John Wayne, real name Marion Morrison, made 170 movies during his incredible Hollywood career from the 1920s silent era to the mid-1970s. A box office king for three decades, Duke dominated the Golden Age of cinema.
He quickly became an American icon, best known for his Westerns and war epics. Yet which are the very best John Wayne movies? Film fan database IMDb has rated the Top 10, but you may be surprised that neither The Searchers, True Grit or Rio Bravo made it to No 1.
10. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) – 7.2/10
Having starred in the first outing of John Ford’s Cavalry trilogy in 1948’s Fort Apache, John Wayne returned to lead the director’s follow-up in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon a year later. The movie cost $1.6 million, making it one of the most expensive Westerns at that point in Hollywood history. Named after the US military song of the same name, the film once again found the two Johns shooting together in the iconic Monument Valley along the Arizona-Utah state line.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon had Wayne portray Cavalry Captain Nathan Brittles on his last job before retirement. In the movie, the mission of the old soldier was to soothe tensions between the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians following Custer’s Last Stand aka the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.
Meanwhile, Brittles had to transport the wife and niece of his commanding officer to safety. But when both these objectives stalled, he pursued a meeting with a Native American chief to prevent the outbreak of war.
Interestingly, Brittles was Wayne’s favourite character of all his roles and one that originally Ford didn’t want him for before seeing him star in Red River. After filming was completed, Ford presented Wayne with a cake with the message, “You’re an actor now”.
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9. Fort Apache (1948) – 7.4/10
In 1947, John Ford and John Wayne kicked off the first of their Calvary Trilogy movies in Fort Apache. Like She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, the movie was filmed in the director’s favoured Monument Valley where the blazing heat, high winds and desert storms proved a challenging shoot for the cast and crew.
Set after the American Civil War, Wayne played Captain Kirby York, the acting commander of Fort Apache, an isolated US cavalry post in the Arizona frontier. The officer soon finds himself clashing with Henry Fonda’s stubborn Lieutenant Colonel, who arrives to take over command with his daughter played by Shirley Temple.
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8. True Grit (1969) – 7.4/10
This movie was a godsend for John Wayne, who lobbied for the lead role of one-eyed US Marshal Rooster Cogburn after reading Charles Portis’ novel of the same name. The boozy lawman is hired by a farm girl to hunt Tom Chaney, the man who killed her father.
Duke would go on to finally win the Best Actor Oscar for his role in the picture, which co-starred Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper and Glen Campbell as Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (a role almost played by Elvis Presley).
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