There are plenty of John Wayne flicks out there that give the Duke his due. Who doesn’t love True Grit or Rio Bravo? Stagecoach still holds up after all this time, and The Searchers is considered Wayne’s masterwork (and one of the greatest Westerns of all time). But there’s one movie in the Duke’s extensive filmography that deserves more praise than it ever got at the time, and feels the most like the actor’s attempt to pass the torch on to the next generation. If you haven’t seen The Cowboys, then it’s one you ought to give a try. This 1972 horse opera, which was based on the 1971 novel of the same name by William Dale Jennings (who co-wrote the screenplay), follows Wayne as he teaches a group of up-and-comers the tools of the Western trade. The cost may be deadly, but the results speak for themselves. As the tagline reads, “All they wanted was their chance to be men, and he gave it to them.”
What Is ‘The Cowboys’ About?
The Cowboys begins with Wil Andersen (John Wayne), an aged Montana cowboy who is preparing for a 400-mile cattle drive with his usual crew. Things change, however, when his formerly faithful ranch hands drop the cattle drive in favor of a potential gold boom, leaving Andersen alone. With nowhere else to turn, Andersen searches for some willing hands at the local schoolhouse, but after witnessing the boys’ immaturity, he decides not to waste his time. But something primal stirs within many of the boys, who show up the very next day to volunteer for the cattle drive. Andersen puts the group to the test, with the eldest, Cimarron (played by future Longmire star A Martinez), instantly proving his worth. Unfortunately, Cimarron is coaxed into a fight with another boy, Slim Honeycutt (in Robert Carradine’s first on-screen appearance), and Andersen refuses to hire him when he pulls a knife. Instead, he hires all the others, and sends Cimarron away.
Soon after, as the boys begin to show their own worth as cowboys, a man named Asa Watts (Bruce Dern), aka “Long Hair,” shows up looking for work. This is only a ploy though, and Andersen sees right through the deception, rejecting the offer. As the drive begins, Andersen leaves his wife, Annie (Sarah Cunningham), behind and takes the boys and their cook, Jebediah Nightlinger (Roscoe Lee Browne), out on the open road, err, range. The group makes decent headway before Slim slips off his horse, only for Cimarron to step in and save his life. Andersen allows Cimarron — who’s been trailing the outfit — to join them, and they continue on. During this time, Andersen slowly teaches the boys what it means to become a man, challenging them and treating them as such on the trail. But when Watts and his men show up, he instructs them to behave like boys so as to not come across as a threat to the band of outlaws.
As Watts’ men surround Andersen’s group, Watts confronts Andersen. This erupts into a massive fistfight that ends with Watts on the ground. But, showing his true colors, Watts shoots Andersen in the back after he turns to walk away. With their leader wounded, the cowboys allow Watts and his men to take the cattle. Eventually, Andersen succumbs to his wounds, but not before he notes how proud he is of the boys, having witnessed their turn into men. Though Nightlinger tries to convince the young men to turn back for home, they overpower him, retrieve their guns, and ride on after Watts and his men for revenge. With Nightlinger’s help, they eventually enact that revenge, rescue the herd, and complete the drive to South Dakota in Wil Andersen’s honor.
‘The Cowboys’ Is the Perfect Coming-of-Age Western
If there’s one thing to be said about The Cowboys, it’s that there’s a lot of fun to be had here. Despite the often mature subject matter, there’s a deep levity in the small moments of this film that tie the whole picture together. The titular characters can joke with each other one moment, only to stare death in the face the next. The film is honest about the stark tension between childhood and adulthood, and often presents its characters with opportunities to cross from one to the other, with traveling madam Kate Collingwood (Colleen Dewhurst) as a potential instigator. The eleven cowboys — which include actors Stephen R. Hudis and Norman Howell alongside rising stars Richard Carradine and A Martinez — are a delight on screen, and the way they hang onto Wil Andersen’s words is quite endearing.
