The Duke will be honored with a movie marathon during TCM’s Summer Under the Stars.
Sure, there will be plenty of stars shining throughout August as Turner Classic Movies once again hosts its annual Summer Under the Stars celebration. But we have to admit: The one who’ll shine brightest for us is John Wayne.
The Duke will be honored with a movie marathon that starts at 6 am ET Saturday, Aug. 3, with Ride ‘Em Cowboy (1932), in which Wayne plays a cowpoke who tries to exonerate a wild horse accused of killing a man, and continuing through 4:30 am ET Sunday with Tall in the Saddle (1944), which has Wayne cast as a tough but fair-minded cowhand who defends a young woman against varmints who aim to grab her murdered father’s land.
Stagecoach (1939) — Director John Ford’s must-see masterwork arguably is the first significant Western of the talking-pictures era, the paradigm that cast the mold, set the rules, and firmly established the archetypes and conventions for all later movies of its kind. Indeed, it single-handedly revived the genre in 1939 after a long period of box-office doldrums, elevating the Western to a new level of critical and popular acceptance. And, not incidentally, it made John Wayne a full-fledged movie star in the lead role of Johnny Ringo, the square-jawed, slow-talking gunfighter who’s willing to hang up his shootin’ irons — who’s even agreeable to mending his ways and settling down on a small farm with a good woman — but not before he settles some unfinished business with the villains who terminated his loved ones. (12 noon ET Saturday)
McLintock! (1963) — Aptly described by film critic and historian Leonard Maltin as a “slapstick variation of The Taming of the Shrew set in the Old West,” director Andrew V. McLaglen’s hugely entertaining comedy-drama showcases John Wayne as G.W. McLintock, a swaggering man’s man who’s rich enough to accurately claim he owns “everything in this county from here to there,” and ill-behaved enough to drive his well-bred wife, Katherine (Maureen O’Hara), to establish residency back East. Two years after his wife’s departure — she suspected her husband of infidelity, and he never really denied it — Katherine returns to the territory, and to McClintock’s opulent home, to claim their Eastern-educated daughter, Becky (Stefanie Powers), and to start divorce proceedings. But Becky is in no hurry to leave after she discovers her father’s new ranch hand (Patrick Wayne, The Duke’s son) is appreciably more attractive than her Harvard-educated fiancé (Jerry Van Dyke). And Katherine reconsiders her options after falling in love with “G.W.” all over again — after he chases her through town during the movie’s climactic sequence, and none-too-playfully spanks her. (5:45 pm ET Saturday)
The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) — As we noted in our 50th anniversary commemoration, this fan favorite was the first film Wayne made after his life-saving 1964 cancer operation: “Wayne remained every inch the thoroughgoing professional throughout the arduous production of The Sons of Katie Elder, determined to prove that he had indeed ‘licked the Big C’ and was back in the saddle, literally as well as figuratively. If he ever resented [director Henry] Hathaway’s demanding drill-sergeant style of directing, he chose not to hold a grudge — and, just four years later, gladly re-teamed with the director for True Grit (1969), the movie for which he won his only Academy Award for Best Actor. Some biographers have theorized that The Sons of Katie Elder was an invaluable boon to John Wayne, in that it convinced him that working hard at what he did best was the way to continue cheating death. Such armchair psychology is usually of dubious value while taking the measure of any man. But in Wayne’s case — well, maybe there is something to the notion that there’s nothing like a brush with death to reignite one’s work ethic.” (8 pm ET Saturday)
Red River (1948) — John Wayne may be remembered as an all-American hero, but that doesn’t mean he never slipped over to the dark side. Indeed, The Duke sounded positively proud when he explained to an interviewer, “I was playing [Charles] Laughton’s part in Mutiny on the Bounty in Red River.” No kidding: Wayne gives one of his darkest, most psychologically complex performances in Howard Hawks’ acclaimed Western, playing a cattle rancher who slowly evolves into a brutal, paranoid tyrant not unlike Laughton’s fearsome Capt. Bligh while leading a massive drive to Missouri. The upbeat ending is a cop-out — everything leads you to expect, even demand, a shootout between Wayne and the adopted son (Montgomery Clift) who leads a rebellion against his harsh rule. Still, Wayne rarely had a more richly textured role to play, and he rose to the challenge with extraordinarily impressive results. (10:15 pm ET Saturday)
Angel and the Badman (1947) — Writer-director James Edward Grant’s classic crowd-pleaser showcases Wayne as Quirt Evans, a notorious gunslinger who’s sorely temptedto hang up his shootin’ irons when he falls in love with a lovely young Quaker woman (Gail Russell). Unfortunately, his conversion to non-violence may be short-lived: Two pistol-packing owlhoots from Evans’ past are bound and determined to make sure our hero doesn’t have much of a future. Angel and the Badman was one of several collaborations between Wayne and Grant. Among Grant’s other screenwriting credits: Sands of Iwo Jima, Flying Leathernecks, Hondo, The Alamo, The Comancheros and McLintock! (2:45 am ET Sunday)