John Wayne’s final movie is a somber, blood-soaked farewell trimmed with sentimental guest-star cameos and closing-the-book gestures. Wayne is terrific as the gunfighter-at-sunset; Lauren Bacall makes the best impression amid a gallery of old friends that includes James Stewart. Audiences didn’t know what to make of the gory final gunfight … was Wayne giving in to changing times?  The polished production leads with Don Siegel’s assured direction; Arrow pours on the extras.

The Shootist
Blu-ray
Arrow Video USA
1976 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 100 min. / Street Date March 12, 2024 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.99
Starring: John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, James Stewart, Ron Howard, Richard Boone, Hugh O’Brien, Bill McKinney, Harry Morgan, John Carradine, Sheree North, Scatman Crothers, Gregg Palmer.
Cinematography: Bruce Surtees
Production Designer: Robert Boyle
Film Editor: Douglas Stewart
Original Music: Elmer Bernstein
Special Effects by: Augie Lohman
Screenplay by Miles Hood Swarthout & Scott Hale from the novel by Glendon Swarthout
Presented by Dino De Laurentiis
Produced by M.J. Frankovich, William Self
Directed by Don Siegel

At the finish of his long career John Wayne made a special effort for one more ‘elegaic’ western: a victory lap production, a valentine to the genre, to old-fashioned moviemaking, and to his own image. After ten years of health problems Wayne wanted to get in the saddle one more time just to show that he had the spirit and the gumption. What else is an American icon supposed to do?

Intentionally or not, Wayne had played the eulogy-elegy card seven years earlier, at the finale of Henry Hathaway’s True Grit. To soften the original story’s downbeat ending, Wayne and Kim Darby graced a sentimental fare-thee-well out in the cold high country air. A memorable dialogue line wrapped up Wayne’s legend with a ribbon and a bow:

“Well, come see a fat old man some time!”
When retirement-age directors like Hathaway and Raoul Walsh were interviewed, they tried to be polite about the ‘new’ westerns. Howard Hawks was quoted as saying he didn’t need or want slow-motion deaths, that he ‘got killing over with fast.’ John Wayne didn’t say much about the new emphasis on gore, but we would assume that he disapproved, even though he proceeded to star in movies as violent as The Cowboys. What actor wants to play second fiddle to quarts of squib blood effects?

 

The Shootist dramatizes the closing of his chapter of the western by having John Wayne’s icon fall prey to a Peckinpah blizzard of bullets — yet also letting him retain his dignity. Coincidentally, Wayne wasn’t the only classic Hollywood icon that year to make an exit riddled with lead: we personally witnessed one 1976 preview screening of a big film with an overkill finale that made children in the audience cry. Behind both major releases was producer Dino De Laurentiis.

When John Wayne’s final film didn’t do big business at the box office, the industry grumbled some more about the death of the Western genre. Its status as a retirement Valentine to The Duke doesn’t detract from its value as a respectable Western. It entertains on its own merits, with a literate script, professional performances and strong direction from veteran action helmer Don Siegel.

The production mixes some beautiful location shots in Carson City, Nevada with exterior sets at The Burbank Studios. Aging gunfighter John Bernard Books (John Wayne) learns the official word on his failing health from Doctor E.W. Hostetler (James Stewart): he has cancer and could be dead in six weeks. Books’ old time notoriety as a killer makes him a pariah in respectable company. At first unwelcome at the boarding house of the widow Bond Rogers (Lauren Bacall), Books forms a friendship with her and also her impressionable teenaged son Gillom (Ron Howard). Bond lets John stay even after the locals discover who he is. The barber jokes about selling locks of Books’ hair, which amuses Books. But he is also pestered by an exploitative newsman and dime-novel writer (Rick Lenz), and pained by an old flame (Sheree North) also interested in making a deal for his memoirs.

Mrs. Rogers doesn’t throw the sickly gunslinger, out, even after he’s attacked by a pair of would-be assassins right in his boarding-house room. Doctor Hostetler advises that John ‘arrange for an alternative to a painful death in bed.’ Books indeed concocts a gunman’s suicide, but in a roundabout way, by provoking three local toughs into a shootout at the local saloon. Pulford (Hugh O’Brien) is gambler-gunslinger looking to boost his reputation. Sweeney (Richard Boone) bears an old grudge against John. Cobb (Bill McKinney, the hillbilly rapist from Boorman’s  Deliverance) is just the local milkman, and a hothead jerk.

 

A movie about aging and death in the old West?  The Shootist certainly shows a different side of John Wayne. In place of his usual swagger, we see him carrying around little pillow to sit on. John Books either has colon cancer or prostate cancer; God knows how little a sawbones doctor knew about such things in 1901. First-time horse riders will wonder how the man can sit a saddle, if he needs a pillow just to sit in a chair.

