It’s easy to take for granted the fact that John Wayne is arguably the most notable Western star that Hollywood ever produced. But it wasn’t always this way. Back when the Duke was a far younger man, at the start of his career around the dawn of the Great Depression, the future icon nabbed his first leading role in a 1930 picture that was helmed by filmmaker Raoul Walsh. The movie in question? The Big Trail. If you haven’t seen this black-and-white Western, it’s probably because it’s not exactly the Duke’s most notable role. While his performance isn’t bad for a man pretty green to the camera, The Big Trail nearly ended Wayne’s career before it had even begun. Here’s what happened.
‘The Big Trail’ Was John Wayne’s First Big Break
This 1930 Western was John Wayne’s first big break in Hollywood, though it didn’t do much for his career. As the story goes, after being recommended for the picture by none other than John Ford himself, Wayne found himself in the leading role of Breck Coleman, a young fur trapper who doubles as a protective detail for a nearby wagon train. As Coleman helps the convoy beyond the Mississippi River, The Big Trail reveals that Red Flack (Tyrone Power) is who he’s really after. Flack had killed Coleman’s old friend, and now he wants to see justice done. In truth, The Big Trail is actually an impressive picture, with size and scale that best emphasizes the myth of the American West. Although there was a pure artistry to this pre-Code flick, the groundbreaking million-dollar horse opera didn’t garner the attention it deserved.
As the BBC once noted, “The Big Trail was artistically ambitious but flopped at the box office.” As a result, Wayne’s sudden rise to fame quickly plummeted. Any hopes that the Duke had of becoming a sure-fire movie star after such a big production — which John Ford was rumored to have passed on himself — crumbled into nothing. In subsequent years, John Wayne was forced to make several B-Westerns (called “poverty row pictures”), such as The Hurricane Express, Blue Steel, and The Man from Utah, for the better part of his first decade in the business. Sure, Wayne was still the leading man, but he had yet to be noticed by the greater industry as a Hollywood heavy capable of leading another billion-or-so-dollar picture. Though, his luck eventually changed.
It Took John Wayne Another Decade To Become a Bankable Western Star
Eventually, everything changed for the Duke when John Ford offered him the leading role in Stagecoach. While The Big Trail’s box-office failures nearly wrecked Wayne’s career, the success of Stagecoach — coupled with the star’s powerful performance as the Ringo Kid, emphasized best in the character’s stellar introduction — changed the actor’s entire trajectory. But it’s a shame that it took Hollywood so long to see Wayne’s potential — not because of how influential the star would be to the film business at large, but because The Big Trail itself is a powerful film. Okay, it’s not Stagecoach or The Searchers, but it is certainly one of the Duke’s most underrated roles. It wouldn’t be until 76 years later that the Library of Congress would finally add the picture to the National Film Registry in 2006, thus ushering The Big Trail into the place it deserved all along.
Thinking of a world in which John Wayne is not celebrated as a Western icon is a bit too tough a pill to swallow, so it’s a good thing that the Duke stuck with the film business in the face of his initial disappointment. The Big Trail may not be the star’s most notable motion picture, but we owe this film a great debt for bringing John Wayne to us in the first place.