are not even close.

In honor of John Wayne’s 105th birthday,  I am posting John Wayne wallpaper and a John Wayne bookmark I created. Both have my favorite movie quote on them.

To use the wallpaper, click on the thumbnail to view the full-size, then download it.

For the bookmark, print it out on sturdy card stock, laminate it, then use it when you are reading your favorite westerns.

Happy Birthday, Duke!

_____

One of the most remarkable things about blogging remains the number of strangers that email me that they have read something I have posted and like it. I assume that there are many who do not like what they read here, but they do not bother to write.

My blog statistics tell me that the number of people coming to  MontanaWriter continues to grow. In the month of March, there were almost 12,000 unique visitors from all over the world. By blog standards, that is a modest number. But since MontanaWriter began two years ago with zero readers, I remain amazed.

One of the other things my blog statistics tell me is that the search term that brings the most people to MontanaWriter is one for John Wayne. The numbers are not even close. On a blog that is mostly about poetry, that has many more references to W.B. Yeats and lyric poetry than to movies, it is curious that so much traffic comes from The Duke.

It is not surprising, though. More than 30 years after his death, John Wayne remains the definitive movie star: iconic and bigger than life. For many he is also symbolic of something vital that it “feels” like we have lost.

What that thing that we have lost is is difficult to define.  It is also difficult to know if it really ever existed at all, or is merely something we wish once existed: some golden era of shared values and understanding that made us all better. Either way John Wayne the actor, the icon, represents something more than just movies or Hollywood or acting technique.

I have loved John Wayne movies all my life. Growing up when and where I did it was natural to love westerns. And if you love westerns, it is inevitable that you will love John Wayne movies because most of the best westerns ever made starred The Duke. There are a handful that star other actors, but they are just that: a handful.

I have always felt more than a bit sorry for those who say they do not like westerns. It is the same way I feel when someone says they do not like baseball (or basketball or football), or reading, or jazz, or poetry, or bourbon, or country music. It is unfathomable to me that someone can live without those things that seem to me so essential to life.

I hope that those who stumble upon MontanaWriter while looking for articles on The Duke are not greatly disappointed to find poetry reviews here, or articles about baseball, or theological comments. I also hope that those who came here for a review of a poem by William Morris or William Blake are not disappointed to find articles about westerns and John Wayne here. For me, all these things seem inseparable, naturally related: Yeats read dime westerns, John Ford read Yeats, theology of culture is all inclusive.

The blogosphere is about interconnectivity… not just of people but also of ideas. In the end, I think it is this “new community” of ideas that is the web’s greatest promise. Poetry, John Wayne, and jazz can inhabit a place together on the web that they could never have in the old, pre-digital age. In fact, in 2012, poetry, John Wayne and jazz seem inextricably mixed, pilgrim.

____

Today MontanaWriter is featuring a movie review from film aficionado Keith Cambre. 

John Wayne played in 152 films, and I am keeping a life list of as many of his works as I can see.  At present, I have screened about three dozen of his films with over 100 to go!  Recently, I viewed one of The Duke’s later works, The Cowboys, for the first time.  This film debuted in 1972, and I am wondering how I let 40 years pass before seeing such a gem.

John Wayne plays Wil Andersen, a successful Montana rancher who must drive his sizeable herd to market, 400 miles away in Belle Fourche.  When Andersen’s hired hands desert him en masse to pan for gold, he is forced to employ 11 boys to accompany him on the drive.  During this Old West Road Trip, the boys are transformed under the mature tutelage of The Duke’s character, who is a font of paternal energy, strength, and wisdom.

There is a second source of father energy on the drive:  Roscoe Lee Browne plays the erudite African-American mess cook, Jebediah Nightlinger, who works in tandem with Andersen to balance the trials of the boys and to shelter their innocence when necessary.  Like Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the inclusion of Mr. Nightlinger in the story speaks of an America where disparate parts come together for the good of all.  E pluribus unum.  The drive also includes Cimarron, an illegitimate Hispanic youth, and Charlie Schwartz, who on meeting Andersen, cheerfully introduces himself as Jewish.  Indeed, all races and backgrounds are welcome on the drive.  All that matters is a focus on working together, looking out for each other, and getting the job done.

Of course, there are bad guys on this cattle drive, set to steal the herd.  Bruce Dern plays a deliciously nasty character, whose sin of bullying the boys trumps his sin of rustling the cattle.  The rustlers’ evil eventually spills over to killing Andersen.  The Cowboys is rare in the annals of John Wayne films in that The Duke’s character dies about 30 minutes before the ending, and it is further rare in that he is shot from behind.  Falling in a cruciform manner, similar to Clint Eastwood’s character at the conclusion of Gran Torino, Andersen admonishes Mr. Nightlinger to get the boys home safely, and just before dying, he tells the boys that he is proud of them.  Coming from The Duke, there can be no greater benediction.

The film concludes with the boys “finishing the job” by retaking the herd from the rustlers and ultimately dispatching the bad guys, one by one.  While some may criticize the film’s depiction of the boys as killers, Bruce Dern’s character and his cohort certainly had it coming.  At the end, the cowboys ride the herd into Belle Fourche, completing the task set upon them.  They return to Montana, not as boys, but as men.

