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Pairing legendary cinematic tough guy John Wayne with baby-faced former child-star Ron Howard might not seem like the most obvious choice, but the two made a great on-screen duo in 1976's "The Shootist." Don Siegel's Western — based on Glendon Swarthout's 1975 novel of the same name — saw Wayne play former Sheriff turned gunfighter J. B. Books. The aging outlaw is diagnosed with cancer shortly after arriving in a Nevada town at the tail-end of the old west. He then spends his final days taking a young fatherless boy under his wing in the form of Ron Howard's Gillom Rogers, much to the dismay of the youngster's mother who doesn't want her son following in the footsteps of a well-known killer.

The film functioned as a sort of meta commentary on Wayne's own career and his era of Hollywood, which...

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John Wayne was a terribly opinionated man who sometimes gave voice to some truly terrible opinions. The politically conservative movie star, who skipped out on World War II while several of his equally famous peers, like Henry Fonda and James Stewart, bravely served, did not think highly of people who looked and lived differently than he did. It's practically cliche at this point to cite the notorious interview he gave to Playboy in 1971, but it is impossible to responsibly consider the man's life without noting that he believed "in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility." In the same conversation, he also called "Midnight Cowboy," which won Best Picture in 1969, "a story about two f***." Roger Ebert once wrote that Wayne was profoundly "unenlightened," which leaves open the possibility that he might've been less of...

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John Wayne was riding remarkably high in the saddle in the early 1950s, knocking out one box office hit after another, when he decided to diversify his Hollywood profile by producing movies. So in 1952, the star of "Red River," "Sands of Iwo Jima," and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" hooked up with his longtime showbiz pal Robert Fellows, and together they founded Wayne-Fellows Productions. Wayne was picky about the people with whom he made movies, but Fellows more than earned his trust. According to Scott Eyman's "John Wayne: The Life and Legend," the Duke once said of Fellows, "What Bob doesn't know about the business isn't worth knowing."

Their first film together was the politically ignorant turkey "Big Jim McClain," which starred Wayne as a heroic special investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee (Huac). In 1953, they released two movies,...

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When principal photography commenced on "Rooster Cogburn" in the fall of 1974, John Wayne was 68 years old and not thinking about retirement. By the end of the shoot, the star was on oxygen after contracting viral pneumonia. Almost a year later, when it came time to promote the film's theatrical release, Wayne was Mia due to the same lingering case of pneumonia -- a frightening proposition given that the longtime smoker had lost a lung to cancer a decade prior.

If Wayne wasn't well enough to do a perfunctory round of interviews, he certainly wasn't in good enough shape to shoot another movie. But the star was determined to get back in the saddle and justified his eagerness by pointing out that he was still cancer-free. Even with one lung, a persistent cough wasn't going to take down the Duke. According...

Nickel Boys was named best picture in the 59th National Society Of Film Critics vote on Saturday, while Payal Kapadia earned the best director award for her Indian drama All We Imagine As Light.

In the acting categories Marianne Jean-Baptiste from Hard Truths and Colman Domingo from Sing Sing took lead acting honours, with Michele Austin from Hard Truths and Kieran Culkin from A Real Pain earning supporting actor recognition. A Real Pain struck a second time as Jesse Eisenberg took the screenplay prize.

Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light was named Best Film Not In The English Language...

At its 59th annual meeting on Saturday, the National Society of Film Critics named “Nickel Boys” the Best Picture of 2024. The award reflects the wide range of independent films released this year.

RaMell Ross directed “Nickel Boys,” which also won an award for Best Cinematography, given to Jomo Fray. Congratulations to Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor for her outstanding performance as a supporting actor and the film’s director for winning second place.

He got the award for Best Actor for his part in “Sing Sing.” “Hard Truths” also had two important wins: Marianne Jean-Baptiste won Best Actress, and Michele Austin won Best Supporting Actress.

Kieran Culkin’s award season continued with his win for Best Supporting Actor in “A Real Pain.” Jesse Eisenberg, who wrote and directed the movie, also received the award for Best Screenplay.

It was a big deal that Payal Kapadia’s movie “All We Imagine as Light...

Because the Golden Globes shouldn’t have all the fun the first weekend of the new year, the National Society of Film Critics presented its annual film awards this Saturday, with critics gathering in New York and Los Angeles to vote on 2024’s best movies and performances.

This year’s 59th annual award for Best Picture was presented to RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys,” with Sean Baker’s “Anora” and Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine As Light” serving as runners-up. Kapadia also managed to score Best Director, with Ross and Baker serving as runners-up in that category, as well as Best Foreign-Language Film.

