The only actor Jack Nicholson called bigger than the president: “More important to the mass psyche”
Cinema has a transformative power, and one that is so strong it can influence the way we see the world and those around us. That’s why telling diverse stories and representing people from marginalised backgrounds is so important, and why writing characters using stereotypes can have a serious effect on the real world. With this in mind, it’s not hard to see how certain stars transcend their role as actors and become symbolic. They become intertwined with the kinds of characters they play, coming to represent a certain mythology.
For Hollywood icon Jack Nicholson, there’s one star who has achieved this status more than any other. The actor, who rose to prominence in the New Hollywood era with roles in movies like Easy Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chinatown, and Five Easy Pieces, symbolised cinema (and America’s) changing landscape, coming to lead grittier and more nihilistic productions that reflected the country’s reckoning with the fallacy of the American Dream.
Nicholson became a stalwart feature of various countercultural films during the 1960s, even writing the psychedelic movie The Trip, embodying an era of deep cultural change. Yet, this transitory period in American cinema, which was ushered in by changing societal views, the demise of the Hays Code, and the rise of independent and experimental cinema, stood in opposition to the glory that was depicted in certain genres, like the classic American western.
One of the most iconic figures of the genre was John Wayne, who rode on horseback through dusty plains and saved the day, emphasising the so-called superiority of the American man with his heroic characters. To Nicholson, the impact that Wayne had over audiences – and cultural consciousness as a whole – cannot be understated.
“I can see that I have created these impressions and that they have influenced writers,” he revealed to Vanity Fair. “And it’s just like I’ve always said that John Wayne—an actor—was more important to the mass psyche than any single American president. His longevity, his penetration—all of that ultimately has affected how human beings behave, what choices they make, who they think they are, more than any straight pragmatic political action and groupthink”.
Wayne’s films, from The Searchers, Stagecoach, and Rio Bravo to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Fort Apache, tended to perpetuate the idea of America as the land of the great and free. In many ways, these films are the greatest form of American propaganda in cinematic existence, with a lot of westerns sustaining harmful ideas such as white supremacy and toxic masculinity. Women are often in need of saving, Native people are described as ‘savages’, and the white male hero almost always comes out on top.
Despite these issues, audiences have long been captivated by classic American westerns, which seem to depict a world that simply doesn’t exist anymore. They affirm an idea of America that simply isn’t real, yet one that has seeped into American consciousness, and at least to Nicholson, these Wayne films have come to have more cultural significance than any US President.
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