Eastwood is a better director and the Man With No Name is a better shot. But Wayne was the better actor and his characters more interesting.
Randolph Scott? You must be joking. The worst big name Hollywood actor ever. Damn what wooden acting! Take Eastwood’s flintiness, subtract Peck’s starchiness and what you have left is Randolf Scott. Yuck!
Best “cowboy” actor? Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda. Both these guys could act rings around most of their contemporaries and play a wide variety of different cowboy (and other) characters believably. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (with Wayne and Lee Marvin) is an all time great, maybe Ford’s best film (more story than Searchers). The Ox Bow Incident, My Darling Clementine for Fonda “cowboy” pix. But see both of them play real cowboys in the western comedy The Cheyenne Social Club, a throw away picture except for them hamming it up together, redeemed by good acting.
Ah, but let’s not forget Kirk Douglas westerns. Now there is an actor!
Clint was a poor farmer in the beginning of “…Josey Whales”. In “Hang 'em High”, he was an ex-Sheriff turned cattle rancher.
Not to take anything away from the Duke, but real cowboys don’t die in their movies!
Clint was a poor farmer in the beginning of “…Josey Whales”. In “Hang 'em High”, he was an ex-Sheriff turned cattle rancher.
Not to take anything away from the Duke, but real cowboys don’t die in their movies!
The “Cowboys” was an excellent pic. I nominate that for the best cowboy line ever: (from memory) “I’ve been shot, stabbed, beat up, had my neck broke once, my back broke twice and on my worst day I could could still kick your ass…”
For me too, it is the “Duke” over Eastwood. With Wayne there was always a real person under the surface of the character with Eastwood you seldom saw that. Yes, it was there in the Unforgiven and it is hinted at in …Josie Wales, but with Wayne no matter how out of control he is in such films as The Searchers or Red River you always see the character as you would with a real human being, not the less dimenional characters created by Eastwood.
I think the “avenging angel” vs the “cowboy” image mentioned earlier is very valid. If “cowboy” is defined by numbers of people killed per movie, yeah, Eastwood gets the nod. But for me that’s not what makes a good cowboy in a film.
I also agree that I would put Fonda and possibly Stewart ahead of both these two as good screen cowboys.
In regard to Wayne’s playing other parts, look at *Donavan’s Reef, The Quiet Man, Bood Ally, High and the Mighty, Circus World, Barbarian and the Geisha, Wake of the Red Witch *among many others not even bringing in the war films.
