What’s impressive about Wayne’s Western films is that he wasn’t always playing a different iteration of the same character; McLintock’s loud-mouthed, wacky chauvinism couldn’t be more distinct from the brooding nature of his character Major Ethan Edwards in Ford’s 1956 masterpiece The Searchers or his villainous turn as John Dunson in Hawks’ 1948 classic Red River.
Wayne was always willing to poke fun at himself, as even some of his older films like Rio Bravo and Hondo had traces of humor in them. However, McLintock! was distinct in that it was purely a “character part,” where he had to shed elements of his charisma in order to play a temperamental, slightly unhinged character.
That being said, Wayne is also credited in helping to craft the story, and clearly had a role in expressing some of his personal beliefs within the film’s narrative. Essentially, McLintock sees the government’s efforts to impede his land as a mistake that leads to chaos within the town.
While the madness that ensues is dialed up for comedic relief, it’s clearly a cry for the type of limited government that Wayne so often advocated for. Wayne’s influence on the film is unmistakable; while there’s a unique identity to the films he made for auteurs like Ford and Hawks, it’s likely that McLaglen ceded control to Wayne throughout the creative process.
This is also likely considering that McLaglen himself was the son of Wayne’s The Quiet Man co-star Victor McLaglen, who had won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Ford’s 1935 political thriller The Informer. Here’s one case where Hollywood truly is one big family!
McLintock! has aged in interesting ways. On a fundamental level, it seems like Wayne intended for McLintock! to be a “revision” of The Quiet Man that rejected the premise that the woman would have the power in a relationship. In The Quiet Man, it’s evident that even if Sean has seemingly “tamed” Mary Kate, she is the one making decisions in their relationship, which reflects the original satirical point of The Taming of the Shrew.
It’s virtually the opposite in McLintock!, as by the end, the titular character has successfully won back his wife after spanking her in public. In the end, she still realizes that they belong together in a moment that certainly has not aged very well. The oblique sexism might make McLintock! more difficult to rewatch than some of Wayne’s other Westerns.
The film does show a side to Wayne that would become absent in his next few Western roles. Films like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance reflected on the end of the western era, and The Shootist even saw him looking at his own mortality. Comparatively, McLintock! is just a lot of silly fun where Wayne gets to play a caricature of himself, and that deserves to be celebrated in its own right.