Another highlight from this year’s crop of awards recipients is Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s win for Best Actress, making her one of five actresses to earn the critics association trifecta, the others being Imelda Staunton (“Vera Drake”), Sally Hawkins (“Happy-Go-Lucky”), Cate Blanchett (“Tar” and “Blue Jasmine”), and...

Voting for the National Society of Film Critics is now complete and films like “Nickel Boys” and “A Real Pain” took home top honors.

Nsfc was founded in 1966 and is comprised of over 60 critics hailing from outlets nationally. These journalists mark their annual voting selections for categories such as best picture, director, actor, actress, supporting actor and actress, screenplay and cinematography.

Voting is processed through a weighted ballot system which has critics vote for their top 3 picks. The nominee that garners the most points and is listed on the most ballots wins. The voting process only proceeds to a second round if necessary and voting continues for as long as required until a nominee receives the majority of votes.

“Nickel Boys” took home the Best Picture prize with “Anora” and “All We Imagine Is Light” as runner-ups. For A24’s “Sing Sing,” Colman Domingo earned the Best Actor award alongside...

One year shy of its diamond anniversary, the National Society of Film Critics has announced its winners.

On Saturday, the Nsfc held its 59th voting meeting in which they awarded Nickel Boys the Best Film of 2024, with acting honors for Colman Domingo, Kieran Culkin, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin, as well Best Director for All We Imagine as Light‘s Payal Kapadia and Best Screenplay for A Real Pain‘s Jesse Eisenberg.

The organization also bestowed awards to Sing Sing, Hard Truths and No Other Land. Anora, Conclave, The Brutalist, His Three Daughters, Nosferatu, A Complete Unknown and A Different Man were among the runners-up.

Founded in 1966, the Nsfc consists of more than 60 members from major publications, using a weighted ballot system to determine its annual winners.

See the National Society of Film Critics’ full list of winners below.

Best Picture

Nickel Boys

Runners-up: Anora, All We Imagine as Light

Best Director

Payal Kapadia,...

The National Society of Film Critics has named Nickel Boys its best picture of 2024.

The film also received runner-up recognition for Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as the best supporting actress, RaMell Ross as best director and received the award for best cinematography.

Colman Domingo took home the prize for best actor for his role in Sing Sing, while Hard Truths star Marianne Jean-Baptiste won best actress. Fellow Hard Truths star Michele Austin was recognized in the best supporting actress category, and Kieran Culkin received the award for best supporting actor for A Real Pain. The film, written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, also won best screenplay.

The best director prize went to Payal Kapadia for All We Imagine As Light, which was also recognized as the best film not in English.

The Nsfc was founded in 1966 and is made up of more than 60 critics from outlets across the country. They vote on their selections for best picture,...

Long before the Disney/Fox merger of 2019 created 20th Century Studios, there was 20th Century Fox. One of the original big five studios, 20th Century Fox was founded as 20th Century Pictures in 1935 by Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck. The latter of the two was a former Warner Bros. executive and noted pervert, who, as The Daily Beast has pointed out, was one of the chief architects of the notorious casting couch culture that produced so much of the murk in which golden age Hollywood operated. But despite what The New York Times has described as his "well documented" proclivity for flashing women, he also seemed to be pretty good at running a studio — at least for most of his career.

One particular aspect of his personality that helped in that regard was his attention to detail, as described in Scott Eyman's 2021 book "20th Century Fox -- Darryl F.

One could probably write a fairly substantial tome on the history of mustaches in Hollywood. Nothing seems to court controversy in the film industry quite like a hirsute upper lip. Modern audiences will no doubt jump to Henry Cavill's magnificent "Mission: Impossible — Fallout" 'tache, which received a touching obituary on this very site back in 2018 after Cavill shaved it off. That particularly controversial cookie duster caused no shortage of issues for Joss Whedon and his reshoots of "Justice League," which infamously included a shot of Cavill with a shoddily-rendered, CGI bald upper lip. But that's just the latest mustache-related debacle to befall Hollywood.

Back in 1978, Gene Hackman had to be duped into shaving his mustache for "Superman," by a particularly crafty Richard Donner. Then, in the 90s, Kurt Russell went over-the-top with his "Tombstone" mustache, prompting director George P. Cosmatos to negotiate with the actor over the exact,...

The 1970 war epic "Tora! Tora! Tora!" takes place from August 1939 to December 1941, dramatizing the wartime events that led up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The film alternately follows the American and the Japanese military during the same 29-month period, with the American sequences directed by Richard Fleischer and the Japanese sequences directed by Kinji Fukusaku (of "Battle Royale" fame) and Toshiro Masuda. 20th Century Fox ultra-producer Darryl F. Zanuck conceived of the project, as he wanted to give a proper telling of both sides of Pearl Harbor while also wanting to partially exonerate the American military (which had previously been blamed for its inability to prevent the attack).