After a decade of mostly escapist payday westerns, John Wayne is years late in getting into the revisionist vein of ’50s and ’60s pictures by Budd Boetticher,  Anthony Mann and  Robert Parrish. The latecomer The Shootist doesn’t wait 5 minutes before quoting a telling moment from the key revisionist western, Sam Peckinpah’s  Ride the High Country. Just arrived in town, John Books is rudely shooed of the street, slighted as an obsolete old man. He takes the insult with a smile, but with one finger on the trigger: “Well pardon me all to Hell.”

Wayne drops the ‘Duke’ persona that became tiresome in his weaker Andrew V. McLaglen pictures. He carries his sickly gunslinger in high dignity, playing closer to the polished dramatic mode of  In Harm’s Way, another Wayne picture that seems conscious of the actor’s state of health. Wayne’s legions of fans were aware of his earlier bout with cancer, when he promoted cancer research charities. The message is that, politics aside, the Duke remained a class act in a changing Hollywood.

Glendon Swarthout’s source book was based strongly on the historic westerner John Wesley Hardin, an authentic gunslinger who was gunned down in an El Paso saloon in 1895. The movie is more about the John Wayne legend. Wayne cleaned up the character without quite turning him into a retirement-age superhero. Books is in no shape to punch anybody out. When he shoots varmints that Had It Coming, he doesn’t mind using dirty tricks.

John Books doesn’t go on a drinking binge, as it’s hard enough just taking his medicine. He instead offers a father figure for young Gillom Rogers. John’s advice is to be strong but tough. He Lives By The Gun, reserving the right to use violence to defend his dignity, and to determine on his own when his dignity needs defending. Hopefully Gillom will honor Books’ independent code, but not pick up a gun to make his living.

 

Lauren Bacall’s performance is the glue that holds The Shootist together. Her sober landlady is a rigid Christian with character and judgment, a perfect woman for John Books’ last platonic fling of friendship. It’s actually one of Bacall’s better roles. Twenty years before, she had stepped in to co-star with Wayne in his Batjac production  Blood Alley. Although Bacall is always good, she was ill-used or underused in too many pictures. This star pairing is far more successful than Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn from the year previous. Flat, ugly and unfunny, its attempt to remake The African Queen as a western only made Wayne and co-icon Katharine Hepburn look old and silly.

The film’s other star appearances are extended cameos. James Stewart gives his small role just the right turn. He played few if any walk-on guest parts … even in  Cheyenne Autumn he’s definitely the ‘star’ of his segment. Richard Boone has less screen time than John Carradine’s wonderful undertaker. Hugh O’Brien says he wanted so badly to perform with Wayne that he would have taken whatever was available. Sheree North was a boost to several Don Siegel films, most notably 1973’s  Charley Varrick. She also embraces her one-scene moment opposite Wayne.

 

Then there’s Opie. In 1975 Ron Howard was an ex-child star newly established as an adult-teen with a hit TV show; he’d soon begin his even more successful directing career. An expert performer, he’s able to come off as a 15-year-old at age 25 or so. Earlier John Wayne movies rustled up Youth Appeal by reaching for the nearest squeaky-clean pop star, most notably Ricky Nelson in  Rio Bravo. Howard is a far sight easier to take than Wayne’s other teen idols. Fabian Forte was amusingly horny in  North to Alaska, and came off better than did Frankie Avalon in Wayne’s epic  The Alamo. If not Ronnie Howard, who else might have been considered for Gillom Rogers, Richard Thomas?

How would Maureen O’Hara have played in Lauren Bacall’s part?

John Bernard Books is no longer up for a real romance, and in fact allows Bond Rogers to help him to his cot. Older patrons may have been aware of Lauren Bacall’s staying by her dying husband Humphrey Bogart in his final months. Bacall doesn’t have to roughhouse with Wayne, as had been the norm with his frequent co-star Maureen O’Hara. Had O’Hara been cast as widow Rogers, everything would change … the audience would assume a previous relationship, no matter what the story was. Also, the addition of O’Hara would make The Shootist a relationship film, not a solo meditation on the John Wayne mythos.

The screenwriters salt in some good bits of action on the way to the expected shoot-out finale. But any movie about old age and slow death is a tough sell, even when starring John Wayne. The title ‘The Shootist’ could be commercial, but ‘The Hospice,’ definitely not. The best promo hype Paramount could muster in 1976 was that The Shootist was only the third film in which a Wayne character dies on screen. One of the disc extras discusses Wayne’s on-screen deaths, and omits the one that made the biggest impression, Allan Dwan’s Sands of Iwo Jima.

 

We know the movie is over when John Books bids adieu to widow Rogers and heads for his bar room rendezvous. The filmmakers skip the maudlin details and telegraphed emotions. Books has arranged this four-way saloon showdown with party invitations. All that’s missing are formal RSVPs.

