John Wayne’s long-awaited sequel to True Grit, 1975’s Rooster Cogburn, seemed to have everything going for it — including an iconic co-star for Wayne — but it was still, unfortunately, a failure. Released in 1969, True Grit earned Wayne his one and only Academy Award for Best Actor. He’d previously been nominated for Sands of Iwo Jima in 1949, but he didn’t win until he donned an eyepatch to play U.S. Marshal Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn in True Grit. Based on Charles Portis’ novel, True Grit revolves around a teenage girl named Mattie Ross, who recruits Cogburn to find her father’s killer.
True Grit marked a drastic tonal departure for Wayne. He’d made his name playing straightforward heroes with clear-cut morals who spring into action at a moment’s notice to bring the bad guys to justice. But in True Grit, he gives a much darker, more grizzled, more morally ambiguous performance. Cogburn is reluctant to help Mattie, he drinks too much, and he’s grown disillusioned with fighting crime in an unfair world. True Grit was one of the biggest hits of Wayne’s career, both critically and commercially, and it remains a beloved classic, but the sequel couldn’t recapture that magic.
Rooster Cogburn Brought Together Two Hollywood Legends For The First Time
The True Grit Sequel United John Wayne With Katharine Hepburn
Six years after True Grit became a big success, Wayne reprised his iconic role in a sequel called Rooster Cogburn, the only sequel of Wayne’s career. In the sequel, Cogburn is stripped of his badge due to his drinking problem and his history of arrests that end in bloodshed. He’s given a shot at redemption when he’s tasked with going after a band of bank robbers who have stolen a wagon shipment of nitroglycerin. This time, Cogburn is joined by an older, unmarried woman whose father was killed by the gang: Miss Eula Goodnight, played by Katharine Hepburn.
This time, Cogburn is joined by an older, unmarried woman whose father was killed by the gang: Miss Eula Goodnight, played by Katharine Hepburn.
Although Wayne and Hepburn were the same age — both born in 1907, just a couple of weeks apart — and they came up in Hollywood around the same time, they’d never appeared in a movie together. By the time they co-starred in Rooster Cogburn, they were two of the biggest movie stars in the world. The fact that they’d never been in the same movie can partly be attributed to their very different careers. Wayne was the Old Hollywood version of an action hero, appearing in mostly westerns, while Hepburn starred in traditional dramas and won a record-breaking number of Oscars.
Why The True Grit Sequel Didn’t Work, Despite Having Wayne & Hepburn
Rooster Cogburn Was A Rehash Of True Grit (& The African Queen)
Despite having the star power of Wayne and Hepburn, the True Grit sequel didn’t work. The biggest problem with Rooster Cogburn is that it wasn’t original enough; it felt derivative of previous films. It’s mostly a rehash of the original True Grit, following all the same beats: Cogburn is a washed-up lawman who gets a chance at redemption when a woman asks him to go after her father’s killer. The only difference is that the woman who recruits Cogburn for his comeback mission is a lot older in the sequel. Other than that, it’s more or less the same story.
And what Rooster Cogburn didn’t crib from its own predecessor, it cribbed from one of Hepburn’s most iconic previous films, The African Queen. In The African Queen, Hepburn plays an uptight single woman who’s forced to embark on a treacherous adventure with a boorish, curmudgeonly mechanic, played by Humphrey Bogart. Over the course of the journey, they find themselves falling for each other. Rooster Cogburn borrows the beats of this story, too, swapping out Bogart for Wayne and swapping out the Ruiki River for the American frontier. True Grit worked because it felt different; Rooster Cogburn did not.
Rooster Cogburn Wasn’t The End For True Grit, But Was For John Wayne’s Involvement
Wayne Never Came Back, But Cogburn Did
Wayne would never reprise his role as Cogburn after the failure of the True Grit sequel, but Cogburn still lived on in future projects. In 1978, ABC aired True Grit: A Further Adventure, a made-for-TV sequel that sent Cogburn off on another adventure with a slightly older Mattie, who was still determined to make him a better man. Warren Oates took over the role of Cogburn from Wayne and Lisa Pelikan took over the role of Mattie from Kim Darby. This was more of a direct sequel to True Grit than Rooster Cogburn, which was more of a spiritual successor.
In 2010, the Coen brothers readapted Portis’ novel for the big screen with their own remake of True Grit. The Coens’ version stuck closer to the book, telling the story more from Mattie’s perspective than Cogburn’s. Jeff Bridges played Cogburn and an Oscar-nominated Hailee Steinfeld played Mattie. While the original True Grit from 1969 features one of Wayne’s best performances, the Coens’ remake is arguably an even stronger film.