In addition to a great story and fine acting, the cinematography of The Cowboys is sweeping and rich.  Musical elements complement the visual perfectly as John Williams’ score evokes the spaciousness and grandeur of Aaron Copland.  John Wayne supposedly commented that his performance in The Cowboys was his favorite of the 152 films in which he worked.  While he is better remembered for his roles in The Searchers and True Grit, The Cowboys is nevertheless a must-see for any fan of The Duke.  I recommend!

A Few Memorable Quotes

Wil (John Wayne):  “We’re burning daylight!”

* * * * * * * *

Mr. Nightlinger (Browne): to feminine entrepreneurs encountered on the cattle drive:  “Well, I have the maturity, and the inclination and the wherewithal, but unfortunately, I don’t have the time.”

____

Duke is the best actor in Hollywood. ~ John Ford

John Wayne back from Cancer

There are better John Wayne movies, but none that I like better or have seen as often as The Sons of Katie Elder. It is the definitive John Wayne movie… and hence the definitive western. It is everything a western… especially a John Wayne western… should be: iconic.

Based very loosely on a William H. Wright book called Life of the Marlows, The Sons of Katie Elder is the story of four brothers who return to their Texas hometown for their mother’s funeral. After her funeral, they discover that their father had been murdered sometime before on the very night that he had supposedly lost the family ranch playing cards to a big businessman named Hastings. Since losing the ranch and her husband, their mother, Katie Elder, had been living penniless. John Elder (Wayne) who is a famous gunfighter, and his three brothers, set about to setting things right and to make sure that the youngest brother amounts to something.

Filmed in 1965, and co-starring among others Dean Martin and a very young Dennis Hopper, The Sons of Katie Elder was the first movie that the Duke made after having cancer surgery to remove one lung and two ribs. Cancer delayed the filming, but once filming began, he insisted on doing his own stunts to prove that he had indeed, “licked the Big C.”

The Sons of Katie Elder is John Wayne at his iconic best. From the very first glimpse we get of him on top of a rocky hill looking down on his mother’s funeral from afar to avoid causing trouble, to the final scene of Duke walking through a small parlor and past his mother’s rocking chair, we are reminded of how truly “big” Wayne was… and how small all actors and landscapes seem when he is on the screen.

Wayne inhabits each scene – inhabits every movie he is in – like a force of nature. Only Eastwood comes close to that kind of screen presence. But even he would have been dwarfed by the presence of Wayne.

This iconic-presence is on full display in The Sons of Katie Elder. I suspect that that is one of the main reasons that it has become my favorite of all his films. It is not in any sense of the word a great film… but it is a great western. It is exactly what a western should be. At its core, it is a celebration of the Duke and the western… for they are synonymous. It is this celebration that allows us ignore all the many imperfections of the story and the movie. For in the end, all that matters is that John Wayne is on the screen… bigger than life.

A Few Memorable Quotes

Bud Elder (Michael Anderson, Jr.): I’m going with you. I can draw pretty fast. We can be famous — like the Dalton Brothers!
John Elder (John Wayne): They’re famous — but they’re just a little bit dead. They were hung!

********

John Elder (John Wayne): All we want to do is make you end up rich and respectable. You fight us every step of the way.

Bud Elder (Michael Anderson, Jr.): I don’t want to be rich and respectable. I want to be just like the rest of you.

____

As I have been polishing up one of my latest western stories, I have been doing a little research on rifles. In the process, I came across this entry at Wikipedia about the Sharps.

Movies which showed the strengths of the Sharps rifle are the 1990 western Quigley Down Under where Tom Selleck‘s title character’s Sharps rifle has a 34″ barrel as opposed to a standard length barrel of 30″ and Burt Lancaster‘s character, Bob Valdez, in the movie Valdez Is Coming.^[6] Also, in the 1976 film “Missouri Breaks“, Marlon Brando‘s character, Robert E. Lee Clayton, uses an 1859 Creedmoor rifle. As a result of Quigley Down Under a Sharps match is held annually every year in Forsyth, Montana known as the “Quigley Match”. A 44-inch target is placed at 1,000 yards for each shooter, remniscent of a scene from the movie.^[7] Theater Crafts Industry went so far as to say, “In Quigley Down Under, which we did in 1990, the Sharps rifle practically co- stars with Tom Selleck.”^[8] This statement was echoed by gunwriters including John Taffin in Guns and Lionel Atwill in Field & Stream.^[6][9] Gun manufacturers such as Davide Pedersoli and Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing Company have credited these movies with an increase in demand for those rifles.^[6]

Guns play an important role in westerns. It is part of the convention. Maybe one of the reasons that people do not read or watch westerns any more is that not as many people hunt or grow-up with guns as they used to. If you grow up believing that guns are something only right-wing extremists, Republicans, and criminals have, you are probably not going to be comfortable reading or watching something where a Sharps rifle or a Colt pistol is “a co-star.”

