The acting collaboration between John Wayne and Vera Miles spanned five movies released between 1955 and 1968, but two classic Westerns stand out above the rest. John Ford’s 1956 movie The Searchers propelled Miles to global fame and is now considered the Duke’s most iconic performance, while 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is another of Ford’s best works. Yet, despite The Searchers’ unparalleled influence on the Western genre and cinema at large, it’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance that scores highest on Rotten Tomatoes among Wayne and Miles’ joint projects.
Vera Miles was first paired with John Wayne for the 1955 short film Rookie of the Year, which was an episode of anthology series Screen Directors’ Playhouse given to John Ford to direct. Ford ended up retaining Miles for his next movie starring Wayne, The Searchers, a slow-burning Western featuring sumptuous panoramic visuals and career-defining performances. The Searchers divided critical opinion upon its release, however, unlike Ford’s later Western thriller with a killer twist, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Is John Wayne & Vera Miles’ Best Rated Movie Together
It Scores 95% To The Searchers’ 87% On Rotten Tomatoes
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has a score of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it more highly-rated than any other collaboration between John Wayne and Vera Miles. It betters the score of Wayne’s favorite Western, The Searchers, by 8%, while the pair’s other three movies together, The Green Berets, Hellfighters, and Rookie of the Year, are either very poorly rated or have no critical consensus.
In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the Duke plays local cowboy Tom Doniphon, who takes no prisoners in his approach to dealing with outlaws. Miles, meanwhile, plays Wayne’s warm-hearted love interest Hallie. The movie features one of the all-time great standoffs of the Western genre, in which John Wayne owns the screen opposite Lee Marvin’s Liberty Valance.
Why The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Outscores The Searchers On Rotten Tomatoes
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Has More Critical Consensus Around It
It might be a surprise to some that The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, an admittedly superb John Ford Western, outscores The Searchers, widely considered the greatest Western of all time, in terms of aggregated critical reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. But it’s worth bearing in mind that, upon its release, The Searchers didn’t initially receive all that much acclaim, and wasn’t even nominated at the Oscars in 1957. Even today, some critics have a problem with the pacing of the movie.
On the other hand, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has been celebrated virtually from the moment it came out in 1962. It’s a more compact and polished movie than The Searchers, and features thriller genre tropes which help pull its audience in. The Duke had honed his tough-talking cowboy persona down to the last detail by the time he played Tom Doniphon, and legendary nice-guy character actor James Stewart perfectly complements Wayne’s performance. Still, however well-reviewed Ford’s 1962 thriller is, there’s no question that The Searchers has left a greater legacy and been more influential on modern filmmaking overall.