Best Cowboy Films of All Time

By Dr. Richard W. Slatta, the Cowboy Professor at North Carolina State University

  • Westerns are as old as the film industry itself. Films with western settings or documenting western life appeared in the 1890s. Edwin S. Porter made film history in 1903 with eight minutes of film called "The Great Train Robbery." Thousands of westerns have followed; a few very good; many very bad.
  • Saddle But what is a western film? And what is a cowboy film? This is akin to asking where is the West-- it can be a Pandora's box. I applied the following criteria in identifying outstanding cowboy films. The film must have 1. horses and preferably cattle 2. cowboys or outlaws 3. western location. Note that the relative dearth of horses and cattle eliminates "The Virginian" (1929) from contention. Using these criteria, I nominate the following as the ten best classic cowboy films. I've arranged the entries chronologically.
  • 1939 "Stagecoach" This is a winner from the opening strains of the theme song, "O, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie," to the final, exciting Indian attack in Monument Valley. Director John Ford keeps the several "lifeboat-style" plot lines running strong. We quickly feel empathy for the social outcasts, Dallas, Ringo, and the drunken Dr. Josiah Boone. The potpourri of characters, engaging and interesting, draws us into their lives. We quickly get to know them. Gatewood, the nasty, blowhard banker, is obviously a crook.
  • Ford gives us some cliches that ring true in this fanciful tale. Luke Plummer draws a dead man's hand, aces and eights, before facing Ringo in a gunfight. Horses ride over the camera so the thundering hooves are right in our faces. The sweeping grandeur of Monument Valley looms, huge and foreboding, in the background. Most importantly, John Wayne shows that he can act and establishes a credible basis for his long, distinguished career.
  • 1946 "My Darling Clementine" John Ford, like many other filmmakers, took up the challenging mythology of the Earps, Clantons, and the shootout at the O. K. Corral in Tombstone. Henry Fonda stars as Wyatt Earp in this beautifully filmed picture. Indeed, director John Ford made the landscape (again Monument Valley) a vivid part of his films, thanks to his skill at painting with the camera. Ford helped create much of the drama of the mythical West. Here he makes the audience care about Earp as a person while building him into an even greater legend.
  • Ford also contrasts the closeness and loyalty of the Earps with the bickering and nastiness of the Clantons, a truly dysfunctional family. Fonda is joined with strong performances by Victor Mature as Doc Holliday, the anti-hero who comes through in the end. Veterans Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, Ward Bond, and John Ireland also deliver. 1948 "Red River"
  • I've limited myself to just two John Wayne top-ten picks-- that's real restraint. "The Searchers" (1956) is one the very best Ford/Wayne efforts. Wayne's latter day characters, Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" (1969) and J. B. Books in "The Shootist" (1976) are wonderfully and engagingly wrought.
  • Nevertheless, I put "Red River" at the top of my John Wayne list. This classic trail drive film includes a host of wonderful actors, dramatic, poignant generational conflict. Howard Hawks provided superb direction in this, his first western. Montgomery Clift shows his stuff as Matthew Garth, his first role. Harry Carey acted in his final role in "Red River." He died before the film's release. Shots of the trail drive have a docudrama quality, enhanced by the great black-and-white photography by Russell Harlan.
  • "Red River" is the classic trail drive film. It has it all-- the dust, danger, and death. The story also takes up another epic western theme, the use of violence and force to maintain order and protect property on the frontier. Wayne is powerful and threatening as the maniacal Tom Dunson. He represents the Old West where might made right. The young Clift, portraying Wayne's stepson, represents is the future of rule by law and reason. Their conflict come to a dramatic end in the film's final riveting fight scene. Like the B westerns of yesteryear, the film has a happy ending.
  • 1952 "High Noon" Picking Gary Cooper's best film is a challenge. "The Virginian" (1929), with the young, genial Coop, is appealing. "The Westerner" (1940), with Cooper bantering with Walter Brennan as Judge Roy Bean, is a charmer. For powerful acting and drama, however, Cooper's portrayal of the besieged Will Cane is his best. Under Fred Zinnemann's skillful direction, Cooper won the second of his three Oscars.
