John Wayne Rejected Lonesome Dove; Perhaps the Western Genre Was the Better for It.
The Western genre struggled greatly in the 1980s. A major blow to the genre was the 1980 release of Heaven's Gate, a $44 million production that barely brought in $4 million at the box office. For some time, viewers had been turning away Westerns; Heaven's Gate basically confirmed that the Western was formally dead. In Hollywood's golden age, the genre had a fantastic run; but, younger viewers felt it was out of current by the 1960s.
Of course, John Wayne, the man who starred in more than eighty Westerns over his career, was one of the major stars of Westerns. John Wayne is practically identified with the Western genre. One of John Wayne's most moving and powerful performances was his last one in The Shootist in 1976, where he portrayed a gunfighter dying of cancer.
Laredo Was Pitched as the "Final" Western Street
Ironically, as John Wayne was the first choice, he might have saved Heaven's Gate if he had starred in the movie. Among the many outstanding projects John Wayne famously passed on were High Noon and Blazing Saddles.
Based on a Larry McMurtry screenplay, John Wayne was presented an intriguing project called The Streets of Laredo in the early 1970s. Hot up-and-coming director Peter Bogdanovich at the time wanted to oversee a classic Western epic and assemble the most eminent names in the field: James Stewart, Henry Fonda, and John Wayne. John Wayne turned down the movie because he disliked the ending, even while Fonda and Stewart said yes. John Wayne, who was still at the height of his performance, was not ready for a clearly dismal view of the Wild West at the end of the script.
McMurtry penned a more than 300 page screenplay. Bogdanovich had to cut it in half, most likely for the best, but even then John Wayne was still dubious. John Wayne thought the movie lacked a fitting ending for his Western career, and Bogdanowicz dropped the project since he refused to reinterpret the part with another actor.
Years later, McMurtry turned his screenplay into his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Lonesome Dove and obtained his rights back-off.
Lonesome Dove became the 1980s Best Western.
Thanks in part for John Wayne turning it down, Lonesome Dove would become the best Western of the 1980s. Robert Duvall as Gus (the part originally meant for James Stewart) and Tommy Lee Jones as Call, the character John Wayne passed on starred the miniseries that ran on CBS in 1989. Considered one of the best Westerns ever produced, the miniseries was a huge hit with viewers and critics both.
Apart from Duvall and Jones, the dream team cast for the miniseries consisted in Diane Lane, Anjelica Huston, Chris Cooper, Danny Glover, and a young Steve Buscemi among many other well-known performers.
Though Westerns may have had a downturn in the 1980s, Lonesome Dove helped to bring the genre back alive. This is a layered, emotional, beautifully mounted piece that might have helped the genre have a fleeting return on the big screen in the 1990s. Great Westerns including Dances with Wolves, Tombstone, and Clint Eastwood's last "oater, Unforgotten," arrived a few years after Lonesome Dove aired.
Empty Dove's Acclaim Shows John Wayne Was Mistaken in Rejecting It
John Wayne starred in many outstanding Western films including Rio Bravo, The Searchers, and True Grit, and had a long and successful career. But the praise Lonesome Dove received shows John Wayne ought to have embraced the part. John Wayne would have been starring with old friends like James Stewart, McMurtry was already a highly regarded writer, Bogdanovich was one of the hottest directors in Hollywood. In his career, John Wayne was known to make some poor choices; passing on Lonesome Dove was among them.
Though John Wayne turned down the part, his rejection of McMurtry's screenplay started a sequence of events that resulted in Lonesome Dove. Tommy Lee Jones gives one of his best performances; it is difficult to see anyone else performing the part better, even John Wayne himself.
Western viewers are constantly fascinated about what a movie including John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda would have had. For those readers, they all appeared in the 1962 movie How the West Was Won, which in its own right pays homage to the genre. The movie centers on the West and features all three of those Western icons.
James Stewart and John Wayne would ultimately collaborate one last time in the Western The Shootist.
