Yee-haw!

I remember that evening like it was yesterday. February 8, 1989, a Thursday. The night Augustus McCrae died.

I watched all four installments of the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove that week, which was uncharacteristic of me because I didn't like Westerns movies. I didn't like Western novels, either, but because Larry McMurtry was one of my favorite writers, I'd read his magnum opus four years earlier and been moved almost beyond words. But that didn't mean I was now a Western fan of books or movies, and I was planning to bypass the TV adaptation when I first heard about it. But when casting was announced and I read that Robert Duvall was on board, I knew I had a moral obligation to tune in.

I was already a blubbery mess by the time Gus's leg was amputated by the exhausted doctor in that Miles City hotel. I even knew what was going to happen next, but that didn't matter -- McMurtry's characters had me in their grip once again. By the time McCrae opened his eyes for the last time and said to his old partner Woodrow Call (Tommy Lee Jones), "'I God, Woodrow, it's been quite a party, ain't it?" I was wringing out my third bath towel. As the final credits rolled, I knew I was a changed man at 36. I liked Westerns.

That means that for the last 26 years, I've been taking a crash course in Western movies to make up for decades of lost time. I could sit here and pontificate on the role of the Western in contemporary American culture and other grad school topics, but I have a better idea. Let's get right down to it with some of my favorite movies, lines, and moments. (Warning: a few spoilers ahead.)

Who else to begin reflections of the movie Western with than John Wayne? I didn't like him for a very long time. I thought he was a bad actor (before I even saw much of anything he'd done), he walked funny, and his politics were somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. Well, I got one right, at least. He turns out to be a terrific actor with just the right walk for a man of his mythic stature. My favorites are Red River and Rio Bravo. Red River is a classic in every sense, while Rio Bravo isn't quite. Ricky Nelson's performance might make Glen Campbell in True Grit look like Olivier, but my life is richer for having seen him step out on that porch just as Angie Dickinson sends a vase of flowers crashing through the window. I also like Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and the aforementioned Grit. He was never better than in The Searchers, a movie I want to like as much as the critics and film polls, but when Wayne lifts Natalie Wood up in his arms at the end and says, "Let's go home, Debbie," I want to yell at the screen, "That's not who you are! You haven't earned that!" Finally, I hate to say it because it was such a fitting plot idea for the Duke's final film, but The Shootist really disappointed me. It had the look and feel of a TV show (even Wayne reportedly complained to the director about that), and that final climactic shootout just felt so contrived. Those three bad guys were only there to give Wayne an excuse to go out in a blaze of glory. I never could figure them out. Their stories were woefully underwritten.

Just as Wayne is our finest Western star, I also agree that John Ford is our one great Western director. He is to Monument Valley what Wile E. Coyote is to anvils -- you can never see one without thinking of the other. My pick for the all-time best American Western is Ford's My Darling Clementine. I'd be here all day trying to explain why. Every shot is perfect. Even Ford's characteristic wit, which I usually cringe at, is refreshingly understated. Twice, someone remarks to Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) about the fragrant open air, and each time he reluctantly replies, "That's me. Barber." My favorite exchange is when Henry Fonda says, "Mac, you ever been in love?" and Mac says, "No I've been a bartender all my life." How perfect -- even profound -- is that? Victor Mature, who played Doc Holliday, was too humble when, upon being rejected by a country club years later because he was an actor, he told them, "I'm not an actor -- and I've got sixty-four films to prove it!" He did a great job. The final image of the fence in the foreground (civilization) and the distant Monuments (the untamed West) is one of my favorite closing shots of any movie. (Still, I wonder what Clementine [Cathy Downs] is doing in the middle of nowhere. How's she going to get back to town?)

OK, let's pick up the pace a little:

Ride the High Country -- I think this is a better Peckinpah Western than The Wild Bunch. They're both elegies, but that final shot of Judd (Joel McCrae) sinking slowly down to die as he casts a last look behind him to the mountains he loves is as elegiac and moving as movies get.

Shane -- This is one Western I don't think you have to be a fan of Westerns to enjoy. Alan Ladd makes a great hero, but Jack Palance as Wilson is one villain who should be on everyone's list of cinematic bad guys, yet I rarely see him there. Wilson's killing of Stonewall (Elisha Cook Jr.) in the middle of a muddy street is a triumph of suspense and tragedy. Speaking of elegies, who can forget little Joey (Brandon de Wilde) at the very end, calling out to the wounded Shane as the gunfighter rides away, "Shane! Come back!"

The Westerner -- If you only know Walter Brennan as a crotchety old limping codger (see Rio Bravo for starters or The Real McCoys on TV), you need to see a younger Brennan hold his own with Gary Cooper in this one. He won the first of three Oscars as Judge Roy Bean, and it's just plain scary watching his expression flash from friendly to murderous in about two seconds. That climactic scene in the theater gives me absolute chills whenever I see it. It's amazing that Brennan allows us to feel a measure of sympathy for Bean in his backstage death scene. (For some reason, he always reminds me of Foghorn Leghorn when he sits out in the auditorium wearing his military uniform, waiting for the curtain to rise.)

Clint Eastwood movies: I don't think his acting is up there with the Duke's, except for one movie -- Unforgiven. He was terrific in that. The screenplay has to be one of the best examples of airtight storytelling, from the plot that coils in on itself like a snake to the period vernacular of the dialogue. For my money, Unforgiven includes the single best line Eastwood ever spoke on film: When the Schofield Kid, trying to sound tough after his first killing, says, "Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming," Eastwood gives us a nice long pause before replying, "We all have it coming, kid." His brief speech in the saloon before gunning down just about everyone in sight is the stuff of movie legend. I won't even spoil this one.

More concerning Clint: The Outlaw Josey Wales was recommended to me by a friend, and I'm really glad he did. Another Eastwood movie I enjoy is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I resisted "spaghetti Westerns" if only because the term sounded so, I don't know, un-American. But Eli Wallach as Tuco gives some of his best work, and the ultimate three-way showdown with Wallach, Eastwood, and Lee Van Cleef is a real nail biter. I also liked Hang 'em High for its original plot. (I once saw a middle-aged woman wearing a T-shirt with two perfectly positioned nooses printed over her chest with the words "Hang 'em High" above them. Let's just say her hangin' days were over and leave it at that.)

Honorable mentions: The Ox-Bow Incident, High Noon (the movie Wayne and Howard Hawks hated so much that they up and made Rio Bravo as a rebuttal), the Coen brothers' remake of True Grit (which, heretical though it may be, I prefer to the original), 3:10 to Yuma (here, too, I like the remake more), and Bad Day at Black Rock (a contemporary Western, but with all the hallmarks of a classic Western thriller).

I know I'm leaving out so much, and I'll kick myself for it later, but I'm not sure how many of you would really want a Part 2. I will say, though, that some Westerns have never felt like real Westerns to me. Dances With Wolves, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Silverado, Doc, Little Big Man -- I enjoyed them all (well, all except Doc, which carried the term "revisionist" to extremes), but something is lacking in them, and I can't pin down what it is (though Little Big Man comes closest to the real thing for me). Oh, and you can add The Outlaw to this list as well. Howard Hughes wasn't half as concerned with the West as he was with making Jane Russell a star. Well, he picked the right genre for her. Russell provided her own Monuments with their own valley. I doubt male filmgoers at the time could have told you who else was in the movie, what it was about, what theater they were sitting in, or what their name was.

Well, pilgrim, we've come to the end of the trail. It only seems fitting to let the immortal John Wayne have the last word on the subject:

"Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!"