At the start of the film, there’s a childlike innocent to these young whippersnappers, who are trying too damn hard to grow up ahead of schedule. By the end, any innocence they had is long gone. Their choice to avenge their fallen mentor and father figure is the ultimate cost of their boyhood, and with blood firmly on their hands, they understand the harsh realities of growing up in a troubled time such as this. There’s no romance to the tough life presented here in The Cowboys, and that’s perhaps one of the film’s biggest strengths. Even though the joys of boyhood are occasionally explored, the brutal realities of frontier living always crash in, ever-emphasized by John Williams’ delightful score. As the boys, especially Cimarron and Slim, slowly become more like Wil Andersen, they realize that there’s a toughness and a danger in becoming like him. Of course, in the end, they still choose so anyway.
In many ways, these boys represent the final generation to grow up with the Duke. Wayne would die seven years after The Cowboys hit theaters, marking this as one of his final Hollywood Westerns. It was also one of only eight Westerns he made that decade, which isn’t a lot considering he appeared in nearly 90 in total throughout his five-decade-long career, including a cameo appearance on Wagon Train and his infamous introduction to Gunsmoke. These were some of the last young actors to work with this Hollywood legend, and to grow up with the Duke while he was still making motion pictures. It’s no wonder then that The Cowboys handed the reins of the horse opera’s future over to the next generation. This is evident in not just the way the story is framed, but in how Wayne’s character, Wil Andersen, effectively raises them as younger versions of himself. One almost wonders if he was trying to impart his own wisdom on young minds before Clint Eastwood had the chance.
‘The Cowboys’ Challenges John Wayne’s Traditional Western Ending
There’s little doubt that Wil Andersen feels like your usual John Wayne protagonist. He has the same raised cadence, gruff exterior, and heart of gold that you might expect from any of the Duke’s most famous heroes. In step with other pictures of his, such as Sands of Iwo Jima, Wayne plays a father figure role here that suits him better than one might think. The way Andersen pushes his cowboys isn’t unlike how Rooster Cogburn pushes Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) in True Grit, only there’s perhaps a deeper love and appreciation here. Andersen seemingly had no living children of his own, yet these eleven effectively carried on his legacy through the end. Of course, the biggest departure from many of Wayne’s usual Western tales is how Andersen goes out, not in a blaze of glory, but after being literally shot in the back.
Unlike Rooster, who defies death in True Grit, or Ethan Edwards, who makes it back home by the end of The Searchers, Wil Andersen dies before the climactic finish. He doesn’t see the cattle drive through, put a bullet in the black hat, nor live long enough to ride out into the sunset. The Cowboys defies our expectations of the types of characters that the Duke traditionally plays and forces its audience to come to grips with the harsh truth that even John Wayne won’t be around forever. While The Cowboys wasn’t the first of Wayne’s pictures to kill him off, it remains one of the few in his filmography with the guts to pull the trigger. Other notable Westerns to do so include The Alamo and his final motion picture, The Shootist.
Of course, Wayne wasn’t meant to be in The Cowboys originally. Director Mark Rydell, who despised the Duke’s overt conservatism, fought Warner Bros. when it came to casting Wil Andersen, but the studio wouldn’t budge. According to Scott Eyman’s biography, John Wayne: The Life and Legend, the director only came around after Wayne begged him to let him play the part, promising not to talk about politics, religion, or anything else but acting. “He completely won me over,” Rydell admitted, “and I agreed he should play the part.” Film historian Emanuel Levy later noted that the Duke considered making The Cowboys, “the greatest experience of [his] life.” That’s some high praise considering how Wil Andersen goes out in the end, but speaks to the lasting power of this exquisite drama.
