That'll Be The Day

The character of Ethan Edwards

I initially thought about leaving this film out of the blog in favor of one which released closer to “Stagecoach”, after all these two films are seventeen years apart. But this stage of development in John Wayne's roles is one that is a result of nearly two decades of slow cultural change that is best seen by the drastic change between the two films. The next film this blog will look at is the 1959 classic “The Searchers”. In this film Wayne plays a retired soldier who spends nearly a decade searching for the Native Americans who murdered his family and abducted his niece. Vengeful, blatantly racist, but still holding to his code of honor, Wayne shows a variant of his gunfighter character that is both older and more weathered. Gone is the innocence of the young Ringo Kid, Ethan Edwards is a pragmatic and at times almost villainous protagonist. This film also marks the start of Wayne’s characters being not just loners in society, but outcasts and rejects. “As the West had become increasingly settled, the rugged individualist had evolved into a social misfit, and Ethan’s mission borders on the psychopathic” (Davis 206). This is rejection mirrors the one that the Western genre struggled with as it slowly died as the 20th century went on. The post-WWII era society became increasingly fixated on realism rather than romanticism, and the mythical stories of gunfighters and cowboys became increasingly out of place as a result. Wayne’s role as Ethan Edwards deconstructs the common perception of himself as a “character actor”, much like James Stewart in “Vertigo", by taking an actor which the public associates with a good values and casting them as a darker role, and that is what makes his role in this film so strong. People will often discredit Wayne’s skill as an actor by claiming he always played himself in his Westerns, but Wayne often took on traits of his characters while filming in order to give an honest performance, something that actor Ken Curtis noticed. When talking about John Wayne on the set of “The Searchers”, Kurtis described how, “Duke was usually pretty laid back when he was working. He usually found time to play practical jokes, and he loved to laugh if someone told him a joke, but when we were making The Searchers he wasn’t quite so loose. He just didn’t seem as relaxed...”(Munn). Curtis would then go on to defend Wayne’s skill as an actor saying, “Anyone who says Duke always played himself – and I’ve even heard Duke say it- should take a look at The Searchers, and they’ll see John Wayne with a whole new dimension to his character” (Munn). By playing the straight example of the gunslinger in “Stagecoach” and the deconstructed example in “The Searchers” Wayne shows his versatility as an actor even when playing similar roles. The next film I’ll discuss will take this a step further and show Wayne acting almost as a parody of himself.


Davis, Ronald L. Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne. Norman: U of Oklahoma, 1998.
     Google Books. Google, 1 May 2001. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

Munn, Michael. John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth. New York: New American Library, 2004.
     Google Books. Google, 1 Mar. 2005. Web. 5 Dec. 2015.