John Wayne was nominated for an Oscar three times across his 50-year career, but he only walked home with one. Wayne starred in around 80 Westerns, so his defining image in pop culture is as a macho, no-nonsense cowboy. This gives a limited view of his range because while he often played variations on the same character, he delivered some layered performances too. The Searchers is Wayne’s best and darkest work, while he’s genuinely charming in the romantic drama The Quiet Man. Still, Wayne rarely got much respect from the Academy Awards.
Many of the John Wayne/John Ford movie collaborations received great reviews, but somehow, none of the star’s Oscar nods came from those films. Wayne also picked up several awards on behalf of other performers, including Gary Cooper for High Noon; this is a little bizarre in hindsight, as Wayne deeply hated High Noon and its moral message. The Academy Awards also served as Wayne’s final public appearance, as he died two months after presenting Michael Cimino with the Best Director award for The Deer Hunter at the 51st Academy Awards ceremony.
John Wayne’s First Oscar Nomination: Sands of Iwo Jima – Best Actor
Lost to Broderick Crawford in All the King’s Men
The first time the Academy took notice of a Wayne performance was the 1949 World War 2 drama Sands of Iwo Jima. The star was famously embarrassed that he didn’t serve during the war like many other actors during this time, though he did front war movies like The Fighting Seabees and Sands of Iwo Jima to reaffirm his patriotism. Wayne played the gruff Sgt. Stryker in the film, who is harsh on his men to prepare them for the much harsher reality of warfare.
Sands of Iwo Jima was a more than worthy nomination, though compared to The Searchers, Stryker didn’t have the same character depth. Wayne lost out on the Oscar regardless and was probably unhappy about the actual winner. Broderick Crawford won the award for All the King’s Men, a political drama Wayne himself had previously turned down for being “unpatriotic” (via Hollywood’s Golden Age). Losing the award to a film he seemingly despised must have made the loss sting even harder for Wayne.
John Wayne’s Second Nomination: The Alamo – Best Motion Picture
Lost out to The Apartment
The Alamo was Wayne’s passion project, with the star spending over a decade developing the historical epic. In the same way Kevin Costner sunk much of his own fortune into his Horizon saga, Wayne is said to have put over $1 million of his fortune into getting The Alamo produced. He also acted as producer and director, with the resulting three-hour Western receiving mixed reviews but becoming a box-office success; it also received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Motion Picture.
Out of its seven nods, The Alamo only picked up one Oscar for Best Sound, which went to Gordon E. Sawyer and Fred Hynes. The film lost out on Best Motion Picture to the Billy Wilder classic The Apartment. While The Alamo has its strengths, it also feels bloated and unfocused, so in this case, The Apartment was definitely the right choice out of the nominees.
It’s also believed that the overtly aggressive campaigning of Alamo co-star Chill Wills for Best Supporting Actor hurt the film’s award chances. One such ad read “We of the ‘Alamo’ cast are praying harder—than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo—for Chill Wills to win the Oscar as best supporting actor.” This ad was seen as a tacky move, and Wayne himself spoke out against Wills for running it; the actor’s publicity agent “Bow-Wow” Wojciechowicz later took the blame for running the ads (via Vanity Fair).
John Wayne’s Third Nomination: True Grit – Best Actor
John Wayne won his sole Oscar for playing Rooster Cogburn
John Wayne’s big Oscar win finally came in 1970 when he won Best Actor for True Grit. Based on the Western novel of the same name, the movie cast Wayne as the drunken, brash U.S. Marshal “Rooster” Cogburn, who helps a teenage girl chase down the outlaw who killed her father. Wayne’s performance is loud and broad, though it does feature some tender moments too. Wayne considered Cogburn the best role he had played in years – though he later confessed to Playboy (via The Wrap) that True Grit itself didn’t rank high among his other Westerns.
John Wayne enjoyed playing the character enough to reprise it for 1975’s Rooster Cogburn, which proved to be his penultimate film. There was something of a legacy win element to Wayne picking up the statue for True Grit, but while it might not be a very nuanced turn, he still deserved his Oscar win for bringing Rooster Cogburn to life.