  • Spurs "High Noon" skillfully combines traditional and modern elements. We see good fighting evil, against great odds. But we also find a crisis of conscience in Grace Kelly's character, Amy Kane. A devout, pacific Quaker, she must choose between religion and love. The bad woman with a good heart (Katy Jurado as Helen Ramirez) interjects a note of complexity.
  • The community in "High Noon" leaves the hero alone to face overwhelming odds. Both women leave in the face of the conflict, but the good woman returns and saves the hero. She resorts to violence, which goes against her faith, to save the man she loves. Right wins over wrong; love conquers. The cowardice of the "Good Christians" in the community stands in sharp contrast to traditional views of the city and city folk as civilizer. The white hats and black hats, are blurred a bit.
  • 1952 "The Lusty Men" Bulldogging A top-ten list must have a stand-out rodeo film. Perhaps the Steve McQueen/Sam Peckinpah collaboration in "Junior Bonner"? The rodeo scenes are first rate. The year 1972 brought forth three good rodeo films: Cliff Robertson as an ex-convict rodeo rider in "J. W. Coop," "The Honkers" with James Coburn and Slim Pickens, and "When the Legends Die," with Richard Widmark as a drunken rodeo promoter.
  • I still have to pick "The Lusty Men." Stellar performances by Robert Mitchum and Arthur Hunnicutt carry the day. The aging rodeo star Mitchum becomes Arthur Kennedy's mentor. Sexual tension unfolds as Mitchum gravitates toward the younger man's wife, played by Susan Hayward. All in all, we get a real sense of life "goin' down the road."
  • 1953 "Shane" Homesteaders besieged by ruthless gunmen, working for big ranchers, is a common western plot line. "Shane" with Allen Ladd as the one-name hero, is the best execution of this kind of tale. Director George Stevens does justice to the Jack Schaefer novel. An ex-gunfighter, Ladd takes up his six-shooter again in defense of good, decent people.
  • Riding off into the sunset The strong cast (Jean Arthur, Jack Palance, Van Heflin) make us respond emotionally to their characters. The powerful, unrequited attraction between Arthur and Ladd adds to the film's tension. Stevens keeps the story moving. Cinematographer Loyal Griggs won an Oscar for his fine effort.
  • Acclaim for "Shane" is not universal. Feminist critic Joan Mellen (Big Bad Wolves: Masculinity in the American Film) finds little merit. Shane has been an overrated film, embodying as it does virtually every stock attitude and clich‚ of the "B" Western: wicked large ranchers hiring guns to terrorize small homesteaders, who are often defended by a cool superman with the fastest gun around. It offers an unabashed celebration of the most destructive emblems of maleness in the fifties." Mellen obviously dislikes westerns.
  • 1962 "Lonely are the Brave" This black-and-white film brilliantly captures the venerable theme of a cowboy in conflict with modernity. Kirk Douglas stars as rebellious anti-modern hero Jack Burns. The film, adapted from Edward Abbey's novel The Brave Cowboy, does justice to Abbey's wonderfully wrought characters.
  • Douglas remains mostly at center stage. Supporting performers include Walter Matheau, George Kennedy, Carroll O'Connor as the truck driver, and Bill Bixby. Director David Miller successfully conveys the dignity and strength of the stubborn cowboy's rock-steady traditional values. "Lonely are the Brave," like "Ride the High Country" and "Monte Walsh" provides a touching treatment of the clash between old cowboy values and the changing West.
  • 1962 "Ride the High Country" Sam Peckinpah certainly deserves to appear in the top-ten list. I consider this film his best. I do not share the adoration of some critics for "The Wild Bunch," Peckinpah's slo-mo "gorification" of violence. I do, however, find his sensitive treatment of two aging cowboy/gunslingers masterful. The main plot line anticipates by three decades Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven." The oldtimers have outlived their time. In the opening sequence Joel McCrae rides into town. He is almost run down by a bizarre race pitting a camel against a horse. On the heels of that encounter, he survives a near miss with an automobile. Modernity is not kind to old cowpokes.
