Credit: Far Out / Paramount Pictures

The star-studded 1972 movie that imploded when John Wayne said no: “Why the hell should I do that?”

Tue 2 June 2026 20:45, UK

Even though he’d reached the peak of his career in 1969 when his performance as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit won him the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’, John Wayne failed to carry that momentum into the 1970s.

He was still a big star, and he was still making movies; they were just as uninspired as possible. Big Jake? A western. The Cowboys? A western. The Train Robbers? A western. Cahill US Marshal? A western. McQ and Brannigan? Dirty Harry rip-offs. Rooster Cogburn? Both a sequel and a western.

Some of them were entertaining enough, while others were terrible, and Wayne’s cinematic swansong in The Shootist showed that, even though he was returning to the well and making yet another western, putting some different flourishes on the standard formula could elevate the formulaic to the fantastic.

In 1972, five years before his final film, the opportunity presented itself on a plate. ‘The Duke’ stuck to his guns and kept doing the things that had made him a household name, even when the industry had evolved into the ‘New Hollywood’ era. Despite the pedigree, he refused to sign on for the picture because he thought it sounded too much like a movie designed to draw a line under the age of the classic western.

In his defence, it was, with Larry McMurtry’s screenplay for The Streets of Laredo eying Wayne for the part of Woodrow F Call, a legendary Texas Ranger-turned-bounty hunter. No expense was being spared, with Peter Bogdanovich set to make it his first feature since landing a ‘Best Director’ nod at the Oscars for The Last Picture Show.

As for the cast, old pals James Stewart and Henry Fonda had agreed to play Augustus McCrae and Jake Spoon, respectively, with the three ‘Golden Age’ titans set to be joined by Ellyn Burstyn, Ryan O’Neal, Cybill Shepherd, and Ben Johnson, with Bogdanovich planning to unite his three iconic leads with most of his Last Picture Show cast, apparently.

Unfortunately, ‘The Duke’ was incredibly resistant. “It’s kind of an end-of-the-West western,” he accurately told his would-be director. “And I’m not ready to hang up my spurs yet.” When Bogdanovich wasn’t within earshot, Wayne had a more specific explanation for why The Streets of Laredo didn’t interest him.

“It just wasn’t a good part,” he said. “Peter had written a good part for Fonda, and some fun lines for Jimmy, but I was a whiner. Why the hell should I do that? Peter said, ‘This is a great part’. I said, ‘To you, not to me.'” He put his foot down, and he wasn’t in the mood for picking it back up.

With nobody capable of changing Wayne’s mind, and no possible replacement being viewed on the same level as ‘The Duke’ and the baggage he’d carry into the picture, the entire thing fell apart. Fast forward two decades, and with him and Fonda both dead and Stewart long retired, McMurtry went back to the drawing board for a long time, until James Garner played Call in a 1995 miniseries.