Planning and shooting "Tora!" took an amazingly long amount of time. Pre-production wrangling lasted about three years, with principal photography taking an entire eight months. To make sure the Japanese segments would be handled by a master, Fox hired Akira Kurosawa to co-direct.

John Wayne, who died of cancer in 1979, wasn't really known for his gentleness or commitment to open-minded, multicultural thinking. Every few years, the internet rediscovers Wayne's infamously racist, misogynist 1971 Playboy Magazine interview, and are offended afresh. He used the three-letter F-word to describe the characters in "Midnight Cowboy," calling it "perverted," before actually saying out loud  "I believe in white supremacy." He also ranted about how in the heyday of his career, there were more white people in movies. 

This interview didn't really expose anything the public didn't already know about Wayne, a man who used antisemitic slurs when talking to Richard Nixon, and who allegedly tried to storm the stage at the 1973 Academy Awards to interrupt Sacheen Littlefeather's speech about how Westerns hurt the public's perception of Native Americans. One can only imagine what Wayne would have thought of Haysi Fantayzee's bawdy 1982 single "John Wayne is Big Leggy.

Throughout the 1950s, big-budget musicals were de rigueur for Hollywood, and there was a sudden glut of epics that sported gigantic budgets, recognizable stars, and no small amount of studio hype. Such films were exhibited as touring roadshow productions, which was a great way for films to make fistfuls of cash. Roadshow epics were also, it should be noted, a concerted ploy by studios to distract audiences from the rising threat of television. Studios felt the need to invest a lot of money into musicals and epics, hoping the massive productions could draw people into theaters and keep the industry afloat.

One might logically predict, however, that Hollywood tried to ride the trend of epics for a little longer than was healthy, and foolish overspending eventually became common. The age of the "roadshow epic" pretty much came to a close with the release of the notorious bomb "Cleopatra" in 1963. 

But then,...

The Hollywood Blacklist ruined dozens of lives. United States-based artists who were sympathetic to, or even curious about, communism were demonized as traitors to their country and, due to hysterical pressure from The House Committee on Un-American Activities (aka Huac), banned from working in the industry. Disgraced and unemployed, blacklisted individuals were forced to leave the country if they wanted to continue working or, if they could not afford to relocate, find a line of work where being an alleged communist wasn't frowned upon. This latter option was, of course, dismally unlikely. The mental and financial burden of being completely shunned from one's industry was so unbearable that it led actor Philip Loeb to die by suicide.

This put Hollywood at war against itself. Anyone suspected of having communist ties was pressured to come clean and, if they wanted to continue working, name names (a cowardly practice savaged by films...

The 1962 war epic "The Longest Day" starred the infamously brusque John Wayne as Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin H. Vandervoort, a real-life American soldier who was present for the titular "day," aka D-Day. Wayne was 55 at the time of filming, however, making him a full 28 years older than Vandervoort was on June 6, 1944. Wayne was still a major star, though, so the filmmakers simply had to ignore the massive age gap.

The studios also had to begrudgingly pay Wayne a massive $250,000 for his work, which was 10 times larger than most of the film's other stars. It seems that Wayne sought such a high salary not because of greed or ego, but out of spite. Wayne, you see, had a beef with 20th Century Fox executive Daryl F. Zanuck, and the actor wanted to actively butt heads with the CEO. It wasn't that Wayne wanted the money, he just wanted to make sure that Zanuck didn't have it.

The studio once known as 20th Century Fox is a younger entity than the other major Hollywood Studios. It was founded in 1935 out of the ashes of Fox Film, compared to Warner Bros (1923), Universal Pictures (1912), Paramount Pictures (1912), Columbia Pictures (1923), and Disney (1923) — the latter being the new parent company of 20th Century Studios.

Still, Fox waited only seven years to take home the top prize at the Oscars. At the 14th Academy Awards, held in 1942, Fox's film "How Green Was My Valley" won Best Picture, presented to Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck. That wasn't the only prize "Valley" won that night: it also got Best Director (John Ford), Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp), Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Arthur Miller), and finally Best Art Direction -- Interior Decoration, Black-and-White.

One of the films that "Valley" beat that night was "Citizen Kane" (which got only Best Original Screenplay for director Orson Welles and his co-writer Herman J.

Much has been made about the smoky sexiness of Luca Guadagnino's "Challengers," notably the brief threesome scene near the beginning of the movie. While the scene is plenty sexy, it constitutes the bulk of the on-screen physicality of "Challengers," and it is, perhaps disappointingly, relegated to about 90 seconds of tongue kissing; Guadagnino's film is not the bisexual throuple film the ad campaign would have you believe it is. 

