Riding With the Duke
Movies And Music
From the American West
John Wayne
May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979
After more than 70 low-budget westerns and adventures,
Wayne’s career took off when John Ford cast him in
Stagecoach (1939), the movie that made him a star. All in
all, he appeared in nearly 250 movies, many of epic
proportions. He is perhaps best remembered for his parts in
Ford’s cavalry trilogy - Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow
Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950). With a simple acting
philosophy (“I stick to simple themes. Love. Hate. No
nuances.”), he was voted the 5th Greatest Movie Star of all
time by Entertainment Weekly.
Interesting Facts About the Duke
Wayne summed up the mystique of the western eloquently. “Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West - the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who’ll continue it. … Don’t ever for a minute make the mistake of looking down your nose at westerns. They’re art—the good ones, I mean. They deal in life and sudden death and primitive struggle, and with the basic emotions—love, hate, and anger—thrown in. We’ll have western films as long as the cameras keep turning. The fascination that the Old West has will never die. And as long as people want to pay money to see me act, I’ll keep on making westerns until the day I die.” And until he lost his long battle with cancer, he did. In discussing his contribution to the western genre, he said “I was trying to play a man who gets dirty, who sweats sometimes, who enjoys kissing a gal he likes, who gets angry, who fights clean whenever possible but will fight dirty if he has to. You could say I made the Western hero a roughneck.” There were a lot of stories about how he got to be called “The Duke.” One was that he played a duke in a school play; another was that he was descended from royalty. His response was “It was all a lot of rubbish. Hell, the truth is that I was named after a dog!”
The inscription on the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to him
in 1979 reads, simply,
“John Wayne, American.”
Some Classic John Wayne Westerns at the Urbana Free library
The Alamo, 1960
Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, Frankie Avalon, Patrick Wayne
DVD / ALA
Angel and the Badman, 1947
Gail Russell, Harry Carey, Bruce Cabot, Irene Rich
DVD / ANG
Big Jake, 1971
Richard Boone, Maureen O’Hara
DVD / BIG
Blue Steel, 1934
Eleanor Hunt, George Hayes, Yakima Cannutt
DVD / ANG
The Comancheros, 1961
Stuart Whitman, Ina Balin, Nehemiah Persoff, Lee Marvin
DVD / COM
El Dorado, 1967
Robert Mitchum, James Caan, Charlene Holt, Paul Fix
DVD / SON
Hondo, 1953
Geraldine Page, James Arness
DVD / HON
How the West was Won, 1962
Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart
DVD / HOW
McLintock!1963
Maureen O’Hara, Patrick Wayne, Stefanie Powers, Jack Kruschen
DVD / MCL
Red River, 1948
Montgomery Clift, Walter Brennan, Joanne Dru, Noah Beery, Jr.
DVD / RED
Rio Bravo, 1959
Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan
DVD / RIO
Rio Grande, 1950
Maureen O’Hara, Ben Johnson, Harry Carey, Jr.
DVD / RIO
Rio Lobo, 1970
Jorge Rivero, Jennifer O’Neill, Jack Elam, Victor French
DVD / RIO
The Searchers, 1956
Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood
DVD / SEA
The Shootist, 1976
Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, Bill McKinney, James Stewart
DVD / SHO
The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965
Dean Martin, Martha Hyer, Michael Anderson Jr., Earl Holliman
DVD / SON
Stagecoach, 1939
Claire Trevor, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell
DVD / STA
True Grit, 1969
Glen Campbell, Kim Darby
DVD / TRU
Music From the American West
Gene Autry: 1933 – 1946
Gene Autry
CDCW / AUT
Slide Show
Cindy Cashdollar
CDCW / CAS
Cowboy Classics: the Best of the West
CDCW / COW
The Best of Don Edwards
Don Edwards
CDCW / EDW
Songs of the Trail
Don Edwards
CDCW / EDW
A Cowboy’s Wild Song to His Herd
Skip Gorman
CDCW / GOR
Lonesome Prairie Love
Skip Gorman
CDCW / GOR
Let’s Put the Western Back in the Country
Joni Harms
CDCW / HAR
Continental Stomp
Hot Club of Cowtown
CDCW / HOT
Public Cowboy #1: the Music of Gene Autry
Riders in the Sky
CDCW / RID
“The King of the Cowboys”
Roy Rogers
CDCW / ROG
Cowboy Real
Tom Russell
CDCW / RUS
Indians Cowboys Horses Dogs
Tom Russell
CDCW / RUS
Sons of the Pioneers
Sons of the Pioneers
CDCW / SON
Tumbling Tumbleweeds
Sons of the Pioneers, featuring Roy Rogers
CDCW / SON
A Cowboy Has to Sing
Sons of the San Joaquin
CDCW / SON
At The Golden Nugget
Hank Thompson
CDCW / THO
The Complete Guide to Edible Wild Plants
Department of the Army, 2009
581.632 / DEP
Yellowhead to Yellowstone and Other Love Stories
Ian Tyson
CDCW / TYS
Anthology (1935 – 1973)
Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys
CDCW / WIL
Out West Somewhere
James McCandless and Julianne Macarus
CDFO / MCC
Lone Driftin’ Rider
Waddie Mitchell
CDFO / MIT
High Lonesome Cowboy: Appalachia to Abilene
Peter Rowan & Don Edwards
CDFO / ROW
Go West: Music for Buster Keaton Films
Bill Frisell
CDMS / FRI
The Ennio Morricone Anthology: a Fistful of Film Music
Ennio Morricone
CDMS / MOR
The West: Original Soundtrack: Traditional American
and Native American Songs and Instrumental Music
CDMS / WES
09/07/10
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