John Wayne won his only Oscar for True Grit, but he should won for a classic John Ford Western instead. Over the course of his 50-year acting career, Wayne fronted everything from romantic dramas to war epics and comedies. Of course, Wayne’s starring in 80 Westerns left him fairly typecast in that genre – something he never seemed to mind. He starred in his share of forgettable “Oaters” like Cahill U.S. Marshal, but he fronted many classics too. These include Quentin Tarantino and John Carpenter’s favorite film Rio Bravo, while 1939’s Stagecoach gave Wayne his breakout role.
The John Ford/John Wayne WesternThe Searchers is not only regarded as Wayne’s best movie but one of the best Westerns ever produced, period. The simple setup sees Wayne’s bitter Civil War vet setting out on a multiple-year-long quest to rescue his kidnapped niece. Everybody from George Lucas to Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg has sung the praises of The Searchers, thanks to its great performances, incredible landscapes and dark, emotional story.
John Wayne Should Have Won His Oscar For The Searchers
Wayne was never better than as The Searchers’ Ethan Edwards
The Searchers features some of Wayne’s deepest work as an actor, with Ethan Edwards being capable of great warmth and kindness towards family and friends, but also being capable of committing shocking acts of violence.
One thing about being a movie star is that audiences are drawn to seeing that actor play a certain type of role. Fans of Wayne playing a cowboy were very well served by his filmography, though many of these projects feature the star playing essentially the exact same character again and again. The Searchers features some of Wayne’s deepest work as an actor, with Ethan Edwards being capable of great warmth and kindness towards family and friends, but also being capable of committing shocking acts of violence.
Ethan’s racism is so all-consuming that when he finally finds his niece Debbie (Natalie Wood) and learns she has joined the Comanche, he considers killing her instead. This is even darker if The Searchers’ theory about Ethan being Debbie’s father is taken into account. The movie saw Wayne probe new depths as a performer, and he went to places he never really attempted again. While Wayne eventually won his only Academy Award as Best Actor for True Grit, his work in The Searchers was more deserving.
Why Wayne’s Searchers Performance Was Snubbed By The Academy
The Searchers was completely ignored at the 1957 Oscars ceremony
Nearly 70 years on from its debut, The Searchers is hailed as a masterpiece. While some classics may not be rated as such when they debut, Wayne’s dark odyssey received both positive reviews and was a box-office hit. Still, despite being a success by any metric, The Searchers was subbed at the 1957 Academy Awards ceremony. Nods for Ford as Best Director and Wayne as Best Actor feel like a given, but instead, the Western failed to receive a single nomination.
Instead, Around the World in 80 Days picked up the Best Motion Picture Oscar, Yul Brynner won Best Actor for The King and I, while Best Director went to Giant’s George Stevens. It’s commonly argued that since The Searchers was an independent production made outside the studio system (Warner Bros would end up distributing it) this doomed its Oscars chances. The business was dominated by studios during this time, possibly accounting for Ford’s epic being overlooked despite its obvious quality.
John Wayne Was Only Nominated For Best Actor At The Oscars Twice
One of Hollywood’s biggest stars was largely ignored come awards season
Wayne fronted well over 100 movies across his decades as a leading man and had a consistent box-office track record. That said, since many of her performances tended to be riffs on Wayne’s established screen persona, critics didn’t tend to laud his work. This may account for the star only receiving two Academy Award nods for Best Actor. Wayne’s first Oscar nod was for 1949 war film Sand of Iwo Jima, and the second was True Grit from 1969.
Wayne always regretted not serving during the Second World War and made several war epics like The Fighting Seabees or Flying Tigers that celebrated American might. Sands of Iwo Jima was released four years after the war ended but is the best of the bunch. Wayne’s Marine Sgt. Stryker is another famous character for the star, who is tough on his men so that they’ll be prepared for the harsh battles that await them once they see combat.
Wayne’s turn as the drunken, lazy Marshal Rooster Cogburn in True Grit is one of his best-known, and the turn that finally earned him his Oscar. He liked the character so much that Wayne made his only sequel with 1975’s Rooster Cogburn, which also proved to be the star’s penultimate screen effort.
Wayne Previously Picked Up Two Academy Awards… For His Friends
John Wayne wasn’t a complete rookie when it came to collecting Oscars
He may not have won an Oscar for Sands of Iwo Jima or even been nominated for The Searchers, but Wayne still collected two Academy Awards during the 1950s for his pals. On both occasions, this was because the winners couldn’t attend. The most bizarre case was Wayne collecting Gary Cooper’s award for High Noon, a movie whose political subtext Wayne famously detested. He passed on starring in the movie himself for that reason, and Wayne dubbed High Noon the most “Un-American” Western he had ever watched.
Regardless, the star was good friends with Cooper, and collected his Best Actor award while singing Cooper’s praises; he also pretended to be mad he didn’t star in High Noon during his speech. Wayne’s second time collecting an Academy Award was for John Ford, who earned Best Director for The Quiet Man in 1959. This went on to be one of Wayne and Ford’s best-known projects, and it only made sense for the leading man to collect the trophy on his director’s behalf.
John Wayne’s True Grit Oscar Was Something Of A Legacy Win
Rooster Cogburn was a great performance, but it wasn’t John Wayne’s best either
John Wayne’s big moment with the Oscars finally arrived at the 1970 Academy Awards. True Grit had been an unqualified success the year before, with critics praising Wayne’s turn as Cogburn. When he collected his award, he mentioned his previous times picking up “these beautiful golden men,” and how it was always for friends. The star was clearly emotional at his belated awards’ recognition, though in Wayne’s infamous 1971 Playboy chat (via The Wrap) he claimed True Grit didn’t even rank among his best Westerns, and he didn’t require awards to measure his success.
But I really didn’t need an Oscar. I’m a box-office champion with a record they’re going to have to run to catch.
Wayne even namechecked The Searchers in this chat, which he felt “… deserved more praise than it got.” Wayne is supremely entertaining in True Grit and he felt it contained the best scene of his career, where Cogburn reflects on his failed effort to become a family man. His performance is also very hammy and broad, so compared to his excellent, textured work in The Searchers, it’s clear which performance is the best.
Wayne’s statue for True Grit had an element of being a legacy win to it, with the award almost signifying a body of work rather than a single performance. While Wayne may have been entering the final phase of his career during the 1970s, he stayed very active. Wayne fronted two Dirty Harry ripoffs with McQ and Brannigan, in addition to Westerns like Rio Lobo and The Cowboys. His final performance in The Shootist was also worthy of awards attention, with the Western icon giving one of his most human turns following The Searchers as a gunslinger dying of cancer.