Wayne had battled cancer in the past and was ill while the film was being made, with production shut down for two weeks. In the coming years he would undergo heart surgery as well as further operations for cancer. As Books he gives a poignant yet never overly sentimental performance.
Books is a hard man who s lived a hard life, like many Wayne characters before him and it s fitting that the opening of the film is a montage of clips from earlier Wayne films used to depict Books past; it adds even more to the aptness of this being his last performance. This isn t a big action film, it s a film about relationships and dealing with one s own impending demise. During the film Books encounters many looking to make money from his death; a newspaper man who thinks he can make a name for himself writing Books life story, an ex-lover looking to marry him and live off his name, even an undertaker who offers to bury him for free knowing he ll make a killing charging people to view his corpse.
The core of the film, however, is his relationship with Mrs Rogers and her son. Lauren Bacall as Mrs Rogers more than holds her own with Wayne. The two characters are often at odds with each other yet there is a mutual, if in the case of Mrs Rogers unspoken, admiration between them.
One gets the feeling that had they met under different circumstances, a friendship might have blossomed. It s an understated relationship, as much about what they don t say as what they do and it s the kind of thing that rewards repeat viewings. I ve never been impressed with Ron Howard as an actor and his performance is the weakest here.
As Gillom Rogers he s required to show a range of emotions that he simply lacks the ability for, and while it would perhaps be unfair to say he s bad, a better actor could have added greatly to the film as a whole. Watching this, it s no surprise that Howard decided he was better suited to work behind the camera. The best of the supporting cast are Harry Morgan, Richard Boone, and James Stewart.
Morgan is the town Marshal, a man who can hardly contain his pleasure at the news of Books impending demise. In the hands of a lesser actor the role would have been mere comic buffoonery but Morgan, while certainly comical, brings much more to the cowardly lawman than that. Marshal Thibido is almost as much of a vulture as those looking to make money from Brooks death.
Richard Boone was a friend of Wayne s and agreed to do the film purely because of that, as did James Stewart. His performance is little more than a cameo but he manages to imbue Mike Sweeney with more menace in two short scenes than most actors could in a whole film. Playing the doctor who gives Books the bad news is James Stewart and the screen time they share are some of the most moving moments in the film.
Stewart draws on his friendship with Wayne to add to the character and the script references , the film the pair made together fifteen years before. As with Bacall there is much unsaid and the scenes work so well because of their simplicity. Downplaying the emotion inherent in the story was a conscious decision by director Don Siegel.
Realising the risk of the film being overly sentimental, he gets the cast to give more restrained performances than a less seasoned director would have and makes the film a more powerful and moving experience because of it. Most actors as they get older move into supporting roles. That Wayne was still headlining films while in his late sixties says volumes about his movie star status.
His ability as an actor has often been questioned but his performance in ranks alongside the best of the genre and is a fitting finale to the career of perhaps the greatest movie star Hollywood ever produced. He made a string of classic films that started with in 1939 and culminated with in 1976. His name appeared on the annual top 10 money-making stars list a record twenty-five times between 1949 and 1974, topping the list four times.
This article marks the end on my journey through Duke s career but I ll shortly be taking a look at Warner s recently released John Wayne Film Collection that contains six of the star s less well known films made between 1939 and 1953, all of which are available for the first time on DVD in the US. Have Warner s unearthed any lost Wayne classics? We ll see.
Wayne had battled cancer in the past and was ill while the film was being made, with production shut down for two weeks.
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