This article was originally written for the TCM Spotlight programming in the TCM Now Playing newsletter in May 2025.
In their screenplay for John Ford’s late-career Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck wrote the now famous and often misquoted line, “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Where the history of the American Frontier is concerned, Hollywood has been doing just that almost since the very beginning. What most people have in mind about the West now is to a large degree what they learned from the movies. Because this uniquely American genre is so enduring and has produced such memorable stories, characters and images over many decades, it has become the foundation of our great national legend, those traits and beliefs by which America, for better or worse, defines itself.
This fairly exhaustive nine-night spotlight on Western films from the earliest days of cinema up to recent times explores how the genre has both shaped and reflected such aspects of our national identity as individualism versus community, the conflict between civilization and wilderness, the pursuit of a hard-won better life, the legacy of oppression and racism, and notions of heroism, justice and retribution. At the same time, the 46 movies shown this month provide a broad view of how the genre has been shaped by the changes in society and modes of artistic expression over more than a century.
May 1: The Foundation
The series begins, fittingly, with Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903), not the first movie set in the Old West but the one generally credited as having established the basic footprint of the genre, defining such familiar tropes as outlaws, gunplay, horses, the railroad, etc. The dynamic editing and storytelling, a breakthrough at the time, became associated not only with the Western genre but with the dominant narrative form developed by Hollywood in the first half of the 20th century. Its influence extends even to other genres: witness the homage to its final shot at the end of Martin Scorsese’s gangster drama Goodfellas (1990).
Westerns grew in popularity during the silent era, attracting directors who would go on to major careers, including John Ford (The Iron Horse, 1924), Henry King (The Winning of Barbara Worth, 1926) and Cecil B. DeMille (The Squaw Man, 1914). The line-up also features the greatest cowboy stars of the period, Tom Mix (Sky High, 1922) and William S. Hart (Tumbleweeds, 1925). The Invaders (1912), a short film preserved in the Library of Congress, is one of the first to focus on the conflict between the original indigenous populations and the pioneers driven by Manifest Destiny.
May 6: The Quintessential Cowboy: John Wayne and the Idea of America
The idea of Manifest Destiny, the belief that the European colonists of the U.S. were meant to expand west, taking control of the land and spreading “civilization” and “progress” from one coast to the other, is perhaps best exemplified by the characters played by John Wayne, the actor most identified with the genre and one of the most popular movie stars of all time. In dozens of Westerns over a 50-year career, Wayne was presented as a hero who could almost single-handedly defeat hostile native peoples to clear a path across the continent, solidifying the notion of American exceptionalism and pre-destination.
The pictures in this evening’s program are among Wayne’s most famous, starting with his first starring role, The Big Trail (1930), directed by Raoul Walsh. The others have equally impressive credentials: John Ford’s genre-defining Stagecoach (1939), in which Wayne firmly established his image and box-office appeal; Howard Hawks’ exciting and masterful saga of intergenerational conflict, Red River (1948); and the episodic, decades-spanning How the West Was Won (1962), an epic so broad it took Ford and three other directors, along with a large all-star cast, to bring it to the screen.
May 8: Rugged Individualism
The image of John Wayne as a solitary figure pitted against the harsh difficulties of settling the West also helped glorify freedom and self-reliance as ingrained values in the national consciousness, privileging the individual over the collective in ways that still affect our governance and way of life. That torch was carried by other stars important to the genre: James Stewart in The Man from Laramie (1955), one of several fascinating character-driven films he made with director Anthony Mann; Randolph Scott, who formed a similar collaboration with Budd Boetticher in Ride Lonesome (1959) and four more complex dramas that transcended their B-movie status; Barry Sullivan and Barbara Stanwyck (the only woman to have achieved true Western stardom) in Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns (1957), a movie rife with toxic masculinity and phallic symbolism; even James Cagney, more at home on the mean streets of the modern city, in The Oklahoma Kid (1939).
Perhaps no actor better embodies mythic rugged individualism like Clint Eastwood, represented here by Hang ‘Em High (1968) and his self-directed High Plains Drifter (1973), a return to the iconic Man with No Name character he played in the so-called “Spaghetti Westerns” of Sergio Leone in the 1960s.
May 13: Social Commentary in Disguise
Classic Hollywood social commentary is usually identified with the gritty urban dramas produced by Warner Bros. during the Great Depression and the on-the-nose message films made by Stanley Kramer 20 or more years later. But social and political themes also crept into the Western. Henry Fonda, Hollywood’s ideal man of principles, stars in William Wellman’s wrenching condemnation of mob rule, The Ox-Bow Incident (1942). Joel McCrea as Wyatt Earp brings gun control to the lawless cattle town of Wichita (1955). With the shifting perspectives ushered in during the 1960s, filmmakers were able to examine racism against Native Americans in Hombre (1967), with Paul Newman, and Black Americans in John Ford’s Sergeant Rutledge (1960) with Woody Strode.
This is also a chance to catch one of the most critically acclaimed but least seen of all the Spaghetti Westerns, The Great Silence (1968), directed by Sergio Corbucci (Django, 1966). In his characteristic operatic style, Corbucci presents an anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment political allegory very much in sync with its time. A brutal critique of state-supported monopoly capitalism, the film features the unlikely “cowboy” duo of Frenchman Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist, 1970) and German Klaus Kinski (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 1972).
