John Wayne got a great send-off in his final movie, The Shootist, but a different late-career western — 1972’s The Cowboys — would’ve been an even better swansong for the Hollywood icon. There are plenty of legendary actors who put their stamp on the western genre, from Clint Eastwood to James Stewart, but no actor is more intrinsically tied to the western than Wayne. Wayne starred in such classic westerns as Red River, Rio Bravo, and The Comancheros. Wayne initially made his name playing clear-cut heroes who spring into action and take down the bad guys without a moment’s hesitation.
But as his career went on, Wayne increasingly stepped outside his comfort zone and took darker, more dramatically challenging roles in movies like True Grit and The Searchers. As he got older, he began to reckon with his legacy and appeared in movies that would act as a fitting farewell to the genre that made him a star. His actual final film was 1976’s The Shootist, which provided a bittersweet ending to his decades-long movie career, but a different western from 1972 would’ve worked just as well as Wayne’s last movie.
John Wayne Took On More Father-Figure Roles Later In His Career
As He Got Older, Wayne’s Characters Became More Paternal
After breaking out with the role of the Ringo Kid in John Ford’s Stagecoach in 1939, Wayne became one of Hollywood’s earliest action heroes. He went on to play young, virile crusaders like Sheriff John T. Chance in Rio Bravo and Tom Doniphon in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But as he got older, Wayne began taking roles that saw him protecting and mentoring the next generation. In the late stages of his career, he started taking a lot more roles where he played a father figure to his younger co-stars.
The most famous example is 1969’s True Grit. Wayne plays washed-up U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, who reluctantly returns to action when 14-year-old orphan Mattie Ross recruits him to help her find her father’s killer. He took a similar role in 1971’s Big Jake. When John Fain’s gang abducts Jacob McCandles’ grandson and holds him for ransom, Big Jake sets out to save the kid. This was a great use of Wayne’s star power later in life. He got to keep playing heroic roles that were more suited to his age, and they added some extra emotion to the stories.
The Cowboys Could’ve Been A Perfect Final Movie For John Wayne Because Of This
The Cowboys Sees Wayne Passing The Torch To The Next Generation
The pinnacle of the father-figure stories that Wayne told later in his career was 1972’s The Cowboys. Based on the 1971 novel of the same name by William Dale Jennings, The Cowboys stars Wayne as an aging rancher named Wil Andersen, who’s forced to hire a bunch of inexperienced kids as cowhands. He needs to herd his cattle to the market on time, and if the race against the clock wasn’t bad enough, they’re harassed by a gang of rustlers along the way.
With Wayne’s character teaching these kids and then dying, but ensuring his legacy will live on right at the end, it works beautifully as a fitting, poignant send-off to The Duke himself.
Since The Cowboys is a great coming-of-age western and a prime example of what Wayne was doing in the final stage of his career, it feels like a fitting note to end on. The storyline of Wayne’s character passing on the torch to the next generation plays like a meta commentary on Wayne the movie star passing on the torch to a new generation of movie stars. With Wayne’s character teaching these kids and then dying, but ensuring his legacy will live on right at the end, it works beautifully as a fitting, poignant send-off to The Duke himself.
John Wayne Still Had A Great Final Western Role
Wayne Gave A Fantastic Performance In The Shootist
The Cowboys would’ve been a perfect send-off for Wayne, but his actual final movie was a great send-off, too. The Shootist’s thematic exploration of mortality has a poignant double meaning with the hindsight that it would be Wayne’s last film before his death in 1979. He plays an aging sheriff-turned-gunslinger named J.B. Books, who has more than 30 killings to his name and is notorious across the frontier. When a doctor tells him he has terminal cancer with only a few weeks to live, Books starts looking for a noble way to die.
It’s heartbreaking to watch a dying western movie star playing a dying gunfighter, seeking out a dignified end to his life. There’s nothing especially groundbreaking about The Shootist — it plays with tropes and conventions that countless other westerns had played with before it — but the meta element of Wayne reckoning with his mortality in the last movie before his death makes The Shootist a unique classic. The Cowboys would’ve been a fitting farewell for John Wayne’s tenure on the big screen, but there have been far worse final films than The Shootist.