John Wayne and Clint Eastwood are arguably the two biggest western movie stars, but they made very different westerns and had very strong opinions about each other’s films. Throughout Hollywood’s storied history with the western, plenty of iconic actors have put their stamp on the genre – Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Lee Van Cleef, Glenn Ford, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, the list goes on – but Wayne and Eastwood are the two actors that defined the genre. And not only that, they each defined completely different eras of the genre.
Like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger or Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel, Wayne and Eastwood had one of the most famous celebrity feuds in Hollywood history. But Wayne and Eastwood’s feud wasn’t based on any personal differences; it was based on their ideological differences and their vastly dissimilar approaches to the Western genre. Wayne and Eastwood both played gunslinging cowboys in classic Westerns, but their movies couldn’t have been more different in their tone, style, and above all, morality.
John Wayne’s Westerns Had More Traditional American Heroes & Clearer Morals
Wayne’s View Of Good Versus Evil Was Very Black-And-White
Wayne’s Western movies have straightforward, clear-cut morals and traditional American heroes. They have a very black-and-white view of good versus evil; there are heroes who always do the right thing and never falter, and villains who do nothing but wrong and need to be defeated for the greater good. Wayne’s characters never dip into a moral gray area; they steadfastly protect the law and their actions are always just. In John Ford’s Stagecoach, the Native Americans attacking the coach are controversially depicted as cold-blooded savages, while Wayne’s “Ringo Kid” is depicted as the noble hero who saves the day.
Having been disgusted by the cowardice shown by Gary Cooper in High Noon, which he considered to be un-American, Wayne made a whole movie in response. In Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo, Wayne plays a small-town sheriff who arrests a local crook, who informs him that his gang is on their way to break him out. Unlike Cooper in High Noon, Wayne doesn’t spend the rest of Rio Bravo’s runtime running scared, desperately asking the townspeople for help; he spends the movie kicking back, getting to know his new deputies, and awaiting the gang’s arrival.
Wayne’s characters never dip into a moral gray area; they steadfastly protect the law and their actions are always just.
Wayne occasionally experimented with some darker stories and more ethically ambiguous characters. In The Searchers, Wayne plays a war veteran who struggles to adjust to civilian life post-war and relentlessly pursues his kidnapped niece, who he finds doesn’t even want to be rescued. In True Grit, he plays an alcoholic U.S. Marshal who reluctantly teams up with a young woman to find her father’s killer. But in these darker movies, Wayne is still portrayed as the hero who’s in the moral right. Wayne’s movies defined the traditional good-versus-evil Westerns of Classical Hollywood.
Clint Eastwood’s Westerns Took Them In A More Complex, Darker Direction
Eastwood Played Morally Ambiguous Antiheroes In Darker, Grittier Movies
Eastwood’s Westerns, on the other hand, took the genre in a more morally complex direction. Eastwood’s Westerns were a lot darker and grittier than Wayne’s, and he often played antiheroes with deeply unlikable qualities. In Eastwood’s Western movies, the lines between good and bad and right and wrong were a little more blurred than in Wayne’s. In Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy, Eastwood plays “The Man with No Name,” whose morality is just as unclear as his name. He pits two warring gangs against each other to liberate a town, but he’s also a cold-hearted bounty hunter who kills for money.
In a traditional revenge Western, the hero gets his revenge and rides off into the sunset. In the Wayne-starring The Dawn Rider, Wayne avenges his father, it magically makes him feel better, and he marries the love of his life. But revenge is a lot messier than that, and Eastwood’s grimmer revenge westerns reflect that. In The Outlaw Josey Wales, as Eastwood seeks vengeance for the death of his family, it gradually turns him into a murderous monster, feared across the land. Eastwood’s Westerns were a lot more complex than Wayne’s, and reflected a more complex world in their time.
John Wayne & Clint Eastwood Defined Different Eras Of The Western Genre
Wayne Defined The Traditional Western, But Eastwood Defined Spaghetti & Revisionist Westerns
Wayne and Eastwood each epitomize a different era of the Western. The genre has a very long history that predates them – going back to the 1899 British short Kidnapping by Indians – and there’s some overlap between Wayne’s Western career and Eastwood’s. But Wayne’s era and Eastwood’s era can be seen as distinct chapters in the history of the Western genre, and their movies perfectly embody what Westerns were doing at that time. From The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to How the West Was Won, Wayne’s Westerns embodied the sprawling epics and clear-cut ethics of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
On the other hand, Eastwood’s Westerns embodied the ambiguous ethics and experimental approach of the American New Wave. He scored his first starring role in the seminal Italian spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, which introduced a darker, more surreal vision of the Old West. Eastwood brought that approach back to Hollywood with grisly anti-Westerns like Hang ‘Em High, High Plains Drifter, and arguably his masterpiece, Unforgiven. Eastwood upended the tropes that Wayne pioneered to spearhead the revisionist Western.
What John Wayne Has Said About Clint Eastwood’s Westerns
Wayne Was Not A Fan Of Eastwood’s Movies
Wayne was not a fan of Eastwood’s Westerns. In 1973, Eastwood directed and starred in High Plains Drifter, a very violent Western that borders on supernatural horror when a demonic spirit rolls into town. Wayne despised High Plains Drifter so much that he wrote Eastwood a letter about it. Wayne felt that Western movies should be about the pioneer experience and settling in the West, and he found High Plains Drifter’s paranormal storyline to be an insult to that. Wayne felt the movie glorified violence; Eastwood felt that Wayne simply didn’t understand it because he came from a different generation.
What Clint Eastwood Has Said About John Wayne’s Westerns
Eastwood Was Much Kinder To Wayne’s Westerns
Despite the fact that Wayne hated Eastwood’s movies, Eastwood was an admirer of Wayne’s. Eastwood believes that Wayne gave his best performances in two classic Westerns: 1948’s Red River and 1956’s The Searchers. According to Eastwood, Wayne’s performance in The Searchers “proved he wasn’t just a movie star, but a really good actor.” It’s no surprise that Eastwood admires The Searchers so much; it’s the closest Wayne came to making one of Eastwood’s dark, gritty revisionist Westerns. John Wayne might have hated Clint Eastwood’s Westerns, but Eastwood was a big fan of Wayne’s.