John Wayne

John Ford’s first sound picture. Victor McLaglan plays a British Army Captain who decamps for India on a secret mission to infiltrate the forces of Yasmani, a mysterious figure threatening the Crown’s interests. Myrna Loy plays Yasmani, carrying over her silent-era typecasting as an exotic vamp.

John Ford’s second sound picture. George O’Brien joins the Naval Academy, endures hazing from the upperclassmen, and rivals his older brother, a West Point cadet, for a girl. John Wayne and Ward Bond have small parts as O’Brien’s upperclassmen tormentors. The film culminates with the big Army-Navy football game pitting brother against brother.

Perhaps the first of Ford’s early sound pictures that rated his full attention. After an accidental collision, an American submarine drifts toward the ocean floor. MacKenna plays a disgraced British officer serving under an assumed name on the sinking sub. When the sub’s commander succumbs to stress, MacKenna assumes command and reveals his true identity. The lighthearted opening belies the transition to taut drama. Though the surviving prints are a mix of dialogue and title cards, Ford’s confident execution shines through. John Wayne appears as a radio operator on the surface.

A botched jewel robbery lands gangster Lowe in court. Up for re-election, the judge seizes the publicity opportunity and sentences Lowe to fight in World War I. In France, he plays baseball, sees some action, and returns a war hero. Back in New York, Lowe opens a nightclub, falls for socialite Owen, and crosses his former gang. The mix of comedy, wartime drama, and gangster film never gels, but Ford’s formal execution—love the final shootout—makes it passable. Look fast for Ward Bond as a drill sergeant.

John Wayne’s first starring role. He’s good but raw—on par with the poverty-row oaters he’d headline for the next nine years. Here he plays a trapper leading a wagon train up the Oregon Trail. The script includes the requisite character drama and romantic interest. Disregard them. The production itself proves the real star.

John Wayne’s fourth credited role. The film opens during the big Army-Navy football game. Wayne plays Army’s star senior quarterback, so beloved he’s not expected to end his sentences with “sir” when talking to the brass. He’s also a womanizer. After the game, with graduation and an assignment to Arizona looming, he jilts his longtime girl, played by Laura La Plante.

John Wayne and Susan Fleming play lovers caught between two feuding ranchers. Lead Buck Jones plays the horseshoe-bedazzled-shirt-wearing sheriff determined to prove Wayne innocent of murder. Spoiler, there’s a third party at play.

I watched Maker of Men because it features an early credited performance from John Wayne. Had I known how small his part was, I may have reconsidered.

Tim McCoy plays Texas Grant, who arrives in the small frontier town of Stampede and finds the locals mistaking him for Jim Rawlings, a lawman believed killed five years prior. After finding Rawlings’s widow struggling to hold on to her ranch, Grant decides to pose as Rawlings and help drive a band of crooks out of town. John Wayne plays a ranch hand who throws in with Grant. Walter Brennan plays the local sheriff.

Tedious, idiot plot opens with Tim McCoy losing his ranch to a crooked land baron played by Wheeler Oakman. McCoy then departs to prospect for silver, but returns in time to save love interest Alice Day from Oakman’s schemes. Long in talk and short in action. John Wayne has a bit part as one of McCoy’s sidekicks. Walter Brennan has an even smaller role as a sheriff’s deputy.

Early in Ride Him, Cowboy, a town tries a horse for attempted murder. It gets sillier from there.

John Wayne plays John Steele, a deputy lawman sent to clean up the New Mexico territory. He arrives in town and poses as a drunken drifter while sizing up local cattle baron Sam Crew. Then John is on the frontier, befriending a wagon train leader named Cal and making eyes at Cal’s niece Ginger. Crew’s gang attacks the wagon train, prompting John to recruit Sonora Joe, a Mexican bandit who first tries to rustle the wagon train’s cattle.

I love John Wayne, but I struggled with Haunted Gold.

Despite backing a young John Wayne with his best supporting cast in years, The Telegraph Trail still stinks.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays the titular Jimmy Dolan, who opens the film winning the world light-heavyweight boxing championship. Radio reporters crowd the ring, asking Jimmy to say a few words. He says “Hello mom, are you listening? This is Jimmy. I just won and there ain’t a mark on me mom, not a mark. I’m coming home right away now and I got the money and you can get that house in Yonkers.”

Foreshadowing a career playing characters with great names, John Wayne plays a wealthy socialite named Dick Wallace.

A young woman (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces a slew of men in her rise to the top of a New York bank.

The Man from Monterey ends with a Scooby-Doo-style chase culminating with John Wayne (who’s dressed as a caballero) alongside his sidekick (who’s dressed in drag) grabbing a sword off the wall and fighting off a horde of bad guys. Note: Wayne’s fencing consists of him waving the sword back and forth while the guys clutch their chests and fall to the ground. Not great filmmaking, but its silly earnestness charms.

Riders of Destiny is not a good movie, but it is an important one.

