John Wayne

 OH The film, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles, and Lee Marvin, is practically a perfect western. It features a classic tale of good versus evil, law versus order, a lie, and a love triangle for the ages. ... Saddle up for Liberty North Island Midweek

 OH Written with co-author Robert Crane and contributor Christopher Fryer, this book is so rich in anecdotes that you will feel you are actually there with Dern, Jack Nicholson, Roger Corman, Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne and all the rest the actor talks ...

 OH - Jan 29, 2009 Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott, Buck Jones, Tom Mix, Bob Steele, George O'Brien, and even a guy by the name of John Wayne all owe their success to ...

By Ian Woolstencroft How do you squeeze a little more profit out of an old album? You release an “Expanded Edition” adding a couple of songs that weren’t good enough to make the original album or failing that, stick a couple of demos on there. You may not attract any new punters but the die hard fans will buy the albu...

By Ian Woolstencroft Tony Woolstencroft: Plague of the Zombies (1966)Made on a shoestring budget in 1966, and sharing the same sets and some of the cast from The Reptile, Plague of the Zombies is one of Hammer Studios' finest films. Shamefully overlooked, this is one of the best examples of '60s horror, and a cr...

By Ian Woolstencroft The Performance Like Steve Earle, I first heard of Dwight Yoakam via a mid-eighties BBC documentary on what was then being called “New Country." I listened to a lot of the artists I discovered on that program -- T. Graham Brown and The O’Kanes are two that spring to mind -- but the only two I’m st...

By Ian Woolstencroft The Performance I first came across Steve Earle back in the mid-eighties when he was grouped in with the likes of Dwight Yoakam and Nanci Griffith in what was heralded as “new” country. In truth the artists had little in common, Yoakam was a throwback to a more traditional country sound albe...

By Ian Woolstencroft

By Ian Woolstencroft Wayne looks like he’s having a good time and with much of the film shot on location in Hawaii, it’s no wonder. From an acting point of view he seems uninterested but this isn’t a film about character it about making a political statement. Big Jim McLain makes Wayne’s The Alamo and The Green Bere...

By Ian Woolstencroft

By Ian Woolstencroft The misjudged True Grit sequel, Rooster Cogburn (1975) followed before Wayne’s final film, The Shootist (1976). Let’s take a closer look at that film and the other high points of the decade. Big Jake (1971) The Cowboys (1972) The Shootist (1976)

By Ian Woolstencroft The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) The ‘60s was Wayne’s decade for making fun films, even when not out-and-out comedies like McLintock! his westerns, with the exception of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, had a easy going sense of fun that is hard not to like. True Grit (1969)

By Richard Marcus Early military science fiction was close to the equivalent of watching The Green Berets staring John Wayne or some such equally jingoistic piece of patriotic propaganda. The stories weren't bad and the action was good, but everything had a my country, right or wrong sentiment, and you ju...

By Ian Woolstencroft

By Ian Woolstencroft If She Wore a Yellow Ribbon was Ford’s love letter to the US Cavalry then The Quiet Man fulfilled the same purpose for his spiritual home, Ireland. While Ford was born on US soil both his parents were from Ireland and it was clearly a place he felt great affection for. The Searchers (1956)

By Ian Woolstencroft John Wayne capitalised on the success of Stagecoach in the '40s, making a string of formulaic films that, while unexceptional, cemented him as a box office draw. Most featured Wayne as one corner of a love triangle, vying with the likes of Walter Pidgeon, Ray Milland, and Randolph Scott (f...

By Ian Woolstencroft The first film in John Ford’s famous cavalry trilogy saw Wayne in a secondary role with Henry Fonda playing Lt. Col. Owen Thursday, the film's central character. The story was inspired by the massacre at the Little Big Horn with Thursday based on George Armstrong Custer.

By Ian Woolstencroft While John Wayne’s film career started in the 1920s it wasn’t until the 1930s that he got his first shot at stardom. This series of articles will take a wander through five decades of Wayne movies from the '30s to the '70s, picking out classics and personal favourites along the way.After spen...

By Ian Woolstencroft It was another nine years before Duke got another chance to shine. Those years were filled with an endless list of forgettable B westerns and bit parts. By the time Stagecoach came around in 1939 Wayne was almost a seasoned pro. Stagecoach (1939)

By Ian Woolstencroft May 26 marks the 100th anniversary of John Wayne’s birth. I’ve already written about two other centenaries this month, Katherine Hepburn and Laurence Oliver, and I could do a similar piece on Wayne. I could but I’m not going to, because for me Wayne is a more personal subject and somehow a bri...

By Ian Woolstencroft My Dad’s preference (with one exception, The Quiet Man) was always for the westerns though. John Ford’s cavalry trilogy, Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo and El Dorado and his Oscar winning turn in True Grit were some of our favourites, as were the comedy westerns McLintock and North to Alaska (my M...

By Ian Woolstencroft You’ll no doubt think “that sounds familiar” when I outline the plot of this film. A young American mother living in London leaves her four-year-old daughter at a new school but when she returns later to collect her she is nowhere to be found. The police are called in but can find no trace of the...

By Ian Woolstencroft The less you know about Sleuth the more enjoyment you’ll get out of it, so I’ll keep details of the plot to a minimum. Andrew Wyke is a true English gentleman, a writer of detective stories who lives in a luxurious mansion house in the country. Milo Tindle is a hairdresser and the son of an Italia...

By Chris Beaumont She Wore a Yellow Ribbon The Searchers The Green Berets The Wings of Eagles Operation Pacific Stagecoach The John Wayne Western Collection: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, True Grit, Hindo, McLintock!, Big Jake, The Shootist, Rio Lobo, The Sons of Katie Elder, El Dorado)

By El Bicho This year we celebrate one hundred years of John Wayne, his life and his work. He is one of cinema’s greatest heroes and an American icon. In True Grit we get to see him shine in the role that won him an Oscar for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn.

By Ian Woolstencroft The Boys from Brazil is a guilty pleasure, a film that revels in its ridiculous plot and over the top performances to such a degree that you can’t help being swept along for the ride. Based on a novel by Ira Levin (Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives) this is a B picture with an A-list cast. Nazi w...

By Ian Woolstencroft This follow-up to True Grit sees Wayne reprising his Oscar-winning role as Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn six years after that western classic. The pairing of John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn should have been a recipe for cinema gold, but thanks to a less than original story and some o...

By Ian Woolstencroft Blending elements of True Grit and The African Queen must have seemed like a good idea at the time but it inevitably draws comparisons with those superior films. Wayne was almost always at his best with a strong director behind the camera - John Ford and Howard Hawks are, between them, respo...

By Ian Woolstencroft May marks the centenary of the birth of three of cinema’s biggest stars – Katharine Hepburn (May 12), Laurence Olivier (May 22), and John Wayne (May 26). Over the course of the month I’ll be revisiting some of my favourite films featuring these iconic stars. First up is Katharine Hepburn, an...

By James Sligh The iconic final shot of John Ford's The Searchers (1956, directed by John Ford) frames John Wayne in a doorway against an infinite Technicolor expanse of hardpacked earth and bluing mountains, he and the mountains both a sliver of uncivilized trammel being swallowed up and rendered sm...