Summary

• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is arguably the best Wayne/Stewart western, showcasing their unique on-screen chemistry and individual talents.
• How the West Was Won, a sprawling epic, features both Wayne and Stewart in a star-studded cast but lacks depth in exploring its themes.
• The Shootist serves as Wayne's poignant swansong, offering a powerful portrayal of an aging gunfighter and challenging his clean-cut hero image.

Throughout their legendary respective careers, John Wayne and James Stewart co-starred in three western movies together – but which one was the best, and which one was the worst? Wayne and Stewart are two of the biggest names in Hollywood history. The former was John Ford’s muse; the latter was Alfred Hitchcock’s. Wayne and Stewart were massive stars in the Golden Age, and they each represented something totally different. Wayne stood for the American ideal – the gun-toting hero who doesn’t hesitate to spring into action – while Stewart was the mild-mannered everyman that audiences could relate to and see themselves in.

Wayne wouldn’t have gone anywhere near a movie like It’s a Wonderful Life and Stewart wouldn’t have gone anywhere near a movie like True Grit. The fact that their acting styles and on-screen personas were polar opposites made it a sight to behold whenever Wayne and Stewart co-starred in a movie together – especially when they shared the screen in a western movie, since they each brought something unique and different to the western genre, and it was fun to see those two energies clash. Wayne’s stoic sternness is contrasted with Stewart’s aw-shucks affability in really interesting ways.

Throughout their tenure as two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Wayne and Stewart co-starred in three western movies: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and How the West Was Won, both in 1962, and The Shootist in 1976. None of them are bad movies, but one of them outshines the others. So, which is the greatest Wayne/Stewart western?

3 How The West Was Won

1962’s How the West Was Won is one of the most ambitious undertakings in Hollywood history. It was essentially a cinematic miniseries that was shown back-to-back on the big screen. It took three filmmakers to make it happen – Henry Hathaway (who directed three of the five chapters), John Ford, and George Marshall – and it was shot in true three-lens Cinerama for a classic look. Set from 1839 to 1889, How the West Was Won chronicles the westward expansion of the 19th century, covering the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the building of the railroads.

The whole historical epic is told through the eyes of the Rawlings family, led by Stewart’s Linus Rawlings. Wayne plays the real-life General William Tecumseh Sherman in the film’s third chapter. Wayne and Stewart aren’t the only big stars in this movie. How the West Was Won’s cast features just about every recognizable actor from that era of cinema: Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, Lee J. Cobb, George Peppard, Walter Brennan, Robert Preston, Eli Wallach, Russ Tamblyn, Andy Devine, Raymond Massey – it’s an impressive collection of A-listers who have each starred in their own movies.

Wayne’s role in How the West Was Won isn’t huge, but he arrives at a pivotal point in the story. Stewart’s Linus and his son Zeb the Union army in an attempt to serve their country in the Civil War and achieve a feeling of purposeful glory. But they quickly learn that war is not what they were expecting, especially after the blood-soaked Battle of Shiloh, which costs Linus his life. Zeb happens upon Wayne’s famed Union general by chance and his snap decision to save the general’s life leads him on the path to becoming a war hero.

While it’s certainly an awe-inspiring spectacle, How the West Was Won doesn’t dig as deeply into its themes as it could’ve done. Since it sets out to chart 50 years of American history and there’s only so much time to do it, it ends up providing a handy bullet-point overview without much additional insight. It’s a marvel to look at – with some really tense sequences, like a buffalo stampede and a raft caught in some rushing rapids – but this sprawling epic is more tedious than breathtaking.

2 The Shootist

14 years after their previous western collaborations, Wayne and Stewart reunited for another entry in the genre with 1976’s The Shootist, directed by Don Siegel. The Shootist marked Wayne’s final film appearance before he ed away in 1979, and it ended up being the perfect swansong for one of the western genre’s most iconic stars. In the same way that Unforgiven would later become Clint Eastwood’s final stamp on the western – a fitting marker of his retirement from the genre that made him a star – The Shootist arrived as the perfect movie for Wayne to end his western career on.

As Wayne reached the end of his road and started reckoning with his own mortality, he took on a final western role that dealt with those themes. The Shootist revolves around an aging gunfighter who recognizes he doesn’t have much fight left in him and starts looking for a way to die with dignity. There’s something poignant about watching a dying movie star bring that pain and reflection to the screen. Wayne gives one of the strongest dramatic performances of his career in The Shootist, bringing genuine pathos and anguish to this dark deconstruction of his stoic gunslinger archetype.

For most of his career, Wayne played the typical hero. He sprung into action to protect innocent people from the bad guys, he didn’t show an ounce of fear in the face of life-threatening danger, and he always saved the day in time for the end credits. But Wayne did his most interesting work when he challenged that clean-cut persona and played a more morally ambiguous antihero, like Rooster Cogburn in True Grit or Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. The Shootist’s J.B. Books belongs to this camp. He’s not a straightforward hero, and that’s what makes him so interesting.

There’s nothing particularly original in The Shootist; the end-of-the-road gunfighter story has been told before in other movies (and told more effectively in other movies). But what The Shootist offers that those movies don’t is Wayne, the poster boy of the western genre, finally breaking down the myth that he helped to create with a portrayal of a sad, broken man on death’s door, looking back on his misdeeds and wondering if it was all worth it. That performance makes The Shootist an unforgettable movie; it’s not perfect, but it’ll stick with the viewer long after it’s over.

1 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

A few months before the release of How the West Was Won in 1962, Wayne and Stewart shared the screen in their first western collaboration, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance – and it’s arguably the best movie they made together. It was directed by John Ford, the trailblazer who established Wayne’s on-screen persona with his turn as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach and also pioneered a lot of the filmmaking techniques used in the American western. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of Ford’s finest works, and one of the greatest western movies ever made.

What makes The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance the best Wayne/Stewart western is that it makes the best use of the unique pairing of these two actors. It utilizes what made each of them such great actors and such beloved stars. The film begins with Stewart’s U.S. Senator character, Ranse Stoddard, attending the funeral of Wayne’s character, Tom Doniphon, as a framing device. Tom saved Ranse after he was beaten and robbed by the notorious outlaw Liberty Valance and his gang. What blossomed out of that noble act of heroism was a beautiful, lasting friendship.

In How the West Was Won, Wayne has a minor ing role in a sprawling ensemble and he doesn’t show up until Stewart’s character has already been killed off. The Shootist is primarily a Wayne starring vehicle, with every ing actor – including Stewart as Doc Hostetler, the physician who used to treat Books’ gunshot wounds – existing in his orbit. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is the closest that Wayne and Stewart came to making a two-hander in the western genre, where their characters’ relationship is the focal point of the story and the crux of the drama.

Ford’s ability to bring heart and humor to his tales of the Old West is on full display in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But at the same time, he doesn’t shy away from the violence and bleakness of the setting. An aging Wayne and Stewart anchor the film, both with compelling individual performances and with an endlessly watchable dynamic. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance explores the irony of heroism – everyone ends up dead one way or another – through a slyly pessimistic lens that was uncharacteristic of Ford’s filmmaking.

The only downside to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is its final act, which is predictable, overlong, and ultimately underwhelming. Once Ranse achieves fame and success, the movie becomes trite and even a little bit boring – especially because the framing device already telegraphed the ending. If the movie ended 20 minutes before it did, it would’ve been perfect. But with its anticlimactic final reel, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is close to perfect, and that’s more than can be said about most movies (including the tedious How the West Was Won and the derivative The Shootist).