The director of Rio Lobo was deeply unhappy with his final John Wayne movie – and wasn’t above pointing the blame elsewhere. Rio Bravo was John Wayne’s angry response to High Noon because, despite this Gary Cooper Western being acclaimed upon release, Wayne and director Howard Hawks despised its politics. Rio Bravo has celebrity fans like Quentin Tarantino and John Carpenter and is now just as well regarded as High Noon. The film wasn’t intended to lead to a trilogy of movies either, but Wayne and Hawks kept going back to the same well.
The Rio Bravo movie trilogy is an unofficial one, since the three films aren’t direct sequels. Instead, they remix the same themes, characters and scenarios, often involving a heroic figure played by Wayne being besieged by killers in an isolated town. The final entry Rio Lobo landed with a thud in 1970, receiving tepid reviews and bombing financially. Rio Lobo even partly convinced Tarantino to retire early, with the director feeling the Western exemplifies the notion of a director sticking to the job past their creative prime.
Rio Lobo Director Howard Hawks Hated His Final Movie With John Wayne
Hawks made sure to spread the blame for Rio Lobo’s failure
Hawks himself may have agreed with Tarantino’s assessment, as there was no bigger critic of the film than himself. Speaking with Tony Macklin from Film Heritage (via Howard Hawks: Interviews) in 1975, Hawks detailed where he felt it went wrong. In Hawks’ assessment, Rio Lobo needed two major actors to front it instead of just Wayne by himself, and this resulted in a rewrite that hurt the final project.
Rio Lobo was a mistake because they didn’t have the money. We needed two good people. Otherwise my story wasn’t any good. I saved the story and just wrote that damn piece of junk and made it.
The filmmaker expanded even further on its shortcomings in the book Hawks on Hawks, with Hawks plainly stating of his Western that “I didn’t think it was any good.” He again cites that the budget didn’t allow for a second big star, before laying into the cast he did assemble. Hawks felt Wayne was too old, complaining the star had a hard time mounting his horse and had to “hold his belly in” during filming.
Of Wayne’s co-stars, Hawks complained that actor Jorge Rivero – who plays “Frenchy” Cordona – was “too slow” and lacking in authority during his scenes, since English wasn’t his first language. The director said he tried to make use of this during Rivero’s romantic scenes, with Cordona being unsure of what to say to his love interest. Hawks was particularly vitriolic towards Rio Lobo’s leading lady, Jennifer O’Neill, claiming he wasn’t allowed to cast his first choice and that O’Neill was “a great mistake.”
Everything the girl did was wrong. She worked for about two days and then she thought she was so good she didn’t have to work.
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Hawks claims O’Neill was unprofessional and more focused on her personal life during the shoot. On the YouTube channel LandumC, O’Neill detailed her own miserable time making Rio Lobo, claiming Hawks hit her in the stomach on the first day, complaining her voice was too high and that she should go to the woods and scream to make her voice sound rougher. The actress also states Hawks turned cold toward her when she later refused to sign a three-picture deal.
Why Howard Hawks & John Wayne Remade Rio Bravo Three Times
Hawks would debate the “remake” term for his Rio Bravo follow-ups
In Hawks on Hawks, the director refuted the idea that El Dorado and Rio Lobo were true remakes. He claimed that filmmakers often feel “I could do that better if I did it again,” and while the three films have similarities in style and dialogue, they all flip the original dynamics on their heads. Despite this framing, Hawks’ Rio Bravo’s sequels are very much riffs on the same story, with Wayne even quipping that he didn’t need to read Rio Lobo’s screenplay as he had already made the film “twice.”
While El Dorado is a really fun outing that moves faster than its predecessor, Rio Lobo felt tired by comparison.
While El Dorado is a really fun outing that moves faster than its predecessor, Rio Lobo felt tired by comparison. Hawks had worn the concept thin with his third revisit, and there’s a weariness to the Western that can make it a dry watch. Maybe Hawks did have a great story for the film that he was forced to alter, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a vastly superior version of Rio Lobo that audiences missed out on.
John Wayne’s Own Suggestion Could Have Saved Rio Lobo
Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum had all the fun in the Rio Bravo trilogy
When Hawks first told Wayne about Rio Lobo, the star asked “Do I get to play the drunk this time?” In the previous two adventures, Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum got to ham it up slightly as characters struggling with drink, and this would have been a different kind of character for Wayne to play. In truth, Wayne did feel too old to front Rio Lobo, which was another variation on the same type of “stoic heroic” character he had played countless times already.
If Rio Lobo had taken up Wayne’s suggestion of playing the “drunk” character, this would have given him something new to play. It would have shown him in an entirely different light, and it felt like the natural direction to move in. Instead, Hawks stuck to the formula, with the film proving to be the veteran helmer’s last.