When it comes to one particular film genre, John Wayne was the most famous movie star of them all, and unsurprisingly a 15-year-old American Film Institute poll named his 1956 masterpiece the greatest Western ever made. While John Wayne made some great movies that are not Westerns, the actor is mostly known for playing cowboys in the quintessentially American genre. His first big movie role was in a failed 1930 Western titled The Big Trail, and his star-making success came by the end of the decade in another movie considered by AFI among the best of the genre. In total, John Wayne starred in 80 Westerns throughout his Hollywood career.
Among the 20 best John Wayne movies, 16 of them are Westerns, and nine of those are in the top 10. One specific Western starring John Wayne lands in the number one spot on that list and most others focused on the actor and the genre. In fact, this classic Western even ranks high on many critics’ and filmmakers’ lists of the best movies of all time, of any kind. In 2008, AFI conducted a poll of “1,500 leaders in the creative community,” resulting in 10 top 10 lists highlighting the best movies of various film genres. One of these lists named this John Wayne movie as the greatest Western.
AFI’s 2008 List Names The Searchers As The Greatest Western Movie Of All Time
According to the AFI’s “10 Top 10,” the greatest Western of all time is The Searchers, starring John Wayne and directed by John Ford. To come to the results of this list of the best Westerns, the AFI provided a group of filmmakers, artists, critics, and historians with many preselected titles to choose from, and they voted The Searchers their number-one pick. Other lists named Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey the greatest sci-fi movie and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the best animated film. The genres involved in the list of lists included romantic comedy, fantasy, sports, gangster, mystery, courtroom drama, and epic.
In The Searchers, John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a Civil War veteran reunited with his brother, Aaron, after many years away. Shortly into the film, though, Aaron’s home is destroyed, he and his wife and son are killed, and his daughters are kidnapped by Comanches. The now-controversial plot follows Ethan on a quest to find the two girls and rescue them from the vilified Indigenous Americans, but his mission becomes complicated years into his search after learning that the older daughter has assimilated and identifies as Comanche. While its story and characters are problematic, The Searchers’ filmmaking craft and artistry can’t be denied as being deserving of AFI’s recognition.
John Wayne Starred In 3 Of AFI’s Top 10 Western Movies
Proving his status as the genre’s greatest star, John Wayne leads three of the titles on AFI’s top 10 list of the best Westerns. In addition to The Searchers landing in the number-one spot, another of Wayne’s collaborations with John Ford, 1939’s Stagecoach, ranked number nine while the 1948 Howard Hawks-helmed classic Red River starring Wayne and Montgomery Clift placed fifth. Some fans would rank even these three films differently, while other great John Wayne Westerns, namely Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the original True Grit, might seem surprisingly excluded. Perhaps even more shocking, though, is that AFI’s list only spotlights one of Clint Eastwood’s Westerns: Unforgiven.