  • Randolph Scott, in his last role, and McCrae make us care about their crusty characters. The film also introduces young Mariette Hartley as Elsa. The innocent woman joins the two old hands to escape her tyrannical father, a religious fanatic.
  • Like any good western, indeed any good film, this one poses a moral dilemma. The two old-timers are guarding a gold shipment. Scott is tempted to steal the gold. He reminds McCrae that when a poor man dies, all he has are "the clothes of pride." McCrae, poor but proud, refuses to stoop to theft. His honor tattered but still in tact, he says "I just want to enter my house justified."
  • Peckinpah had worked mostly as a television writer. He showed his capabilities in several ways. He spent four weeks rewriting and enlivening the script. "We didn't know he was such a good writer," recalled McCrae. Taking the advice of expert technicians, he used creative flash cutting and montages to heighten the film's tension. Use using impressive rising shots from a crane. The beauty and ruggedness of the High Sierras (Inyo National Forest) provide an impressive backdrop for the action.
  • 1969 "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" Paul Newman and Robert Redford provided two great sidekick films, "The Sting" and "Butch Cassidy." Add Katherine Ross as a runaway schoolteacher, and you have grand entertainment. "Butch Cassidy" deftly blends witty comedy, tragedy, and Old West fact and legend. We follow the outlaw trio from the Hole in the Wall in Wyoming to the outback of South America. We also get enjoyable performances from Cloris Leachman (as a prostitute) and the supporting cast.
  • As a critical counterpoint, I again quote Joan Mellen, who never met a western she liked. Poorly directed and tiredly resurrecting old stereotypes buried with the Western of the forties, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would have us look once again with nostalgia upon a male image in danger of extinction. Yet despite its amateurishness and banality, it set the tone for buddy films to come in the seventies.
  • Cowboy Gear In Mellen's angry feminist Freudian view, any friendship between males (including Butch and Sundance) is evidence of homosexuality. She roundly condemns westerns for the secondary roles they assign to women. While Mellen may not like it, many good western films reflect a historical demographic reality. Men formed close bonds with other men because women were few, far between, and usually out-of-reach for a working cowhand. Much as during wartime, men develop close, but not necessarily sexual, relationships with other men. Their lives often depend on their pards. Big Bad Wolves may not be the worst book that critiques westerns, but it's certainly in the running.
  • The film won four Oscars, and the awards point to its many strengths. Oscars went to William Goldman for the fine script, to Conrad Hall for cinematography, and to Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the wonderful score. George Roy Hill was nominated as best director, but he did not win. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" will ever conjure memories of old-fashioned bicycles.
  • 1970 "Monte Wash" Based on a Jack Schaefer novel, "Monte Walsh" is an aging cowboy in conflict with a changing West of the late 1880s. In the title role, Lee Marvin arouses our sympathy and our support. Perennial bad guy Jack Palance adds interest by playing a good guy, Walsh sidekick Chet Rollins.
  • The movie is a happy blend of gritty realism and touching sentimentality. Arriving a a ranch, the cowboy's first question as he gets off his horse is "How's the grub?" The ranch scenes, from the bunkhouse to mustang and cattle roundups, ring true. The cattle boom has gone bust, so everything is fraying around the edges. As Palance observes philosophically, "nobody gets to be a cowboy forever."
  • Walsh faces many losses in his life. He loses the two people he most loves, Martine Bernard, played by Jeanne Moreau, and Rollins. He also loses his job and his way of life. Cowboy proud to the end, Walsh turns down the chance to earn big money as a performer in Colonel Wilson's Wild West Show. "I ain't spittin' on my whole life." Walsh shares much in common with the lone wolves that open and close the film.
