Wayne’s last picture, The Shootist, in which he plays an aging cowboy who is dying of cancer, was a most appropriate end to an illustrious career.
In retrospect, producer Mike Frankovich was delighted with the casting, claiming, “Nobody could have been better for the part than Duke. He’s perfect.” Though he seemed to be the natural choice for the part, though it had been first offered to Paul Newman, who reportedly pulled out for personal reasons, and to George Scott, who demanded too many changes in the script.
There were many advantages in casting Wayne as John Bernard Books, for director Don Siegel wanted to show the progression of the gunfighter from his early glorious days to his tragic death. What better than using old clips from Wayne’s own Westerns, Stagecoach,” Red River,” and Hondo.” The movie thus became a self-conscious invocation of the Wayne screen legend and a tribute to his career. It looked as if “The Shootist” had been consciously designed as an epitaph, though Wayne had intentions at the time to continue making movies.
There were many parallels between the film’s narrative and Wayne’s real life. John Bernard Books is dying of cancer, a theme that was unpalatable and unmentionable to many actors, but not to Wayne. “Hell, no. It means nothing to me,” he told an interviewer, “I’m a member of the club, after all.” However, Wayne refused to make cancer the film’s major concern and, accommodating his request, the subject was mentioned just twice.
Moreover, the conversation between Wayne and the physician (played by Republican peer and pal Jimmy Stewart), confirming his fear of having cancer, was in harmony with his image. Stewart tells him the grim truth about cancer, even hinting about suicide as a way of avoiding pain. Upset, Wayne protests, “You told me I was strong as an ox,” to which Stewart replies, “even oxen die.”
Wayne even gets an opportunity to sum up his life as “All in all, I’ve had a helluva good life,” which he states with utmost conviction. The closing scene is also most congruent to his way of thinking and public persona: he dies on his birthday, wearing his best clothes, and he dies with his boots on, at the saloon, after a shootout. Most critics regarded The Shootist” as a well-designed swan song, self-conscious and reverential. The movie was acclaimed by most critics, even those who used to pan Wayne’s work.
The reviewers approached it as an autobiographical statement, as Janet Maslin wrote in Newsweek: The Shootist” never jeopardizes its hard-boiled integrity by making apologies for either Books or Wayne; it unabashedly advocates the manly art of self defense, the occasional necessity for vigilante justice, and other things that Wayne stood for.”
The movie is “the compleat John Wayne reader,” wrote Combs in the London Times, “it proves to be not so much indulging as measuring these (Western) myths.” “The whole is such a self-conscious theatrical artifice,” Combs noted, “that it acquires the dry, self-reflecting quality of inconceivable myth.” For Frank Rich, the principal virtue of the movie is allowing “Wayne’s distinctive star qualities to emerge in all their splendor,” making him “by turns, heroic, sardonic, chivalrous, mean, romantic, tough, frightened, fatherly and ever so tentatively sentimental.” However, he did not want to make cancer the film’s major concern and, under his request, it was mentioned just twice. Moreover, the conversation between Wayne and the physician (Jimmy Stewart), confirming his fear of having cancer, was in harmony with his image. Stewart tells him the grim truth about cancer, even hinting about suicide as away of avoiding pain. Upset, Wayne protests, “You told me I was strong as an ox,” to which Stewart (Wayne’s close friend in real life) replies, “even oxen die.”