Bruce Dern Is Proud To Have Killed John Wayne in ‘The Cowboys’
When it comes to Western villains, few are as dastardly as Asa Watts/Long Hair in The Cowboys. While it’s Wil Andersen’s paternal relationship with the young cowboys that’s the pure bedrock of this picture, no Western is complete without a compelling villain. Though most Hollywood black hats are still somewhat honorable — Ben Wade from 3:10 to Yuma comes to mind — Bruce Dern’s Long Hair is anything but. His willingness to shoot a man, the Duke of all people, in the back and leave him to die shows just how desperate and depraved this outlaw is. It’s no wonder that he ultimately gets what’s coming to him. Before The Cowboys was released, John Wayne had some famous words for his co-star. “When this picture comes out, and audiences see you kill me — they’re gonna hate you for this,” the Duke told Dern, and boy was he right.
“I knew on the day when I had to shoot him, when we did that scene, that he had never even had a bullet squib put on him before in his career,” Dern told Cowboys & Indians Magazine in 2015, before revealing that he still gets hate from folks who were upset with how The Cowboys handled Wayne’s character. Even Dern’s own daughter, the equally famous Laura Dern, had kids come up to her at the time, upset that her daddy killed John Wayne. The Cowboys might’ve just been a movie, but the death of John Wayne in any fashion was a Western tragedy, particularly when he’s shot in the back. “[The Cowboys was] the only time I’ve ever been in a theater watching a film I was in where I heard an audience gasp,” Dern noted in his autobiography, Things I’ve Said, But Probably Shouldn’t Have: An Unrepentant Memoir. “They actually gasped.”
According to Dern’s memoir, Wayne believed audiences would gasp not because it was him getting killed in that way, but because Andersen’s death comes so early in the picture. “That’s why the Ravetches [referencing married screenwriters Ivan Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr.] put it halfway through the picture,” Wayne reportedly told him. “Scribes are always right when they’re good.” Of course, Wayne’s death itself is shocking, but we couldn’t imagine The Cowboys any other way. Not only did it propel Dern to legendary status as the only star to kill the Duke on screen, but it masterfully subverted all our expectations for the climactic finish. Now that’s good storytelling.
‘The Cowboys’ Has a Complicated Legacy — and Continued on Television
Following The Cowboys’ theatrical release, the film had some mixed reviews from critics. While many considered this a classic John Wayne Western, others such as Roger Ebert expressed their displeasure with the film’s apparent violent message. “It’s a shame they had to go for the unlikely, violent, and totally contrived last thirty minutes,” Ebert wrote in his 1972 review. But Ebert misses the point of The Cowboys, which is that life is not like a Hollywood motion picture. Andersen dies because Watts is dishonorable, and the cowboys are able to kill all the outlaws in the end, not because of any magical plot armor, but because, unlike Watts and his ilk, they take the time to plan their attack and use their size (or lack thereof) to their advantage. Watts ultimately looses because he underestimated Andersen and his cowboys, and their love for one another.
Evidently, The Cowboys was received well enough that ABC became interested in making a television adaptation, and so The Cowboys premiered on the network on February 6, 1974, without the involvement of Wayne or his character. While most of the cowboys were recast, with Father Murphy star Moses Gunn replacing Roscoe Lee Browne as Jacob Nightlinger, A Martinez and Robert Carradine reprised their roles as Cimarron and Slim from the original picture. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present by Tim Brooks and Earle F. Marsh notes that Sean Kelly and Clay O’Brien also returned from the original, though instead of playing “Stuttering” Bob and Hardy, they played Jimmy Phillips and Weedy (originally played by Sam O’Brien and Norman Howell, respectively) for the television series. Unfortunately, the show was canceled after only 12 episodes, proving to be a delayed victim of the infamous rural purge.
Though John Wayne has starred in plenty of exceptional Westerns, The Cowboys remains one of the most underappreciated in the genre. Its magnificent characters, thematic material, and stellar cast mix thoroughly into one of the most heartfelt of the Duke’s longstanding career. If you haven’t seen this one yet, now is certainly the time.