The shadow The Searchers cast over cinema can be neatly epitomised by the fact that Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg are just two of the directorial icons who worship at the altar of the classic western, which endures seven decades later as the magnum opus of both director John Ford and star John Wayne.
The dynamic duo made over a dozen films together, and many of them are classics in their own right, but The Searchers has always been in a league of its own. Quite possibly the greatest western that Hollywood has or ever will produce, it was a towering testament to not only the genre but also the actor and filmmaker who defined it in the collective cinematic consciousness.
‘The Duke’ may not have had to try too hard to get a handle on Ethan Edwards when the vengeful protagonist was hardly a million miles away from his real-life personality, although that doesn’t make his performance any less powerful or effective. Obviously, it wasn’t the role that won him an Oscar, but it’s hard to make a case against The Searchers being Wayne’s career-defining turn.
Wayne struggled to find parts substantial or significant enough to match his towering tour-de-force in the years to come, not that it dented his status as one of Hollywood’s biggest and most popular stars. However, he did find one less than a decade later, which might seem strange considering it was an anthology story where the A-lister only played a supporting role in a single segment as Civil War General William Sherman.
That said, it was more than enough to convince ‘The Duke’ that he was on to a winner. Needless to say, Ford helmed Wayne’s part of How the West Was Won, and the actor explained to William Munn that all it took was three reasons and one worthwhile character to convince him to sacrifice top billing for testing himself as a performer.
“The first is because Pappy wanted me to do it; the second is because the studios would be making donations to St John’s Hospital in Santa Monica,” he said. Being asked by his closest collaborator and doing it for a good cause are good enough reasons as any to sign on, but the third spoke to Wayne’s desire to sink his teeth into a meatier part than usual.
“The third is because it gave me the chance to play a character part,” he explained. “I said to Pappy, ‘Come on, Coach, convince the men in suits to let us make a whole damn film about Sherman and [Ulysses] Grant. This is the best role I’ve had since The Searchers.”
Spinoffs were hardly all the rage back in the early 1960s, but the studio definitely missed a trick by not even considering an offshoot from How the West Was Won that would have starred Wayne’s Sherman and Harry Morgan’s Grant as the two focal points, especially when it was clear he was massively invested in doing more with the character than his brief screentime allowed.