Instead, it's a soapy, recognizably classical love triangle about three bitter souls who were never able to get over that fateful make-out session. The three players involved were promising tennis champions in high school. There's Tashi (Zendaya), the hotshot celebrity that is already being courted by marketers. There's Patrick (Josh O'Connor), the rough-hewn, stubble-encrusted stud. And there's Art (Mike Faist), the talented jokester whose magic shell quickly hardens into a crunchy layer of jealousy. "Challengers" follows them, via flashbacks, through their...

The Hollywood Reporter thanks the following 322 members of the global film community — listed alphabetically — for taking the time to cast a ballot to help us determine the 100 greatest film books of all time.

Seth Abramovitch

The Hollywood Reporter journalist/It Happened in Hollywood podcast host

Jo Addy

Soho House group film and entertainment director

Casey Affleck

Oscar-winning actor

Rutanya Alda

Author/actress

Stephanie Allain

Filmmaker

Victoria Alonso

Filmmaker/executive

Tony Angellotti

Publicist

Bonnie Arnold

Filmmaker/executive

Miguel Arteta

Filmmaker

Chris Auer

Filmmaker/film professor

John Badham

Filmmaker/film professor

Amy Baer

Executive

Matt Baer

Filmmaker

Lindsey Bahr

Journalist

Ramin Bahrani

Oscar-nominated filmmaker

Cameron Bailey

Toronto International Film Festival CEO/former film critic

John Bailey

Cinematographer/former Academy president

Bela Bajaria

Executive

Sean Baker

Filmmaker

Alec Baldwin

Oscar-nominated actor/author

Tino Balio

Author/film professor

Jeffrey Barbakow

Executive

Michael Barker

Executive

Mike Barnes

The Hollywood Reporter journalist

Jeanine Basinger

Author/film...

A few of the industry heavyweights who cast ballots to help determine The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the 100 greatest film books of all time agreed to share a few words with THR about a film book that they especially treasure.

Below, you can read actor Alec Baldwin gush about his “favorite show business memoir,” marketing exec Terry Press explain why she owns three copies of “the only book dedicated to one of the most iconic screen teams,” studio chief Tom Rothman reveal which how-to book he gives to every young executive who comes to work for him and actor Robert Wagner on the biography of an oft-caricatured golden age studio mogul that actually captures the “vulnerable human being” who met some 70 years ago.

Alec Baldwin on By Myself, by Lauren Bacall By Myself

“I had always admired Lauren Bacall as an actress throughout her career, beginning as a young...

The demon Valak, aka The Nun, is among the most infamous faces in "The Conjuring" universe. Aside from perhaps the doll Annabelle, Valak's image looms over the franchise more than any other. According to a lawsuit put forth by actress Bonnie Aarons (via The Hollywood Reporter), who played the character in "The Conjuring 2," "The Nun," and "The Nun 2," the character shows up on official merch a lot, too. Now, Aarons is asking for a cut of royalties she says she's owed, alleging via a suit obtained by THR that Warner Bros. has been exploiting her "talent, creativity, and likeness."

"The Princess Diaries" and "Mulholland Drive" actress is reportedly suing Warner Bros, New Line Cinema, and Scope Productions for breach of contract, citing a clause in her contract that ensured her a "pro-rata share" on all merch with her likeness, which her suit alleges has included "toys, dolls, decorations,...

The Academy Awards aren't just a ceremony where movie stars and filmmakers get little gold statues that honor their work. Over the vast 94-year history of the Oscars, the Academy Awards have taken on a rarefied air. They're a huge annual event that celebrates an industry that gives people entertainment, inspiration, and hope. Those statues that say things like "Best Picture" have become Hollywood's most coveted items, and symbols of greatness within a powerful, influential art form.

Not only that, but the Academy Awards drive so much of the conversation about cinema, with Oscar buzz dominating publications and periodicals for the last several months of each year, and the first several months of the next year. By the time the ceremony finally takes place and the Oscars are handed out, film festivals like Sundance have already got the buzz rolling for the next year's Academy Awards, and the process starts all over again.

One of the key scenes in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven was inspired by John Wayne's final movie, The Shootist. Eastwood made his name on the big screen with Westerns like the Dollars movie trilogy, but he largely stepped away from the genre in the late 1970s. Unforgiven was a screenplay he sat on for nearly a decade, as he felt it could be his perfect last statement on the genre and the myth of the Old West. Unforgiven was released in 1992 and not only did it win Best Picture and Best Director at the 65th Academy Awards, but it's also considered one of the finest Westerns ever produced.

John Wayne - a vet of 80 Westerns from Hollywood's "Golden Age" - made little secret of his dislike of Eastwood's darker style of Western. His last performance came with 1976's The Shootist, where he played a legendary gunfighter dying of cancer.