The set piece finale delivers the graphic mayhem that western fans expected in the Bicentennial Year. Books’ foolhardy foes arrive promptly and wait as individual ambushers. As in a samurai or chop-socky film, each takes a turns attacking Books instead of unloading at him from all sides. Otherwise the fight choreography is very good. A sneaky bartender fulfills Books’ adage that the geek that gets ya is the geek ya ain’t watchin’ out for.

We’re told that Wayne insisted on a few changes to the shootout. Young Gillom Rogers was originally to be one of John Books’ assailants, an angle likely dropped early on. The older video documentary states that Wayne entreated director Siegel to rework things so that Books doesn’t shoot bad guy Bill McKinney in the back. John Wayne just doesn’t do that in movies, Pilgrim.

With John Wayne in charge, there is nothing morally ambiguous about Books’ grand saloon melee. A lot of blood is spilled but no innocent bystanders are hurt. All the shooting victims are clean kills. Books’ gunpowder suicide is a glamorously violent blaze of glory.

Widow Rogers accepts her star boarder’s actions. John Wayne’s hero even merits a poetic send-off from a sweet young girl in a trolley car (Melody Scott Thomas, of Piranha).  The Shootist nominates its career gunfighter as a misunderstood great man, a hero with many regrets but few real flaws.

Only the audience is privileged to see what really happens in the saloon, before it becomes distorted frontier legend. Gillom Rogers should hope that the Law doesn’t learn about his part in the fight. I sometimes ask people if they think that Gillom’s actions are justified, or if he is a technical murderer. If we really want to exonerate the kid, then I’d make the case that Jeff Bridges’ Richard Bone in  Cutter’s Way should also merit a Get Out of Jail card. Our knowledge of that final act is also ‘privileged.’ In such chaotic situations, who can say what happened, or who is responsible?

 

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Arrow Video USA’s Blu-ray of The Shootist is a massive improvement on the ancient DVD. Paramount performed the 4K scan and Arrow supervised the restoration in England. The images look terrific and the mono sound is perfect. Director Siegel and cameraman Bruce Surtees successfully intercut traditional camera angles with handheld work. The handheld shots add greatly to the action scenes, and never feel ostentatious.

We didn’t find a previous American Blu-ray disc of this film listed at Amazon or Blu-ray.com, only Japanese and German releases. But Arrow doesn’t make the claim that this is a First. We couldn’t help but note that the last time we saw and reviewed The Shootist was several months before 9-11, which seems like a whole lifetime ago.

Still looking grainy is the B&W opening montage using vintage film clips culled from  Red River,  Rio Bravo and  El Dorado. The montage was likely tacked on for some bang-bang right at the outset, for patience-challenged ticket buyers. But we know those earlier John Wayne characters too well, and don’t accept them as John Books as a younger man. It’s an impression that Don Siegel and Co. work hard to overcome.

 

Disc producer Neil Snowden presides over a wealth of new extras. He’s got solid input from Howard S. Berger (the commentary) and C. Courtney Joyner, plus two separate visual essays, from Scott Tafoya and David Cairns. Joyner spends time on the career of author Glendon Swarthout, while Cairns unwinds 30 interesting minutes on the creative intersection between Wayne and his director Don Siegel.

Elmer Bernstein’s music score also gets a special featurette. The other extras are listed below; Arrow tosses in some mini- lobby cards plus one of their welcome two-sided posters. The new cover artwork by Juan Esteban Rodríguez is outstanding.

It’s fun to repeat my personal story connected with The Shootist. In 1975-76 fellow editor Robert S. Birchard got me gigs projecting 35mm film for producer Mike Frankovich, at his Sunset & Doheny offices and at his house up in the Hills of Beverly. One Saturday night I projected a fresh answer print of this movie — Frankovich was giving his associate Dino De Laurentiis the first look at the final product. These projection parties involved substantial drinking. Frankovich was happy, convinced he had produced a huge hit. He ambled back to the booth to see if I was threading up the right feature, and Dino came with him.

Although I’d heard De Laurentiis speak in English, when I said I loved his movie  Danger: Diabolik he pretended to not understand. That’s understandable: De Laurentiis was a big wheel not likely to chit-chat with an insignificant projectionist.  I think he would have ignored me even if I had addressed him in perfect Italian.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

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The Shootist
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good and somewhat historic in nature
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
New:
Audio commentary by filmmaker and critic Howard S. Berger
Visual Essay The Last Day by David Cairns
Visual Essay Contemplating John Wayne: The Death of a Cowboyby Scout Tafoya
Interview featurette A Man-Making Moment with C. Courtney Joyner
Interview featurette Laments of the West about composer Elmer Bernstein with Neil Brand
Archival Featurette The Legend Lives On with producer William Self, Miles Hood Swarthout, Peter Frankovich, Hugh O’Brien
Theatrical trailer, Image gallery, double-sided poster, reversible sleeve, postcard lobby card reproductions
30-page illustrated pamphlet with an essay by Philip Kemp.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: March 5, 2024
(7089shoo)

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