John Wayne is one of the most iconic movie stars, with a career filled with classic films, but True Grit features the scene that Wayne considers his best. Wayne rose to fame with star-making roles in the likes of the classic Stagecoach. His unmistakable screen presence and gruff persona on-screen helped to make him an icon of the Western genre, starring in classics like Rio Bravo and The Searchers. However, as popular as he was as a movie star, Wayne wasn’t always recognized for his skills as an actor.
In his legendary career, Wayne only won one Oscar, and that was for his performance as Rooster Cogburn in the Western adventure True Grit. Based on the novel by Charles Portis, True Grit follows US Marshal Cogburn as he is hired by young Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) to track down the outlaw who killed her father. While there are some who felt Wayne’s Oscar win was more about his career as a whole than that singular performance, Wayne happens to agree that the movie contains the best acting of his career, specifically in one scene.
John Wayne Called This Moment In True Grit The Best Scene Of His Career
Wayne Showed New Sides Of His Persona In His Oscar-Winning Role
There are a number of iconic moments from John Wayne’s movies, but the actor points to the stakeout scene in True Grit as featuring his best performance. The scene comes midway through the adventure as Rooster, Matt, and the Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Glen Campbell) stake out an old cabin, waiting for the outlaws they are tracking to make their return. As they wait, Mattie begins to ask the gruff and hard-drinking lawman about his life.
Rooster reflects on his failed marriage from years earlier, while also revealing that he has a son whom he apparently doesn’t have any connection with anymore. He mentions with some regret that his wife took the boy and suggests his son, “Never liked me much anyway.” He also reveals he was a bank robber before becoming a lawman, refusing to see it as a flaw. In an interview with legendary film critic Roger Ebert, Wayne remarked, “I guess that scene in ‘True Grit’ is about the best scene I ever did.”
Ebert suggested that the scene works quite well because it feels as though it is a summation of all the previous Western characters Wayne played in his career, while also bringing a more human side to that persona. Wayne himself acknowledged in the same interview that True Grit offered him a character to play that was not just the archetypal Western hero he had become known for, and perhaps that is why it has allowed him to earn some acclaim:
“It’s sure as hell my first decent role in 20 years,” he said, “and my first chance to play a character role instead of John Wayne. Ordinarily they just stand me there and run everybody up against me.”
Rooster Cogburn Was One of John Wayne’s Best Western Characters
John Wayne Starred In Many Iconic Western Movies In His Career
While John Wayne’s Western movies offered a number of memorable characters, it is easy to suggest that Rooster Cogburn could be the best of them all. Though True Grit is the only movie for which Wayne won an Oscar, there were a number of other performances that the actor earned strong praise for, including The Searchers, Rio Bravo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Shootist. However, True Grit offers a character that contains some of the great elements of those characters while also offering something more.
Cogburn is a morally ambiguous protagonist in True Grit, something that was excitingly different from Wayne’s other famous roles, like the stoic and heroic Tom Doniphon in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Cogburn’s history as a bank robber and the fact that he doesn’t see anything wrong with that is a clear sign of his more nuanced view of right and wrong. He also has no qualms about shooting unarmed men if it makes his job easier.
Wayne’s character of Ethan Edwards in The Searchers is an even darker character, as a racist and brutal man. However, he is also a character who is very hard to like at all, whereas Cogburn’s flaws are softened by the humor that Wayne brings to the role. Characters like Sheriff Chance in Rio Bravo are witty characters, but maintain the stoic side of Wayne’s persona. Cogburn sees Wayne playing against type as a character audiences are meant to laugh at.
He is a heavy-drinking old man who falls off his horse and whose aim isn’t as true as it once was. Other characters mock his weight, and he feels like an out-of-shape lawman who is just not what he once was. It makes it all the more satisfying when he proves himself the hero in the end.
During the stakeout scene in True Grit, Cogburn looks back on his time as a bank robber and a time he charged at a posse of men chasing him, firing two guns at once. For most Wayne characters, it would be a believable story, but when Cogburn tells it, it seems like a tall tale from an old man. However, when Cogburn does this same heroic charge at the end of the movie and proves he is still that man, it feels like he’s proving he is still that man to himself as much as to the audience.