When someone makes the misguided assertion that John Wayne had no range or, worse, was actually a bad actor, you can be sure they've never seen "The Searchers," "Red River" or "True Grit." They most certainly haven't seen "She Wore a Red Ribbon," the conclusion to John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" which boasts what might very well be the finest performance of The Duke's career.

To be fair, Ford, Wayne's most trusted collaborator, wasn't entirely sold on Wayne's potential beyond his star power until he saw Howard Hawks' "Red River" in 1948. Upon seeing Hawks' Western, Ford reportedly exclaimed, "I didn't know the big son of a b**** could act." While it's worth noting that Ford had a penchant for razzing his frequent leading man, Wayne's portrayal of rancher Thomas Dunson is surprisingly shaded. Dunson is a hard, unyielding man at the outset, but an arduous cattle drive compounded by...

It's something of a cliche and a bit of a lie when actors say they do their own stunts. If you want to know what that really looks like, watch the end credits of any film Jackie Chan made in his Hong Kong prime. You'll see him break various extremities and get carried out on a stretcher more than once. The only Hollywood star with that kind of daredevil spirit working today is Tom Cruise, who seems determined to keep making Mission: Impossible movies well into his autumn years or die trying.

John Wayne was an ornery, prideful cuss who wanted to look like an authentic badass on the big screen, but he knew when to defer to his longtime stunt double Chuck Roberson. This was a practical matter as much as anything. If The Duke took a nasty spill, production could be shut down for months, which was anathema...

It's possible that the list of motion picture artists who haven't won competitive Academy Awards might be more prestigious than those who have. Legends such as Stanley Kubrick, Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardner, Montgomery Clift, and Yasujirō Ozu were snubbed throughout their brilliant careers. So when John Wayne, perhaps the most consistently popular star of his generation, attended the Oscars ceremony at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on the evening of April 7, 1970, he wasn't exactly hopeful.

There were numerous reasons for Wayne's pessimism. At the age of 61, he was up against three of the hottest young actors in Hollywood and a celebrated thespian who'd been denied five times previously (Richard Burton for "Anne of a Thousand Days"). Wayne was also coming off arguably the worst film he'd ever make in "The Green Berets," which earned critical opprobrium for being both lousy and ludicrously supportive of the Vietnam War.

But Wayne had rebounded splendidly with "True Grit,...

John Wayne was one of the most dependable stars in Hollywood when he formed Wayne/Fellows Productions with producer Robert Fellows in 1952. When Fellows parted ways with the star a few years later, Wayne changed the company's name to Batjac Productions (a misspelled reference to the Batjak trading company in Edward Ludwig's "Wake of the Red Witch"). Given that just about every Wayne film was a guaranteed money maker, it was smart business to ensure he had a personal financial stake in the movies he top-lined.

Still, Wayne listened to offers for films developed outside of Batjac (particularly those from his longtime collaborators John Ford and Howard Hawks). This meant Mike couldn't just find any old script and expect his dad to make the movie. He had to be diligent about locating projects of quality, or the old man might just give him the heave-ho.

A Company As Successful...

Henry Hathaway's "True Grit" went before cameras at a particularly fraught moment in United States history. Richard Nixon had been elected President by campaigning on a racially tinged "law and order" platform. The Vietnam War was still raging despite 39 approval from the American public, sparking massive protests in cities and on college campuses all over the country. This unrest was reflected in the pop culture of the period, particularly in film. The nation's youth were inspired by the maverick works of Dennis Hopper ("Easy Rider"), Robert Downey Sr. ("Putney Swope"), and George A. Romero ("Night of the Living Dead). They craved edginess and experimentation, and rejected the stodgy conservatism of John Wayne.

Hathaway was well aware of this contentious climate when he began shooting the slightly out-of-character Wayne Western. The 71-year-old filmmaker had worked with The Duke many times throughout his career, and didn't want anyone to rile his cantankerous star.

John Wayne was in perhaps the biggest creative rut of his career in 1969. He'd just made the worst film of his career outside of "The Conqueror" in "The Green Berets," and with the advent of the New Hollywood revolution, was growing culturally irrelevant. His best collaborators, John Ford and Howard Hawks, were either fully retired or on their way out. Wayne could keep making formulaic Westerns with the hacks who let him call the shots on set, but the returns would be ever diminishing. If he wanted to matter in the film industry again, he had to take a risk.

Charles Portis' novel "True Grit," about a young girl who hires an alcoholic U.S. Marshal to hunt down the men who killed her father, offered the 62-year-old Wayne the perfect opportunity to tweak his image. The lawman role of Rooster Cogburn would allow The Duke to show off his...

