I grew up in the 1950s, the heyday of Westerns both on film and on TV. I’d bet that I’ve seen thousands of Western stories since I began watching “Hopalong Cassidy” and “Roy Rogers and Dale Evans” on my tiny portable black and white television every Saturday morning starting in 1956 or 1957 or thereabouts. But I only became a connoisseur of Westerns sometime back in the 1990s or so when cable TV opened up the vast archives of classic western movies. Since the advent of the internet and YouTube, hundreds of old westerns have found have been resurrected, and they, plus almost any black and white American and British movies from the 30s, 40, and 50s, have become my favorite forms of entertainment. I regularly watch the same Westerns over and over again, and they never get tiring for me.
As an example, the first movie in my list of favorites that follows, “Stagecoach,” was first released in Hollywood’s “Golden Year” of 1939, and I must have seen it at least forty or fifty times. On each viewing, I see or hear something new I hadn’t picked up on before, and I also get the pleasure of repeating the dialog as I have committed the great majority of them to memory long ago.
The list that follows, although listed numerically from most favorite to least favorite, doesn’t really matter all that much, because, like parents trying to choose their favorite child, it just doesn’t work. So, on any particular day, my favorites will change places depending on my mood, so don’t get hung up on the order of listing. Nevertheless, you can’t go wrong starting with #1 and then going down the list. They’re all great in my book!
As far as directors go, anything directed by John Ford is a great place to start. He is the master of the Western genre, and you couldn’t do better than to study his films as a master class in how to direct movies. This is evidenced by his 5 Oscars, more than any other director in history, although none of them were for his Westerns! He would get at least four more Oscars in my book for his Calvary Trilogy and Stagecoach alone.
The table lists, from left to right, the name of the film, the main star or lead, the director, and the year it was released, if I had that information at hand. Sorry, I can’t include more information or links to the films for you, they’re just too many of them for the time I have available.
What are your favorites? Please leave me a comment, particularly if I’ve missed one that should be on the gol’dern list.
1. Stagecoach – John Wayne, Directed by John Ford (1939)
2. Red River – John Wayne, Directed by Howard Hawks (1942)
3. The Big Country – Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston (1958)
4. The Searchers - John Wayne, Directed by John Ford (1956)
5. The Westerner – Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan (1940)
6. Open Range – Kevin Costner, Robert Duvall (2003)
7. True-Grit - John Wayne (1969)
8. True-Grit – Jeff Bridges (2010)
9. Monte Walsh – Lee Marvin (1970)
10. High Noon – Gary Cooper (1952)
11. Angel and the Bad Man – John Wayne, Gail Russell (1947)
12. Dances with Wolves – Kevin Costner (1990)
13. Tombstone – Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliott (1993)
14. Rio Grande – John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara Directed by John Ford (1950)
15. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon – John Wayne, Directed by John Ford (1949)
16. Fort Apache – Henry Fonda, Directed by John Ford (1948)
17. My Darling Clementine – Henry Fonda, Ward Bond, (1946)
18. Unforgiven – Clint Eastwood (1992)
19. The Cowboys – John Wayne (1972)
20. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence – John Wayne, James Stewart, Lee Marvin (1962)
21. Winchester ’73 – James Stewart (1950)
22. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly – Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef - Directed by Sergio Leone (1966)
23. Lonesome Dove – Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones (1989)
24. The Bravados – Gregory Peck, Joan Collins (1958)
25. Duel in the Sun – Gregory Peck, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotton (1946)
26. The Gunfighter – Gregory Peck (1950)
27. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – Paul Newman, Robert Redford (1969)
28. Quigley Down Under – Tom Selleck, Alan Rickman (1990)
29. How the West was Won – James Stewart, John Wayne – Directed by John Ford (1962)
30. Once Upon a Time in the West – Henry Fonda (1968)
31. Shane – Alan Ladd, Van Heflin (1953)
32. 3 Godfathers – John Wayne, Harry Carey, Jr., Pedro Armendariz – Directed by John Ford (1948)
33. The Outlaw Josey Wales – Clint Eastwood (1976)
34. Jeremiah Johnson – Robert Redford (1972)
35. Little Big Man – Dustin Hoffman – Directed by Arthur Penn (1970)
36. 3:10 to Yuma – Glenn Ford, Van Heflin (1957)
37. One-Eyed Jacks – Marlon Brando, Karl Malden (1961)
38. The Naked Spur – James Stewart (1953)
39. Lonely Are The Brave – Kirk Douglas (1962)
40. Will Penny – Charlton Heston (1967)