A few years before his death, John Wayne revealed an unseen side of himself in The Shootist, his final film.
If we look back at John Wayne’s career, which spanned over 40 years, what stands out is his determination to embody strong characters throughout his life. Wayne is the courageous cowboy, the charismatic man. Yet in the last film he played before his death in 1979, the actor gives way to a much more fragile personality.
Don Siegel’s 1976 film The Shootist tells the story of J.B. Books (John Wayne), an ex-killer with a bloody reputation, who comes to a country house for a rest after being diagnosed with cancer. In this film, Wayne is not the man he used to be; he’s a tired, sickly old man, with a slow gait, shortness of breath and a scarred face.
What makes this last film so special is its relationship with its lead actor: by 1976, Wayne was aging and in declining health. After beating lung cancer in 1965 – at the cost of a left lung – he contracted stomach cancer, which caused his death in 1979. This film therefore sounds like his final appearance, and Wayne knows it. His reunion with his doctor Dr. Hostetler, played by James Stewart, sounds like the last chance to catch up with a duo established 17 years earlier in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. In all the small moments of silence that arise from this scene, a deep melancholy emanates, particularly in Stewart’s gaze towards Wayne.
The Western genre was in decline in the 1970s, following its slow decline since the mid-1960s, with audiences turning to a new generation of actors playing complex, fallen heroes, such as Al Pacino and Gene Hackman wandering the roads in Scarecrow. Wayne is no longer the youthful hero he once was; for over a decade, the actor has represented a caricatured interpretation of his own persona. With hyper-patriotic portrayals such as The Green Berets (1968), which he made during the Vietnam War and which stood in stark contrast to the youth of the time.
His relationship with Bond Rogers (Lauren Bacall) in The Shootist shows the actor in a new light, always hidden behind a tough shell, he reveals an unseen fragility and lays himself bare. Uttering phrases like “ I’m a dying man who is afraid of the dark ” or slipping in his bath, he shows a never-before-seen facade of a John Wayne in need of help. While the actor imposed a macho – almost violent – superiority over women in most of his major films, Lauren Bacall shows herself to be a force equal to Wayne’s character. As she looks after the house and educates Gillom (Ron Howard), she expresses a sad strength, a woman who has suffered tragedy in her life but who has always moved forward, head held high. When the two argue over coffee and she expresses “ damn you for the sickness you brought to this house ” she melts into silence, head bowed, as John stands up ready to leave, he looks at her one last time. Before touching her stomach. There’s an almost instant regret in both of them for having raised their voices so much. And seeing John touch his stomach reminds him that the clock is ticking and there’s no time for fighting.
The Shootist gives John Wayne something that few of his films have managed to give him: a humanity that goes beyond his character. And watching Books try to redeem what little humanity he can from the people around him holds up a mirror to the actor. Books knows that he can’t erase the murders he’s carried out in the past, and that he’s disliked by many people because of his actions, elements that can be traced back to Wayne’s active participation in the exclusion of Communists from Hollywood during the Cold War. But there’s an attempt to go out on a high note, to restore color to his soul in his final moments.
Siegel never really gives his character the opportunity to be heroic or to appear glorious. And running through the film’s dialogue seems to resonate twice as much with its context, like running through the tracks of Johnny Cash’s American IV. The film definitely has its faults, and celebrating Wayne’s performance will never take them away, but Don Siegel succeeds with The Shootist in provoking, through his script, a legendary actor to introspection at a decisive moment in his career and life.
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