John Wayne had been working steadily in movies for over 30 years when principal photography wrapped on Howard Hawkes' "Rio Bravo" in 1958, and the miles were beginning to wear on the screen legend. At the age of 52, retirement was out of the question. He'd launched Batjac Productions only six years prior, and had his heart set on at long last bringing his labor of love, "The Alamo," to life.

If The Duke had his druthers, this is the moment in his career where he would've eased off on the gas a tad and began to experience more of life outside of a film set. In terms of box office success, he'd more than earned it. Why did he have to keep knocking out two or three movies a year like he still had something to prove?

There was a reason, and it's one that keeps many celebrities working their tails off well beyond their primes.

Angie Dickinson once said of Jack L. Warner, "Jack was funny. He was funny because he wasn't funny, but he was always trying to be funny, and that struck me as funny."

Dickinson's "Rio Bravo" co-star, John Wayne, was far from enamored of Warner's funniness, particularly as it pertained to business. Warner was an early practitioner of "Hollywood accounting," which is where the studio shifts the earnings from its hits to make money-losing films appear profitable. There are many examples, but the best known arose out of Buchwald v. Paramount, wherein the company attempted to avoid compensating the writer (whose original story had been stolen by the filmmakers) by claiming the film – which grossed 289 million worldwide on a 36 million budget – failed to turn a profit.

In Hollywood, it's sadly common for studios to screw writers out of money. When it comes to a major movie star like Wayne, however,...

Ask people to describe John Wayne, and you're most likely to hear them talk about his larger-than-life swagger and taciturn nature. While it's wrong to say The Duke generally played himself in every film, he did adjust each character's dialogue and behavior to fit within his carefully crafted persona. Audiences filled theaters to see John Wayne be, to some recognizable degree, John Wayne, and he was a savvy enough entertainer to know that they didn't want to see him stretch (which he learned when he played Genghis Khan in the notorious stinker "The Conquerer").

Wayne was initially fine with this arrangement, but according to Scott Eyman's "John Wayne: The Life and Legend," as his career wore on, he began to grouse that he was "the hub of the wheel" around which an array of far more colorful characters spun for our enjoyment. Moviegoers might've loved his steadiness, but he...

All leading men are not created equal. This is especially true when it comes to playing a love scene. Clark Gable was a man of action; when he lavished his affections on a woman, he knew they would be reciprocated. Cary Grant's approach was more playful; he used banter as foreplay, and let the woman decide when to take their sparring to the bedroom.

And then there was John Wayne. He was trickier. The Western superstar was adored primarily for his unruffled nature. He was the toughest guy in every scene, and we never truly believed his opponent could lick him or outdraw him. Romance was, at best, a secondary concern for him, but when a woman had her mind set on wooing him, he didn't exactly shoo them away. He might've been stolid, but he wasn't made entirely out of stone.

John Wayne Needs A Take-Charge Woman

Howard Hawks,...

Hollywood history is littered with "what ifs." Some are massive ("What if Tom Selleck hadn't been committed to 'Magnum P.I.' and signed on to play Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"), some are tragic ("What if Bruce Lee hadn't died at the moment he'd become a movie star in the U.S.") and some are just flat-out silly ("What if O.J. Simpson had played The Terminator"). But they're fascinating to consider in an alternate timeline sense.

One "what if" that falls in the middle of the spectrum in terms of significance is the casting of Michael McCandles in George Sherman's "Big Jake." No one talks about this 1971 John Wayne Western much anymore, largely because it's a fairly straightforward genre effort churned out in the wake of The Duke's 1969 Best Actor win for "True Grit." It was made to turn a tidy profit by appealing to Wayne's die-hard fans,...

John Wayne only received credit for directing two films throughout his 50-year career, but his fingerprints are all over many of his star vehicles. Having cut his teeth during the silent era under the tutelage of masters like John Ford, King Vidor, and Michael Curtiz, Wayne became an expert in the manufacture of movies. He understood camera placement, framing, how long to hold onto a shot, and when to cut. Though it was Ford who made him a star with 1939's landmark Western "Stagecoach," Wayne is as responsible for burnishing his big-screen image as any of his behind-the-scenes collaborators.

In Scott Eyman's biography "John Wayne: The Life and Legend," the author reveals that The Duke's experience knocking out programmers for Republic Pictures taught him that the difference between a B movie and an A movie was the "difference ... between a quick punch to the jaw and the expression on a face.

After a brief critical and commercial revival kicked off by his Oscar-winning turn in 1969's "True Grit," John Wayne fell back into the creative slump that had dogged him throughout much of the previous decade. In 1973, the star slogged through a couple of listless Westerns in "The Train Robbers" and "Cahill, United States Marshal." They were Old Hollywood tripe in an age of New Hollywood innovation. A few years prior, Wayne foolishly passed on a script about a loose-cannon cop called "Dirty Harry," which wound up serving as Clint Eastwood's transition from Spaghetti Westerns to Hollywood action flicks. It was the late-career break Wayne needed, but his taste was too old-fashioned to identify a delectable new flavor of film.

