“I don’t think it holds up”: the John Wayne masterpiece that failed to win Clint Eastwood over
Whenever someone talks about John Wayne, the shadow of Clint Eastwood will be looming in the background, and whenever someone talks about Clint Eastwood, vice versa.
That’s just the way it is, with the two titans woven so deeply into the fabric of the western genre as its undisputed 1A and 1B that it’s impossible to think of one without the other creeping their way in. They knew it, too, but they weren’t always entirely complimentary about each other’s work.
‘The Duke’ was so displeased with High Plains Drifter that he wrote his erstwhile successor a letter telling him as much, with Wayne aghast that the medium responsible for most of his biggest hits and most iconic pictures had resorted to the sort of jarring violence he believed was ruining Hollywood.
They passed like ships in the night several times, whether it was Wayne turning down the lead role in Dirty Harry or Eastwood turning down the lead role in McQ, the latter being ironic in itself when the former only signed on to the crime thriller to try and compensate for the fact that he regretted not accepting the part of Harry Callahan.
Any talk of a potential collaboration was quickly shut down, with ‘The Duke’ never sold on the prospect of joining forces with his replacement as the western icon for a new generation, even if it would have been guaranteed to make a fortune. Still, Eastwood had huge respect for the man as a star and as an actor, even if he refused to give Wayne’s magnum opus a pass.
If John Ford’s The Searchers isn’t the greatest western ever made, then it’s got to be in the top two, at least. Wayne’s finest hour in front of the camera, Ethan Edwards was a character with surprising depth, giving the aging star the platform to deliver the best work of his legendary career.
Since it was made in the 1950s, the film has inevitably aged, which turned out to be Eastwood’s biggest issue. “Well, it’s got some wonderful things in it,” he clarified to the Los Angeles Times, just in case anyone was thinking that he’d be unloading both barrels on a stone-cold masterpiece.
“I don’t think it holds up in the sense that there’s some sub-characters that wouldn’t play today,” he explained. “I think that whole thing with the ingenue and Jeffrey Hunter would be considered pretty edgy by today’s standards. But I think Wayne gave one of the best performances he ever did.”
While he wouldn’t go so far as to say The Searchers isn’t worthy of the praise it’s been receiving for the last 70 years, from a narrative and character standpoint, Eastwood doesn’t think it holds up, but you could also say that about a lot of the westerns he made in the 1960s and 1970s, too.
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