The role John Wayne desperately craved an Oscar for: “I knew he wanted it”
One of the strangest oversights to occur when John Wayne was phasing himself out of the spotlight was his lack of an honorary Academy Award for his overall contributions to cinema, especially when so many of his peers and successors were gifted a similar prize.
Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Greta Garbo, Cary Grant, Orson Welles, Alec Guinness, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, and Paul Newman are just some of the iconic names who received an honorary Oscar when they were still alive, but for whatever reason, ‘The Duke’ didn’t make the list.
At least he had a competitive prize, though, winning a ‘Best Actor’ trophy for his performance in True Grit. Some within the industry viewed it more as a lifetime achievement award than his Rooster Cogburn objectively being the finest turn of the preceding 12 months, but Wayne didn’t care; he’d finally claimed the prize that cemented him as a worthy actor.
He’d been nominated twice before, for his on-camera efforts in Sands of Iwo Jima and his status as the producer of The Alamo, but he was never seen as one of his era’s greatest thespians. He almost always played John Wayne, but what he lacked in range, he more than made up for with star power, box office clout, and longevity.
When ‘The Duke’ knew the curtain was drawing closed on his personal and professional lives, he wanted to go out with a bang. In a case of art imitating life, he settled on The Shootist, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why he’d been so drawn to the role of JB Books, an aging gunslinger and man out of time who confronts his mortality in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis.
It was a fitting swansong to a legendary career, but despite the film featuring what was comfortably his finest work since True Grit, which admittedly wasn’t too difficult when his recent credits had been the likes of Cahill US Marshal, McQ, Brannigan, and Rooster Cogburn, he didn’t even factor into the awards season conversation.
Lauren Bacall landed a Bafta nomination for ‘Best Leading Actress’, and Ron Howard was on the Golden Globes shortlist for ‘Best Supporting Actor’, but ‘The Duke’ was nowhere to be found. His performance won strong notices from critics, but it wasn’t compelling enough for the Academy to give him a look-in. As Pat Stacy revealed in her memoir, that wasn’t the outcome he wanted.
“The Shootist meant something to Duke, and he was determined to see that it was kept alive, even if he had to do it single-handedly,” she wrote. “Besides, there was talk in the air that the picture might land Duke a third Oscar nomination. Although we never talked about it, I knew he wanted it for the picture and wanted it for himself. He simply wasn’t sure how many more quality starring roles he could find for a man his age.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the answer was none, since he passed away before he could make another movie. He planned to reunite with Howard for the final production that never was, and his final appearance at the Oscars saw him present ‘Best Picture’ to The Deer Hunter, instead of sitting among the nominees one final time.
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