Wayne eventually found a pale imitation of "Dirty Harry" in "McQ," which, if nothing else, flaunts The Duke wielding a newfangled Mac-10 machine gun. It's mediocre, but at the time...

By the end of the 1940s, John Wayne was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, and could thus afford to be picky about his collaborators. He had a rotating company of actors and a number of preferred directors, but from 1947 onward there was one screenwriter he valued above all others.

If you're not a Wayne devotee, you're probably unfamiliar with the work of James Edward Grant. He was an Irish-American writer who, early in his career, rose quickly through the ranks of Chicago journalists during the 1920s. At the age of 21, he was covering the Windy City's ultra-violent organized crime scene via a column titled "It's a Racket." He fired off essays and stories for top publications like The Saturday Evening Post, but wasn't above churning out pulp yarns for low-aiming magazines like Detective Fiction Weekly. Grant fit the cliche of the prolific newspaperman to a T; he was a hard-drinking,...

There is no more precarious moment in a movie star's career than the day they wake up, flush with box office success, and declare, "What I'd really like to do is direct!" Slightly less dangerous is a star's inclination to produce –- i.e., to diversify their career by generating material that reflects their taste or broadens their brand.

Two years after the end of World War II, John Wayne, who'd sat out the civilization-saving conflict while colleagues like James Stewart and Henry Fonda served, realized he was the biggest star in Hollywood and ought to start calling his own shots. Rather than direct, he found a quaint Western called "Angel and the Badman" written by James Edward Grant, in which a Quaker woman nurses a wounded gunfighter back to health. For an actor who'd made his name as a kickass, take-charge hero in Westerns and war movies, this was an oddly anti-violent movie.

When producer Mike Frankovich set out to make "The Shootist," he did not initially pursue John Wayne for the role of J.B. Brooks, a lawman-turned-gunfighter who discovers he is dying from cancer. Given the elegiac tone of Glendon Swarthout's novel, and Wayne's real-life battle with cancer, you'd think he would've been at the top of Frankovich's list. Alas, Wayne's health was in steep decline; he'd struggled through the shoot of 1975's "Rooster Cogburn," and was likely not up to the task of one last leading-man part. But when top Hollywood stars like Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, George C. Scott, and Gene Hackman passed on the project, the universe seemed to be telling the producer there was only one man for this particular job.

Frankovich finally caved and offered the part to Wayne, who not only accepted but proved to be a boon to the film's casting prospects.

The conventional wisdom on John Wayne's acting abilities holds that he was a severely limited performer who leaned heavily into his persona to the point of self-parody. Moviegoers who didn't grow up watching his movies (or have parents who grew up watching his movies) tend to view him as a relic of a blessedly bygone era at best or a rampaging racist who made movies that whitewashed the genocidal exercise of Westward Expansion. They basically have no use for him at all.

Everyone has their own threshold for separating the art from the artist, but I think holding his personal views against A-class Westerns that told a more complicated tale than the average B oater is a mistake. Furthermore, I'd argue that there was nuance to his swagger. Wayne didn't become the biggest movie star of the '40s and '50s because he stood for conservative American values.

Howard Hughes's deliriously ahistorical "The Outlaw" is probably best known for star Jane Russell's brassiere, which the director painstakingly designed to accentuate her 38Dd bosom. Never mind that Russell claimed she wore it all of a few minutes, loathed the fit, and padded her own bra the old-fashioned way; the undergarment is still on display in a Hollywood museum -- the, er, stuff of showbiz legend.

The film itself is an agreeably campy Western. Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) rides into Lincoln, New Mexico looking to recover his stolen horses. He tells his friend Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell) that Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel) is the thief, which sets up a not-terribly-understated homoerotic love triangle. It's a goofy movie that should be a lot more fun than it is, but its script by Jules Furthman boasts some nifty flourishes, one of which finds the sharp-shooting Holliday trying to goad...

Hollywood in the early 1970s was unkind to many of the industry's surviving golden-age legends. The smartest of the bunch had either retired, moved to television, or segued to supporting roles in disaster films. Unlike our current era, there wasn't much nostalgia for the good old days. The '50s and '60s were a time of social upheaval during which Black Americans struggled mightily to fight and win basic civil rights. Meanwhile, the Vietnam War was only getting bloodier. People were not in the market for old-fashioned entertainment. They wanted edgier, angrier movies. Those who wanted more of the same could stay home and watch the same when it reran on the afternoon movie.

