John Wayne Centenary: The '50s - Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, Hondo, The Searchers and Rio Bravo

The ‘50s saw Wayne make some of his greatest films but it also marked his ultimate low as an actor; in fact 1956 alone would see him show how good he could be in the right part and also how bad in the wrong one. On 21 February The Conqueror was released on an unsuspecting public, with John Wayne hopelessly miscast as Genghis Khan. Less than one month later on 13 March he was seen in arguably his finest film (and his own personal favourite role) as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers.

During the decade he would be seen at sea (Operation Pacific, The Sea Chase, Blood Alley) and in the air (Flying Leathernecks, Island in the Sky, The High and the Mighty, Jet Pilot), and as far afield as the Sahara desert in Legend of the Lost and Japan in The Barbarian and the Geisha. Most of them are still enjoyable today although some have dated worse than others. It’s hard to take The High and the Mighty (the film that provided the blueprint for the disaster movies of the ‘70s) seriously after Airplane, particularly as both star Robert Stack.

But, with one exception, it was the western that provided him with his most memorable characters in the ‘50s.

Rio Grande (1950)

The final part of John Ford’s cavalry trilogy, Rio Grande was only made to help finance Ford’s dream project, The Quiet Man. Given that fact it’s hardly surprising that this is the weakest of the three films, yet it’s still a classic in its own right and arguably the most fun of the trilogy.

The films are always referred to as Ford’s “cavalry trilogy” and yet they are not really connected. They do have some things in common though. In Fort Apache, Wayne played Captain Kirby York, while here he plays Lieutenant Colonel Kirby Yorke and in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Ben Johnson played Sergeant Tyree and Victor McLaglen Top Sergeant Quincannon; in Rio Grande they have the same names but lower ranks.

So, while the films never reference each other, the ranks would lead one to assume that the chronological order is Fort Apache, Rio Grande, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Watched in that sequence the films act as snapshots of the military career of Wayne’s character. For, although in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon he’s called Nathan Brittles as opposed to York(e), they are essentially the same man, career soldiers as married to the cavalry as they are to their women.

Article Author: Ian Woolstencroft

Ian Woolstencroft was brought up on a diet of John Wayne movies and Marvel Comics and still has a passion for both. Now as a blogcritic he finally understands what Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben meant when he said ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ …

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