Pat O’Brien plays an opportunistic football coach hired to raise a struggling college program’s fortunes. The story reminded me of High Pressure, and while I bought O’Brien as a coach, he didn’t convince as a wheeler-dealer.

The underwater scenes in Sagebrush Trail belie its shoestring budget.

John Wayne plays the titular Texan, who strikes gold with an old rancher played by Gabby Hayes, only to find themselves wanted for murder thanks to a crooked assayer.

West of the Divide sees John Wayne impersonate a wanted man, join an outlaw gang, and find both his father’s killer and his long-lost kid brother.

A sheriff (Gabby Hayes) and a man (John Wayne) help homesteaders beset by outlaws.

A cowboy (John Wayne) goes undercover to investigate a crooked rodeo.

Randy Rides Alone opens with an awful miniature shot—even by B-movie standards. It rights itself as John Wayne, playing a cowboy, walks into a saloon full of dead bodies. Fingered for the murders, he goes to jail and escapes, only to find himself joined up with the actual killers.

John Wayne plays a U.S. Marshall who, along with his Indian partner Yak, played by Yakima Canutt, matches wits with the villainous Shadow, an unseen outlaw terrorizing a small western town.

After a mixup on a train, a cowboy (John Wayne) and his buddy find themselves on the run from law, searching the Canadian wilderness for a girl and a gold mine.

John Wayne plays a man searching for his parents’ murderer, a notorious outlaw named Pandro Zanti, a “half white, half Apache Indian who poses as a Mexican.”

A cowboy (John Wayne) protects a little half-Indian girl from crooks aiming to ransom her for a portion of the oil lease she’s inherited.

Believing he’s killed his friend, a lawman (John Wayne) turns recluse, only to later become involved with his friend’s daughter, and the true killers.

A rodeo star (John Wayne) and his gambler buddy (Eddy Chandler) are mistaken for robbers.

The Dawn Rider is, for better or worse, a fairly unremarkable entry among the westerns John Wayne made for Lone Star Productions.

A cowboy G-Man (John Wayne) follows a medicine show to counterfeiters.

This Republic Pictures production sees former Pony Express riders John Wayne and Lew Kelly conned into buying a stagecoach line to a near-deserted town. Desperate, they enter a stagecoach race for a lucrative government mail contract, but they’ll need to beat the same underhanded businessman who sold them the bum line, and he’ll do anything to win.

In this Three Mesquiteers entry, John Wayne fakes his death to go undercover and foil a poison gas smuggling plot.

The Three Mesquiteers (John Wayne, Ray Corrigan, and Max Terhune) thwart bus, train and airplane hijackers.

John Ford’s Stagecoach reinvented the western genre and marked the debut of the “John Wayne” persona that the legendary actor refined over the next 40 years.

A cowboy (John Wayne) arrives in Kansas, runs for Marshal, and battles a Confederate raider.

An Austrian refugee doctor (Charles Coburn) and his daughter travel to dust bowl Oklahoma and stay with a farmer (John Wayne).

A group of merchant seamen endures the early days of World War II.

Wayne plays a sea captain who, as the film opens, is unconscious, having been knocked out by a treacherous first mate who’s been paid to scuttle the ship by an underhanded salvager, played by Raymond Massey.

The Spoilers is an entertaining John Wayne entry, notable chiefly for its strong cast.

A Boston druggist (John Wayne) travels to California where he rivals a local heavy (Albert Dekker) for the attentions of a saloon singer (Binnie Barnes).

A man (John Wayne) leads a squadron of American mercenary pilots fighting the Japanese in China before America’s entry into World War II.

Joan Crawford plays a French heiress hiding a downed American pilot played by John Wayne from the Nazis in occupied Paris.

A cowboy (John Wayne) and a tycoon fight over oil-rights and a schoolmarm.

During World War II, a construction boss (John Wayne) working for the Navy in the Pacific, clashes with an officer (Dennis O’Keefe) over arming his workers against the Japanese.

Tall in the Saddle proffers a novel amalgam of the hard-boiled detective story and western.

When the US retreat from the Philippines after it falls to the Japanese in World War II, a US Colonel (John Wayne) remains behind to organize guerrilla resistance.

A gambler (John Wayne) and his bride (Vera Ralston) help wheat farmers fight swindlers in 1871 Dakota.

PT boat captains (Robert Montgomery and John Wayne) defend the Philippines against the Japanese in World War II, despite little initial support from Navy brass.

En route to Hollywood to oversee production of the film adaptation of her best-selling novel, an author (Claudette Colbert) meets a Marine (John Wayne) who she believes would be perfect for the lead.

A young Quaker (Gail Russell) nurses a wounded gunman (John Wayne) back to health only to fall in love with him.

Wayne is an engineer hired by Hardwicke to build a tunnel through the Andes. Wayne wants to build a bridge instead, because it’s safer for his crew, but Hardwicke wants a tunnel because its cheaper for his stockholders. Things get even more heated after Wayne falls for Hardwicke’s daughter, Day.