Where did this leave John Wayne, the Western icon who'd become the big-screen personification of everything that was right (morally and politically) about America at the time? After scoring his first Best Actor Oscar as the alcoholic U.

The 20-year-long persistence of the superhero genre in contemporary blockbuster cinema has cause many pundits to draw a genre parallel between comic book movies and Westerns. In 2015, the Guardian published an essay comparing the two cinematic trends, largely as a predictor as to when the superhero film would finally cease its continued ascendency. That same year, Steven Spielberg compared the genres, once again using the moribund Western as an indicator of the ephemerality of any genre. Seven years since then, superhero movies have churned out several enormous hits, including several of the biggest box office bonanzas of all time. In 2022, however, the entertainment landscape has changed a lot, companies are merging into weird, gross entities, and high-profile superhero projects now stand the chance of being canceled. Pundits have been predicting it for years, but superhero movies may finally be on the downhill slope. Only time will tell. 

"The Train Robbers,...

Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder had a truly incredible 1974. It is rare enough that someone makes a comedy that stands the test of time as one of the greatest films in history, regardless of genre classification. They made two. Amazingly, "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein" were both released in the same year, and I would consider "Young Frankenstein" to be the funniest film ever made, with "Blazing Saddles" not too far behind it. These two films, along with Brooks and Wilder's 1968 Oscar-winning breakout "The Producers," show two comedy kindred spirits operating at a high level. Each one brings out the best in each other, and I wish it didn't stop with just those three movies.

Well, it was almost just two movies. For as simpatico as those two comic geniuses were at the time, Gene Wilder was not originally going to play The Waco Kid (known to his friends as Jim). In fact,...

The year was 1976, and John Wayne was cheesed but good at King Kong.

The gargantuan ape with a fatal penchant for blonde starlets was all the rage at Paramount, and for good reason. The studio had sunk 24 million (equivalent to 124 million in 2022) into the John Guillermin-directed remake, and desperately needed it to hit the box-office jackpot when it opened in December. Though studios have huge marketing departments that, when professionally run, know how to manage multiple releases at once, Wayne felt the film that was to be his big-screen swan song, "The Shootist," was getting ignored by Paramount's advertising team. And it was all because of that big, stupid monkey.

The Duke Vs. King Kong

According to Scott Eyman's "John Wayne: The Life and the Legend," Wayne groused to his former secretary and then present companion Pat Stacy, "Those people are putting all their damn time into King Kong.

Alfred Hitchcock is behind several decades' worth of celebrated films, but some of the English director's best works were adaptations of stage plays. "Dial M For Murder" was one such adaptation, based on Frederick Knott's Broadway hit concerning an affair, a murder plot, and the trial that followed. Meticulously plotted and visually sparse, the thriller has one of the most satisfying endings of any of Hitchcock's films.

"Dial M For Murder" came to him from one of his previous players. "Notorious" star Cary Grant brought the project to the filmmaker with ambitions to play a hired killer, an appealing role after the suave menace he showed years earlier in Hitchcock's "Suspicion." At the time, Hitchcock was with Warner Bros., who paid thousands of British pounds for the film rights from filmmaker Alexander Korda (who had previously acquired the rights for much cheaper). After previously scrapping a feature adaptation...

Some friendships are so iconic that they can inspire a whole book's worth of retelling. That's the case with James Stewart and Henry Fonda: "Hank and Jim," a 2017 book by Scott Eyman, chronicles the lifelong friendship of these two Hollywood legends.

In some ways, the two were quite similar: despite their movie star status, they carried themselves with Midwestern modesty. In other ways, they were very different: Stewart was a Republican hawk and Fonda a New Deal Democrat. Despite this, they remained friends for almost five decades until Fonda's death in 1982. In fact, their...

The post How Broadway Made James Stewart and Henry Fonda Lifelong Friends appeared first on /Film.

Review By Lee Pfeiffer

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20th Century-Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio by Scott Eyman (Running Press/Turner Classic Movies) $28, 304 pages, Illustrated (Colour & B&w), Hardback, Isbn ‎978-0762470938

Scott Eyman has authored high profile biographies of numerous screen legends including John Wayne, James Stewart, John Ford, Louis B. Mayer and Cary Grant. Now, Eyman sets out to examine the career of another larger-than-life Hollywood icon, Darryl F. Zanuck. There’s plenty of fertile ground to examine, too, as the mercurial producer had a long, dramatic career that could have formed the basis of one of his films. He saved the fledgling Fox film corporation early in his career then became the tyrannical head of its subsequent incarnation, 20th-Century Fox. Over the decades, Zanuck would be feared and despised, rarely liked, but always respected as his early knack for creating hits was legendary.

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