Two years ago this month, I wrote a post bemoaning the lack of respect John Wayne receives from Bay Area cinephiles.
Now the Stanford is running a John Wayne series with some of his best films–and some oddball choices. Among my favorite Wayne’s, it’s got Fort Apache, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and Rio Bravo (but not Stagecoach). Among the less expected choices, it has The Greeen Berets (the second and least respected of his two films as a director) and the romantic comedy (yes, you read that right) Without Reservations.
The series closes on June 5 with an appropriate end-of-career double bill: True Grit, for which he won his only Oscar, and his last film, The Shootist. He was dying of cancer when he made The Shootist, about a gunfighter dying of cancer–a very personal film.
Filed under: Westerns