A Cavalry officer (John Wayne) watches as his ambitious and arrogant commanding officer (Henry Fonda) leads the company into a massacre.

A desperate cattle drive forces a wedge between middle-aged cattle baron John Wayne and his young adopted son Montgomery Clift.

A group of outlaws (John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz, and Harry Carey Jr.) adopts a dying woman’s baby in the desert and vows to bring it to safety.

A captain (John Wayne) fights his boss over a woman (Gail Russell) and a fortune in gold.

A cavalry captain (John Wayne) nearing retirement, leads a final patrol to stop a pending Indian attack.

A Kentucky militiaman (John Wayne) falls for a general’s daughter and helps thwart land grabbers with the help of his friend (Oliver Hardy).

A hardened Marine sergeant (John Wayne) pushes a group of young recruits until they’re ready to fight.

The estranged wife (Maureen O’Hara) and son of a Cavalry officer (John Wayne) join him at a fort out west.

In a World War II fighter squadron, a well-liked Captain (Robert Ryan) clashes with a hard-nosed Major (John Wayne).

A man (John Wayne) moves home to Ireland and falls in love with a woman (Maureen O’Hara) whose ornery brother picks a fight.

John Wayne’s first production under his Wayne-Fellows Productions company (later renamed Batjac) sees him playing a House Un-American Activities investigator ferreting out communists and romancing a war-widow played by Nancy Olson in Hawaii.

A disgraced football coach (John Wayne) tries to save a Catholic University and retain custody of his daughter.

After crash landing in the frozen uncharted wilds of northern Canada, a captain (John Wayne) and his crew fight to survive while other pilots lead a search party.

An Army dispatch rider (John Wayne) protects a frontier woman and her son from warring Apaches.

A passenger plane experiences trouble en route from Hawaii to San Francisco.

Chinese villagers engineer the escape of an American ship captain (John Wayne) from a Communist prison in the hopes that he will help them flee to Hong Kong.

The Searchers is a very good film about a very flawed man.

The life story of pioneer Navy aviator and Hollywood screenwriter Frank W. “Spig” Wead (John Wayne).

In Timbuktu, an American (John Wayne) reluctantly guides a pious explorer (Rossano Brazzi) and a prostitute (Sophia Loren) into the Sahara desert in search of a lost city.

Texas sheriff John Wayne holds a powerful cattle baron’s no-good brother for murder with only drunken deputy Dean Martin and cantankerous jailer Walter Brennan for support.

During the Civil War, a Union Cavalry Colonel (John Wayne) clashes with a pacifist surgeon (William Holden) assigned to his outfit for a raid deep into confederate territory.

Davy Crockett (John Wayne), Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark) and William Travis (Laurence Harvey) lead a group of volunteers and soldiers in an attempt to stave off the forces of Mexican General Santa Anna.

A fugitive gambler (Stuart Whitman) helps a Texas Ranger (John Wayne) uncover a group of white renegades running guns and liquor to the Comanche.

An idealistic tenderfoot lawyer confronts the fiercest outlaw in a small western town.

An epic look at one family’s trials and tribulations over the course of four generations as they seek their fortune in the American west through the middle of the 19th century.

A circus owner (John Wayne) embarks on a disastrous tour of Europe in the hopes of finding his lost love (Rita Hayworth).

In Harm’s Way is that rare breed of all-star cast movie that works.

Returned home for their mother’s funeral, four brothers (John Wayne, Dean Martin, Earl Holliman, and Michael Anderson Jr.) investigate their father’s death.

A semi-fictionalized account of Col. David “Mickey” Marcus’s (Kirk Douglas) efforts in building the Israeli army on the eve of their independence.

A gunfighter (John Wayne) and a half-Indian gambler (James Caan) sober up a sheriff (Robert Mitchum) and take on a corrupt rancher (Edward Asner).

Fresh out of prison, a rancher (John Wayne) teams up with the gunslinger (Kirk Douglas) who shot him to rob an armored stagecoach.

A ex-Union Colonel (John Wayne) and a ex-Confederate Colonel (Rock Hudson) cross paths in Mexico shortly after the end of the Civil War.

A cattle baron, along with Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, battles a land-grabbing outsider in the Lincoln County Cattle War.

A Civil War colonel (John Wayne) tracks down stolen gold, and helps a group of townsfolk stand up to a corrupt sheriff.

A rancher (John Wayne) is forced to hire a group of school children to help take his heard to market.

A Chicago police detective (John Wayne) travels to London to extradite a mobster (John Vernon).

A Marshal helps a bible-toting spinster find the men who killed her father.

In 1901 Nevada, an old gunfighter (John Wayne) rooms with a widow (Lauren Bacall) after learning he has a terminal cancer.

A rancher (John Wayne) long estranged from his family sets out to rescue his kidnapped grandson.