John Wayne's 44.40

Westerns and guns go hand-in-hand. Guns can play both the hero and the villain in a western. Violence and violent men can also be both. Maybe it is this “morally nuanced” understanding of violence in general, and gun violence in particular, that makes the western seem most anachronistic to the literary and film trend-setters of today.

I love the movie Quigley Down Under. Selleck does a great job. So does his Sharps. It has been a long time since I have seen either Valdez is Coming or Missouri Breaks. I am going to be putting both into my NetFlix queue.

I am thinking now of other westerns and other guns….

Growing up I loved the show The Rifleman and Chuck Connors. His Winchester was certainly the “cool” co-star of the show.

John Wayne, of course, also used Winchesters and Colts in many of his movies. But with the Duke being the Duke, no rifle or pistol… no matter how big… could ever truly be called his “co-star.”

I could, I suppose, do a little research on famous guns and famous westerns. That is the nature of research. It is so fun to move from subject to subject…. And with Wikipedia and “The Google,” it is so easy that sometimes you can lose sight of where you are supposed to be going.

For me I am supposed to be polishing up another western short story that I will soon be sending out…. But hell, wouldn’t it be fun to go to that Quigley Match in Forsyth?

____

Like most things cinematic and western, John Wayne understood perfectly by the end of his career what role romance should play in a western movie: almost none. Unfortunately many western writers, no matter how many westerns they may write, never come remotely close to figuring this one out.

There is little in life more frustrating than settling into a great western novel – one with strong writing, a great understanding of the relationship between landscape and plot, and the right kind of dialog – only to have everything come to a screeching halt when a two-dimensional female character enters the picture. Bang! Another potential western masterpiece shot down by a clumsy, pointless, cobbled-on, two-dimensional romance.  The only thing worse is the movement in some more modern westerns to transform the bad romantic scenes to bad pornographic scenes.  “Disappointment… thy name is Legion.”

Truism One: Westerns are primarily a male genre… written and read by males. There are exceptions, of course. But they are just that, exceptions.

Truism Two: For most men, sex is way more interesting than romance. By definition most men would rate a romance novel or a romantic movie somewhere on a continuum between “deathly boring” and “completely pointless.” Sex, of course, is something altogether different.

Truism Three: Reading about sex is boring. Even though men find sex interesting they do not like to read about it  [Note: I said "read" not watch or look at] any more than they like to read about romance. Go to any bookstore and look in the Erotica section. Erotica is for women. Women like to read about romance and sex… not men.

Truism Four: Male writers cannot write convincingly about either romance or sex. There are, of course, notable exceptions.. but these are few and only Larry McMurtry writes westerns.

Truism Four: Westerns should have no romance or sex.

Truism Five: There are exceptions to every rule… or at least there should be. But before you think, dear western writer, that you are the exception, please do us all a favor and show the story to at least six women. If they think it is really not the same old  two-dimensional, adolescent bullshit, publish it. And I will promise to buy it.

_____

The Music Monday feature at MontanaWriter has been on a holding pattern these last months for no better reason than: I have not been listening to that much music lately.  A weekend in Decorah, Iowa, with my wife who was attending the Luther College Alumni Band Reunion reintroduced me to John Williams’s score for the movie John Wayne and the Cowboys.

On the first day of August, what could be better?

Enjoy!

____

I have always thought of movies as the laziest of arts. I do not mean their creation. I have seen movie sets. I know how many people it takes to create only a minute or two of film. There is nothing of laziness in that.

I am thinking of those of us who watch them. Where reading a book requires you to be actively engaged in the creation process, movies are handed to you in their finished form. The imagination part has been done for you. All you need to do is sit back and take it in.

When I pick up a novel and begin to read, I am really picking up a blueprint of sorts. The writer might describe a character but his or her final form is left up to my imagination. The Sherlock Holmes of my imagination never looks wholly like the Sherlock Holmes of yours. This is even more so when the writer is someone like Hemingway who often provides no description of the character at all. We create out of our imaginations everything that we see in our mind’s eye.

In a movie, the director takes care of such things for us. When Ethan Edwards comes out of the sun-baked desert toward the shaded house in The Searchers, he is John Wayne. John Ford imagined the scene for us one way and it happens just like that– for us and for anyone else who sees the movie. It is perfect, but requires nothing from us and we contribute nothing to it. For this reason, I am an impatient movie watcher, and generally speaking a reluctant one.

If it sounds like I am saying that film is a lesser art form, I do not mean that at all. The written word, ultimately, is limited. It is limited first to those who can read, then those who can read that particular language, and finally to issues of interpretation and meaning. Reading after all is always interpretation.

Film as a visual art can transcend the limitations of language. I could watch an Akira Kurosawa film in Japanese, understanding none of the words spoken, and still be haunted all my life by certain scenes. In this way, film is iconic like painting and universal like music.

Each art form has its limitations and its strengths. When we engage different arts we expand ourselves, open ourselves up unfettered to truth and beauty. Each art uses us in different ways. Poetry and prose primarily use our imagination then our ears. Movies primarily use our eyes and then our ears. When we live a life immersed in all the arts, we are constantly changed and challenged.

_____