John Wayne still ranks among today’s most popular movie stars, even though he died in 1979 at the age of 72. In a legendary screen acting career that encompasses more than 140 feature film roles and spans 50 years, Wayne was listed by movie theater owners as being among Hollywood’s 10 most bankable stars for 25 years between 1949 and 1974, the longest run of any star in history, followed by Clint Eastwood at 21, and Tom Cruise at 20.
Wayne still holds great influence in pop culture, especially the Western genre, which he redefined so completely throughout his career that he essentially became the genre. While Wayne’s Western masterpieces hold timeless appeal, several of his initially underappreciated Western films have received increasing appreciation over the past 40 years. One of these is the 1972 Western film The Cowboys, in which Wayne plays Wil Andersen, an aging rancher who is forced to seek the help of a group of schoolboys to help Andersen execute a 400-mile cattle drive.
While The Cowboys is best remembered for Wayne’s shocking death scene, which elicited lingering public outrage, The Cowboys has emerged over time as being arguably his best late-career film. Moreover, the movie has increasingly drawn praise from Western historians, several of whom have listed it as being the most historically accurate film of Wayne’s career.
An Old West Historian Praised ‘The Cowboys’ For Its Historical Accuracy
Just as The Cowboys, which presently holds a 75% Rotten Tomatoes rating and 88% audience score, has increasingly gained support from audiences and critics over the past 50 years as being John Wayne’s last great Western film, Western historians have praised The Cowboys for its authenticity. One of the film’s admirers is cowboy and esteemed Old West historian Michael Grauer, who has stated that he believes The Cowboys to be among the most historically accurate Western films of John Wayne’s career and the overall period.
In a 2024 video for Insider, Grauer rated 13 iconic Wild West scenes from films and television for their realism. In selecting The Cowboys as his favorite Wild West film, in terms of its accuracy, Grauer expressed admiration for how Wayne’s character, Wil Andersen, employs children for the film’s cattle drive, instead of experienced cattle drivers and gunfighters, as Grauer believes this is more reflective of the cowboy experience in 1878, when The Cowboys is set. Grauer said:
“My favorite Wild West movie that’s accurate is The Cowboys, because, literally, the John Wayne character has to hire young men and boys to be his trailhands, and the things they encounter along the way are pretty accurate to the real story.”
‘The Cowboys’ Is Much More Accurate than John Wayne’s 1956 Western Masterpiece
In the same video for Insider, historian Michael Grauer also commented on what is arguably John Wayne’s greatest film, the 1956 epic Western The Searchers, in which Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a Civil War veteran who, after members of his family are massacred and then taken hostage by Comanche warriors, embarks on a years-long journey to find his abducted niece by venturing deep into Native territory.
Grauer references The Searchers in the video in the context of commenting on the portrayal of Native Americans in cinema. In the video, Grauer reviewed a scene from The Searchers in which Comanche warriors, in full paint and regalia, launch a full-frontal assault by moving over a river against a fortified position. Grauer described this scene as being nonsensical from an accuracy standpoint, as Native American warfare, according to Grauer, was primarily based on advantage, in terms of numbers and surprise. Moreover, Grauer says that fights between cowboys and Native American people rarely happened in 1868, when the film opens.
While Grauer gave The Searchers a lowly 2/10 rating in terms of the accuracy of the aforementioned scene and the film’s depiction of Native American people, Grauer nonetheless considers The Searchers to be a great and important film. Indeed, The Searchers is widely regarded as being one of the greatest and most influential films ever made and arguably the greatest of Wayne’s collaborations with director John Ford.
Wayne Loved Playing a Father Figure in ‘The Cowboys’
While John Wayne, who was 64 when filming began on The Cowboys, had played many mentor and parental figures prior to donning the role of Wil Andersen in The Cowboys, Wayne had never previously played the surrogate father role as enthusiastically as he does in The Cowboys, which exudes genuine emotion and warmth within this dynamic, as Andersen transfers his life experiences to his young cowboys.
The Cowboys is a special film, which Wayne described as being one of the greatest experiences of his career and life. When The Cowboys was released in 1972, Wayne’s incomparable run as a box-office star was nearing an end, as was seemingly the Western genre itself. Just as The Cowboys represents Wayne’s ultimate passing-of-the-torch film, Wayne’s death heralded a transfer of power in Hollywood to a younger generation of stars, led by Clint Eastwood.