To commemorate John Wayne's 100th birthday, Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief will be reviewing several of the key DVD titles recently released as part of the many tributes to the Duke. Here, editor in chief Lee Pfeiffer, author of The John Wayne Scrapbook looks at Wayne's Oscar-winner.
I know there isn't another film critic or scholar in the world who will share my view on this, but True Grit is my favorite western- ever. While virtually everyone agrees the movie is worthy of high praise and it garnered John Wayne some of the best reviews of his career, not to mention his only Oscar, the film is generally left out of any discussion regarding the great westerns. I'm not going to try to make a case to bring everyone over to my point of view because I freely concede that True Grit isn't the best western of all time, just my favorite western of all time. My opinion is probably colored by sentiment. It's not unusual for people to allow pleasant memories of where and when they saw a particular film to color their critical assessment of it. In my case, I saw the movie on opening day, July 4, 1969 at the magnificent Radio City Music Hall. At age 13, I was accompanied by my mom and dad- both dyed-in-the-wool Duke Wayne fans. We expected just another enjoyable, but routine Wayne horse opera. However, we knew from minute one this film was different. It seemed to be made outside of the universe of stock company actors and technicians who dominated most of Wayne's films. The tipping point was the classic sequence in which Wayne faces down Robert Duvall and three of his men across an open-meadow and responds to Duvall's taunt that he's a one-eyed fat man by shouting "Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!"