May 15: Heroism and Sacrifice
Despite the values of self-contained individualism expressed in most Westerns, even outlaws and outsiders can overcome their reluctance to act on behalf of the greater good. The point is made in two films that are loose remakes of Japanese samurai pictures: The Magnificent Seven (1960), from Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), itself inspired by American Westerns, and A Fistful of Dollars (1964), whose producers were sued by Kurosawa over its uncredited resemblance to his Yojimbo (1961). The greatest figure of self-sacrifice in the interest of the community, however, is always the lawman, whether it’s Gary Cooper’s embattled marshal fighting against all odds in High Noon (1952) or Henry Fonda’s Wyatt Earp bringing peace and justice to lawless Tombstone in one of John Ford’s greatest, My Darling Clementine (1946).
An interesting sideline to this theme is the 14-minute film High Noon on the Waterfront (2022), an inventive examination of the titular movies, each of them about individuals risking everything to stand up for what they believe is right.
May 20: A Changing America: Disillusionment and the Rise of the Antihero
Historical events like the Vietnam War, Watergate, political assassinations and movements that spotlighted America’s civil rights failures engendered a sea change in the national character in the 1960- ‘70s. Cynicism, disillusion and challenges to traditional societal norms and values were reflected in films with morally ambiguous characters and themes that shared more with contemporary attitudes than the Westerns audiences had known. This is true of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), with its charismatic anti-heroes, pop music score and hip, modern dialogue, relationships and humor. Two Clint Eastwood films eschewed such slick “updating” while taking the genre into new thematic territory. He was catapulted into international stardom with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), described by its director Sergio Leone as a satire of the Western that amps up the genre’s violence, cruelty and greed to deconstruct its long-accepted ideology. The film was also critical of war, an aspect Eastwood as director and star tackled in his acclaimed The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).
Genre-busting maverick director Robert Altman stepped in with one of his most innovative and unique films, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971). Deep in moral (and literal) muddiness, it is a beautiful and melancholic elegy to the Western that would fit equally well into the final night of the series.
May 22: Cultural Breakthroughs
The overwhelming majority of protagonists in classic Westerns are white males, presumably heterosexual (although tell that to the boys comparing their “guns” in Red River). From time to time, however, fresh perspectives arise to challenge ingrained stereotypes. Robert Taylor stars in Westward the Women (1951) as a wagon master tasked with leading dozens of women to a predominately male settlement. Many of the women turn out to be as tough and resourceful as their escorts. The multiple award-winner Brokeback Mountain (2005), while not strictly a Western thanks to its modern and partially urban setting, broke ground with its sensitive story of two ranch hands who fall in love in the wilderness. The funny, rambunctious Buck and the Preacher (1972) broke with Hollywood tradition by casting Black actors (Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee and Sidney Poitier, who directed) in the leads and showing both tension and cooperation between Black pioneers and Indigenous allies.
In 1950, two movies viewed the plight of Native Americans through a more sympathetic lens: Broken Arrow and Devil’s Doorway. Unfortunately, any progress made in those storylines was undercut by the usual Hollywood practice of casting white actors (Jeff Chandler and Robert Taylor, respectively) as the leads. The racism and genocide that characterized the settlement of the West and the way it was normalized by many decades of motion pictures are examined in the documentary Bearing Witness: Native American Voices in Hollywood (2024).
May 27: American Psyche
In the 1940s, the genre began to evolve to include what critics have referred to as psychological Westerns, featuring complex characters who are flawed, conflicted and driven to the point of obsession. Included here are the noirish Blood on the Moon (1948) with Robert Mitchum; another of the compelling James Stewart-Anthony Mann dramas Winchester ’73 (1950); Samuel Fuller’s look into the torment of the man who killed the famous outlaw in I Shot Jesse James (1949); and Duel in the Sun (1946), adding an overheated element of amour fou that earned the picture the sarcastic alternative title “Lust in the Dust.” One of the greatest films by Western master John Ford, The Searchers (1956), presents a decidedly less heroic John Wayne as a man whose actions reveal the fine line between core Western values and bigoted hatred.
May 29: The End of an Era
As our current spate of post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows prove, there’s highly fertile ground for artistic expression in the decline of a civilization and the overturning of a way of life. Westerns of this type, which appeared with greater frequency in the 1960s and ’70s, were set during the sunset of the Wild West, when the harsh, lawless existence of the frontier gave way to the refinement, rules and institutions of civilized society. Sam Peckinpah proved himself a keen chronicler of that period with The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) and The Wild Bunch (1969), a tale filled with sadness and despair despite its (for the time) ultra-violence. In these two pictures and an earlier one, Ride the High Country (1962), the appearance of an automobile is an apt metaphor for the end of an era.
In his penultimate Western, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Sergio Leone cast Henry Fonda against type as a vicious gunman; Charles Bronson as a mysterious, harmonic-playing avenger; and Claudia Cardinale as an ambitious entrepreneur seeking her fortune with the coming of the railroad in a haunting piece that is at once intimately spare and grandly epic. Every element of the production is fully realized: acting, cinematography, editing and, thanks to frequent collaborator Ennio Morricone, arguably the most exquisitely evocative score of any Western, rivaled only by his work on Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
That brings us full circle to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which sees an upright citizen (James Stewart) elevated to the governing class of a rapidly acculturating frontier territory thanks to the printing of a legend that leaves the story’s true “hero” (John Wayne) forgotten by history.
