One Of John Wayne’s Best Westerns Launched An Unofficial Trilogy

Picture the scene: You’ve been dating this great person for a while and it’s time to find out whether they’re a keeper. One night over cheeseburgers and vanilla Cokes you decide to pop the question: “Hey, do you like ‘Rio Bravo?'” By his own admission, that was a criteria for a successful relationship in director Quentin Tarantino’s younger years and he has called Howard Hawks’ classic western of the greatest hang-out movies of all time. Depending on your point of view, spending two hours hanging out with John Wayne might not sound like the most appealing prospect, but there is little denying he was a screen icon despite his personal flaws. In “Rio Bravo,” we find the Duke at his most engaging and charismatic, and the movie was so successful that it launched an unofficial trilogy.

Released in 1959, “Rio Bravo” was born out of Howard Hawks and John Wayne’s hatred for “High Noon.” It was a film that Wayne turned down and dismissed as the most “un-American” thing he’d ever seen — he later told Playboy that he had no regrets helping run the movie’s blacklisted screenwriter out of the United States. For his part, Hawks considered Fred Zinnemann’s suspenseful classic a betrayal of what westerns were all about, namely honor, bravery, and rugged American individualism. As such, teaming up with Wayne again after previously making “Red River” together was a throwback to the traditional white hats versus black hats narrative of earlier westerns, surrounding the Duke’s character with loyal buddies who would stand by him in a clinch.

Now “Rio Bravo” is regarded as one of the great Hollywood westerns and one of John Wayne’s best, even if the rest of the “trilogy” it inspired doesn’t quite live up to that watermark.

We’re down in old Texas where Dude (Dean Martin), the deputy sheriff and town drunk, is in a sorry state. Craving a drink, he is humiliated in front of the whole saloon by local cowboy Joe Burdette (Claude Atkins), who then guns down a bystander who tries to intervene. Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) arrests Joe for murder and carts him off to jail before things get any worse.

Joe’s rich older brother Nathan (John Russell) isn’t pleased and brings in a gang of hired guns to loiter menacingly around town, waiting for an opportunity to waylay the sheriff and spring Joe from his prison cell. With a week until the U.S. Marshall arrives, Chance and the Dude are outnumbered and outgunned, with only old coot Stumpy (Walter Brennan) and cocky young gunslinger Colorado Ryan (Ricky Nelson) for backup. Also in town is Feathers (Angie Dickinson), the widow of a crooked gambler, who takes a shine to Chance and decides to stick around. Our gang attempt to hole up in the jail, but Chance and the Dude are lured into a trap, culminating in a final showdown at the Burdette ranch.

Clocking in at almost an hour longer than “High Noon,” “Rio Bravo” treads a similar path but adds a typically Hawks-ian emphasis on loyalty and camaraderie. It sure takes its time allowing the relationships between the characters to develop, but that pays dividends as the standoff between the two mismatched sides grows increasingly tense. We even get a musical number before the finale, which seems disappointingly one-sided in favor of the good guys.

“Rio Bravo” is very leisurely paced and your enjoyment of the movie will probably boil down to how much you like these characters. John Wayne’s monolithic frame dominates the screen as always, but he is an older and wiser presence here. It’s fascinating to see this performance just a few years after playing the darkest role of his career in “The Searchers.” Now in his early 50s, he portrays sheriff Chance as a more paternal version of the heroic persona that came to the fore in “Stagecoach.”

The rest of the principal cast are also very genial. Walter Brennan hoots and hollers as eccentric comic relief Stumpy; teen heartthrob Ricky Nelson is stiff but likeable as the Kid; and Angie Dickinson is resolute and charming but only seems to be in the movie to provide a love interest for John Wayne. Despite the glaring age difference, their tentative romance is surprisingly touching and believable.

Dean Martin’s casting may have worried John Wayne at first, but he gives the film’s best performance as the former sharpshooter brought low by alcoholism. Ragged, sweaty, and torn with self-loathing, Dude’s struggle to kick the booze and regain the respect of Chance and the rest of the town provides a strong emotional arc in a movie that otherwise coasts along on the chemistry between its stars. It’s a really strong performance from the crooner at a time when he was trying to emulate the silver-screen success of his friend Frank Sinatra. The following year he would receive a Golden Globe nomination for “Who’s That Lady?” but he never got a nod from Oscar. It isn’t too much of a stretch to suggest that maybe he deserved one for this.

The success of “Rio Bravo” pushed John Wayne and Howard Hawks to plagiarize themselves. First, Hawks loved the idea of a noble sheriff defending his turf against outlaws so much that he hired Leigh Brackett (who had co-written “Rio Bravo”) to rehash the formula into 1966’s “El Dorado.” Flipping the roles slightly, John Wayne plays Cole Thornton, a gunslinger hired by a ruthless rancher to help take over a town but switches sides to assist his old friend and alcoholic sheriff J.P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum) in thwarting the villains instead. The central duo are once again joined by a fresh-faced cowboy named after a State (James Caan’s Mississippi) and a grizzled old deputy (Arthur Hunnicutt). “El Dorado” is a worthy companion piece to “Rio Bravo” that revels in the charismatic pairing of Wayne and Mitchum in their first movie together. It is also surprisingly poignant as Thornton must come to terms with the fact he’s not a virile young hero anymore.

Four years later came “Rio Lobo,” the worst of the unofficial trilogy. Wayne is an aging Union calvary officer who tracks down a pair of traitorous train robbers to a dusty town and faces the usual standoff with the local baddies. This time he is assisted by an ex-Confederate captain played by Jorge Rivero, who is a significant step down in star quality after Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum. It was Hawks’ final film and the face of western cinema had changed with the likes of “The Wild Bunch” and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. As a result, the format was very tired and it was a sad end to Hawks’ career — Quentin Tarantino has even cited “Rio Lobo” as one reason he wants to quit while he’s ahead.