  • The production has lots of fine touches. Mama Cass sings John Barry's sad, ironical theme song, "The Good Times Are Comin'." Veteran actor Richard Farnsworth appears in a cowboy role. David Walsh's cinematography looks like Charlie Russell paintings come to life. Indeed, the credits appear over Russell drawings. The film well conveys the starkness life of life in a dying little cattle town and the unhappy prospects for cowboys whose golden days have past.
  • 1985 "Silverado" Horseshoe Produced and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, "Silverado" opens with a blazing gunfight and never slows its breakneck pace. Kevin Kline and Scott Glenn star, but the supporting cast deserves equal billing. Kevin Costner makes a delightful young lady's man/gunfighter. Danny Glover plays a strong role in his righteous, no-nonsense quest to revenge his father's murder. Linda Hunt plays a saloon girl with her heart in the right place. Brian Dennehy is downright chilling as the homicidal sheriff.
  • The heroes, badly outnumbered but inventive, use a massive stampede to flush out the bad guys. Their smarts and superior gunplay allow them to cut down the crooks, over a period of several minutes, one by one. The action sometimes takes on a "Batman" socko flavor, but it remains absorbing. In one of the closing scenes, a hero loses his weapon. He rides up a ramp, hides, then jumps his horse onto down the bad guy, killing him.
  • There's lots of violence, but there's also lots of laughs. The film does a great job of using western cliches in a refreshing and entertaining fashion. The plot is outlandishly B western, but the actors make it A quality.
  • 1992 "Unforgiven" William Munny is another in a long line of Clint Eastwood's cold, quiet avenging killers. He raises his two kids on a forsaken Wyoming pig farm after his wife dies of smallpox. But the big-talking "Schofield Kid" (Jaimz Woolvett) comes along with news of a $1000 reward for killing two cowboys who cut up a prostitute. Munny sets aside his vows to his dead wife and rides off to Big Whiskey, Wyoming, to collect the reward.
  • The movie has comic moments not unlike another western spoof, "The Over-the-Hill Gang" (1969). The aging Eastwood has great difficult mounting his skittish horse. The big-mouthed Schofield Kid and would-be-gunslinger is woefully near-sighted. Only Munny's black sidekick, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), seems to have weathered the years gracefully.
  • Between these three and the reward, however, stands sadistic Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett (Gene Hackman). The sheriff first kicks gunfighter "English Bob" (a flamboyant Richard Harris) nearly to death and runs him out of town. He gives Eastwood the same treatment. As in many previous films, Eastwood's righteous wrath brings him back from near death. He avenges wrongs and rides out of town, as always, alone.
  • "Unforgiven" earns its R rating for language and violence. Eastwood's character is familiar. The plot and some of the scenes are absurd and a bit tasteless. (The "Schofield Kid" kills his first and only man as the victim sits relieving himself in an outhouse.) Despite its cliches and preposterous elements, the film is powerful and compelling. Eastwood masterfully conjures many images of western mythology-- violence, justice, loyalty.
  • Also-rans: Many of the best cowboy films pit individualism and respect for tradition against the growing constraints of modernity. Anyone who likes "Monte Walsh," will also enjoy Charlton Heston as "Will Penny" (1968). Heston acted badly in his share of turkeys, but here he's first rate.
  • You will also enjoy two other lighter treatments of the same theme. Clint Eastwood does a wonderful job as "Broncho Billy" (1980). "The Electric Horseman," (1979) with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda also highlights cowboy independence.
  • I limited the number of gunfighter films, or "The Gunfighter" (1950) and "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) would likely make the list.
  • If you love the old-time B-western stars, you can get a concentrated dose in three films. You can enjoy performances by several great old stars in "The Over-the-Hill Gang" (1969). "The Wild West" (1975) and "Meanwhile Back at the Ranch" (1976) splice together footage from oaters of the thirties and forties into a hilarious new plots.
  • Well there you have it, pardner. Keep an eye on late-night TV listings, and you'll still see these and other classics. Ride on over to your local video outlet and rent a few for a gala evening of cowboy fun. You'll enjoy them, maybe even more than you did a few decades ago.
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