[8] Barbara Stanwyck stars as Lily Powers, the poor daughter of a speakeasy owner, who takes an old philosopher’s advice to start using her feminine wiles (or ‘lily power’) to get ahead in life. After her nasty father dies in a distillery fire, Lily moves to New York City and literally sleeps her way, floor by floor, to the top of a banking company. She …
[5] John Wayne gave up the lead in 1971’s Dirty Harry and came to regret it. McQ is his attempt to get in on the vigilante cop craze, playing a cop who starts out investigating the murder of a friend and ends up unearthing a police corruption scandal. Along the way Diana Muldaur and Colleen Dewhurst compete for his affection. Both women have secrets and …
[6] John Wayne stars as a crotchety loner cowboy who goes in search of the gang who kidnapped his grandson. Big Jake is not a serious western. It’s more of a nostalgic love letter to old big-studio westerns. Sometimes that love undercuts the drama. Even though a boy’s kidnapping is what spurs the characters into action, they begin their adventure like a trip to Disney …
[7] John Wayne and Robert Mitchum headline this Howard Hawks western about a gunfighter-for-hire (Wayne) who teams up with a drunk sheriff (Mitchum) to help a family protect their land from a rival rancher. The plot to El Dorado was a little hard for me to follow. So many characters are introduced in the first half hour and the way allegiances are formed is a …
[7] John Ford reteams with frequent leading man John Wayne in what is often considered one of the best Hollywood westerns ever made. Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a loner returning home from the Civil War. After his brother’s family is murdered by Camanches, Ethan begins a five-year search for his kidnapped niece (Natalie Wood). Wayne plays more than a charicature of himself for once, bringing …
[7] John Wayne worked pretty much right up until the end of his life, and even in that last decade there are gems to be found. Chisum stars Wayne as the title character, John Chisum, a New Mexico cattle baron who ends up in a battle with a greedy tycoon named Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker). As Murphy buys up all the local business in town …
[6] John Wayne leads an ensemble cast in this William Wellman film about the passengers and crew of a trans-Pacific flight who experience engine failure and a loss of fuel. When they realize they won’t reach the California shore, everyone prepares for the worst. The High and the Mighty plays more like a straight drama than the disaster flicks that would come after it in the 1970s. …
[7] John Wayne took home the Oscar for his performance as crotchety Rooster Cogburn, an alcoholic US Marshall recruited by a young girl (Kim Darby) to capture her father’s killer and bring him to justice. Wayne is low key as always, but it works pretty well for him. Except for Robert Duvall as the villainous Ned Pepper, the rest of the casting leaves something to …
[7] John Wayne stars in this Howard Hawks western about a tyrannical cattle farmer who invests over a decade of work into the mother of all cattle drives, only to have it threatened when his adopted son — played by Montgomery Clift — launches a mutiny against him. I always love to see Howard Hawks playing with gender roles and male archetypes, and Red River …
[10] An unshakable sheriff and his riff-raff crew brace for a days-long siege when a swarm of bad guys descend on their town, threatening to free one of their own from jail. Rio Bravo is the last great film from legendary director Howard Hawks (Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, The Big Sleep). It’s not the epic western you might imagine from Hollywood in the ’50s. Nor …
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