To be great at your art does not necessarily guarantee that you will be a good person. In fact, some of the most troublesome creators personally are wonderfully gifted professionally. Though the western movie icon John Wayne certainly has his detractors, it’s fair to say that the genre would have a significant gap apparent if it were not for the Iowa-born actor’s efforts.
After coming through the silent era of Hollywood, it wasn’t long before Wayne established himself as one of the big western players. As the genre took off, providing America with a sense of self it had rarely found in the arts, Wayne’s face became synonymous with the genre. He was, by and large, America’s very first superhero, and at a time when such figures were desperately needed.
His first lead role arrived in 1930 with Raoul Walsh’s movie The Big Trail, but it took until 1939’s Stagecoach, directed by John Ford, for Wayne to become a mainstream star. He subsequently appeared in several acclaimed pictures, including Red River, The Searchers, True Grit and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
With such an imposing career, the number of incredible colleagues Wayne shared is astounding. Throughout his career, Wayne had the pleasure of working with some seriously big names in cinema, including the likes of Dean Martin, Kirk Douglas, Jimmy Stewart, K atharine Hepburn, Robert Mitchum and Maureen O’Hara, but interestingly, his favourite co-star wasn’t a single one of them.
In fact, Wayne’s most beloved co-star wasn’t even a human being but was, in fact, a horse by the name of Dollor. Now one might expect a cowboy to be particularly tied to his horse, but Wayne wasn;t exactly a dab hand with the reins. Still, the animal became his ultimate co-star. Dollor starred with Wayne in each of his final movies, beginning with 1971’s Big Jake and ending with his final ever film appearance in The Shootist by Don Siegel, released in 1976.
Interestingly, Wayne had once suggested that he was not actually a big fan of horses in general, which makes his western-heavy filmography all the more confusing. “I’ve never really liked horses, and I daresay not many of them liked me too much,” Wayne had once said, according to Michael Munn’s biography John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth.
Wayne had ridden atop several different equine creatures of beauty throughout his life, including his family’s horse, Jenny, whom he rode to school. In some of his early movies, Wayne rode a horse by the name of Duke the Miracle Horse before going on to ride another called Zip Cochise in El Dorado.
But it was Dollor who looked to turn the tide on Wayne’s opinion of horses in general. After Big Jake, the legendary horse featured in The Cowboys, The Train Robbers, Cahill, Rooster Cogburn and finally, The Shootist. Wayne had parts put into his contracts that no one else could ride Dollor but him.
The Shootist was Wayne’s final film, which, of course, saw the end of his collaboration with Dollor. It sees Wayne’s character take good care of him and feed and bond with him. Wayne fittingly saw the end of his relationship with Dollor by passing it on to the emerging actor Ron Howard. How fitting.