John Wayne was set to star in another Western following his final movie, The Shootist, in 1976, but a pay dispute saw him axed from the role with Harrison Ford stepping in
John Wayne, the legendary actor known for his roles in over 170 films from the silent era through to the New Hollywood of the 1970s, was lined up for another Western following his last film, The Shootist, in 1976.
The movie, a comedy called The Frisco Kid, featured Gene Wilder as a Polish rabbi on his way to San Francisco.
Wayne was set to play Tommy Lillard, a bank robber who befriends the protagonist. In the Netflix documentary ‘Remembering Gene Wilder’, producer Mace Neufeld, who passed away in 2022, disclosed: “When we started on the film we were going to use John Wayne and he was all excited about joining the project.”
Yet, John J Puccio of Movie Metropolis pointed out that while Wayne was keen to take on the role as a humorous sequel to True Grit and Rooster Cogburn, salary disputes put an end to the idea.
Moreover, it’s doubtful he would have been able to complete the film as he died shortly before The Frisco Kid was released. In a past interview before his own death in 2016, Wilder remembered: “I was so excited and one the executives got the idea of going out to Long Beach, California where John Wayne lived and tried to knock him down $250,000 and [Duke] said ‘Forget the whole thing! ‘” There are also claims that Wayne turned down The Frisco Kid due to the script’s “vulgarity.”
In the end, the role of Tommy was handed to an up-and-coming actor named Harrison Ford, who had recently appeared in a little-known film called Star Wars.