As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I picked up a movie 4 pack for a quarter at the Thrift which had John Wayne in 4 movies.
The Cowboys
Fort Apache
Rio Bravo
The Searchers
It is very hard to find The Cowboys as most people like myself did not like it as John Wayne got killed in the movie. The Searchers is panned by critiques as Wayne's finest, but I'm about to change that.
Fort Apache is more John Ford nonsense and Rio Bravo does not quite work as the amigo movie with Ricky Nelson and that old duffer I can not......Walter Brennan.
The worst of Wayne's movies is The Shootist with that horrid Ronnie Howard. It is really scarce thankfully as it is a movie which features Howard and no one wants to see that.
The basis of The Cowboys is a rancher in western Montana needs to get his cattle to Belle Fouche South Dakota. A gold strike happens on the Ruby River, and everyone leaves the ranch. No one is left, except a group of school kids aged 8 to 15, and it is this that Wayne is talked into nurse maiding these kids 400 mile across the wilderness with his herd.
Bruce Dern shows up as the bad guy. I really like Bruce Dern. I have seen him hold his own with rapist Kirk Douglas, but in this movie he just is weak. He can not be next to John Wayne and flourish.
The Producer and Director did very well with the casting, but Dern did not fit, and he should have. I was thinking that I would have liked to have seen Ken Curtis or Festus from Gunsmoke as he played a heavy once and was scary.
That or Charles Bronson or Steve Forrest.
Not everyone could stand next to John Wayne and not disppear. Remarkably the kids held there own against Mr. Wayne. Roscoe Lee Browne did every well, but actors like Richard Jordan or Victor French were like Bruce Dern in not having the presence it takes.
There are a few things I desire to share in this.
The first is Robert Carradine, you would know him in Revenge of the Nerds in a great job he did there. He is the son of John Carradine, brother of David and Keith. He never gets credit for being the supberb actor he is. I have seen him in Law and Order as a heavy and he was great. In this, as a 15 year old child, he holds his own on screen and shows the talent he has.
His father was always John Ford over the top in roles. His brothers were one dimensional in their success, but Robert is a very skilled actor in his ability to do any role.
Clay O'Brien, he is my favorite child actor. I did not realize he started in his movie as a child. He would appear in Gunsmoke and with John Wayne again in Cahill US Marshall and do a command peformance. He is a delight in this movie, although he has not figured out yet to be bossy boy which he really could project later with dellight.
Collen Dewhurst - Dick Farnsworth. You will remember this duo in Anne of Green Gables. I knew Dewhurt was in this movie as a whore, but when one of the cowboys, A Martinez does a really good job in this movie too a the outsider brought in.
It is Martinez who pulls a wide eyed man off the saddel and kills him, that I exclaimed that this was Richard Farnseworth and it was. It would take him into the 80's before he would hit his mark with Wilfred Brimley.
Lastly, as an adult, I really understood why John Wayne did this movie, as it was about man who lost his two sons, instilled in a bunch of boys the meaning of being a man, and in death, they become his children and all men.
There is a perfect scene at the end as the herd is brought into Belle Fouche, the cowboys are riding along, and 3 children are seen running down the street. The difference is pronounced. They were now cow men and these others are children what they were a few weeks ago.
This honestly is the best artistic movie which John Wayne was ever in. It is far better than the acclaimed Searchers by critics which was weak, and the even more disjointed True Grit for which John Wayne won an Oscar. The Cowboys should have won for best picture and Mr. Wayne should have got an Oscar for Best Actor and the boys for Best Supporting Actors.
I will end this with my favorite part of this movie.
There is a suttering boy in this movie and when they are crossing a river, another boy falls off, and he can't call out, as the boy is drowning, he rides over to John Wayne.
They save the boy, but John Wayne lights into this little boy.
He says, "You could of got that boy killed!"
The boy says he tried to say something but couldn't.
Wayne goes full bore and yells, "If you were out there drowning you sure as hell could have called out and would have and we would have heard you!"
The boy is bawling and crushed, but the boy does not back down, he starts yelling back, "You mean son of a bitch!"
Wayne glares at the bawling boy and challenges him, "What did you say?"
The kid lights in again with, "You dirty mean son of a bitch!"
Wayne challenges him again and the kid says, "I said you are a Goddamn dirty mean son of a bitch!"
John Wayne perfectly says without a flinch, 'I wouldn't make a habit of calling me that." and walks away.
That moment the kids know John Wayne is caring about them and teaching them to be a man.
This is a very good movie. I dislike the sad parts as life sucks, but I understand why it was all written as it was from the original book.
The Cowboys was John Wayne's best artistic movie and I understand why he actually did most of the shots and did not hand it off to the second unit as actors always did. He wanted to tell this story and he did a superb job, so much so that John Wayne in a rare apperance, actually gives more screen time to the other actors and they carry the picture as always does.
Nuff Said