There are plenty ofJohn Wayneflicks out there that give the Duke his due. Who doesn’t loveTrue GritorRio Bravo?Stagecoachstill holds up after all this time, andThe Searchersis considered Wayne’s masterwork (andone of the greatest Westerns of all time). But there’s one movie inthe Duke’s extensive filmographythat deserves more praise than it ever got at the time. In fact,this one feels the most like the actor’s attempt to pass the torch on to the next generationthan any other picture he made. If you haven’t seenThe Cowboys, then it’s one you ought to give a try. This 1972 horse opera — based on the 1971 novel of the same name byWilliam Dale Jennings, who co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation — follows Wayne as Wil Anderson, an old grizzled cowboy who teaches a group of young up-and-comers the tools of the Western trade.The cost may be deadly, but the results speak for themselves.As the tagline reads, “All they wanted was their chance to be men, and he gave it to them.”
What Is ‘The Cowboys’ About?
The Cowboys, which is one of the mosthistorically accurate horse operasin John Wayne’s filmography, begins with the Duke’s Wil Andersen, an aged Montana cowboy, as he prepares for a 400-mile cattle drive with his usual crew. Things change, however, when his formerly faithful ranch hands drop the cattle drive in favor of a potential gold boom elsewhere, leaving Andersen high and dry for the most important drive of the season. With nowhere else to turn,Andersen searches for some willing hands at the local schoolhouse, but after witnessing the boys' immaturity, he decides not to waste his time. But something primal stirs within many of the boys, who show up the very next day to volunteer for the cattle drive. Andersen puts the group to the test, with the eldest, Cimarron (played by futureLongmirestarA Martinez), instantly proving his worth.Unfortunately, Cimarron is coaxed into a fight with another boy,Slim Honeycutt (inRobert Carradine’s first on-screen appearance), and Andersen refuses to hire him when he pulls a knife on his opponent. Nevertheless, he hires all the others and sends Cimarron away.
Soon after, as the boys begin to show their own worth as cowboys,a man named Asa Watts (Bruce Dern), who often goes by the alias “Long Hair,” shows up looking for work. This is only a ploy, though, and Andersen sees right through the deception, rejecting the offer. As the drive begins, Andersen leaves his wife, Annie (Sarah Cunningham), behind and takes the boys and their cook, Jebediah Nightlinger (Roscoe Lee Browne), out on the open range. The group makes decent headway before Slimslips off his horse, only for Cimarron to step in and save his life. Andersen allows Cimarron to join them — after all, he’s been trailing the outfit this whole time — and they continue on. Over the course of the cattle drive,Andersen slowly teaches the boys what it means to become a man, challenging them and treating them as such on the trail. But when Watts and his men show up, he instructs them to behave like boys so as to not come across as a threat to the band of outlaws.
The War Drama That Threw a Wrench in John Ford and John Wayne’s Friendship
Ford’s insult caused The Duke to walk off the set in tears.
As Watts’ men surround Andersen’s group, Watts confronts Andersen.This erupts into a massive fistfight that ends with Watts on the ground. However, his true colors become clear, and Watts shoots Andersen in the back after he turns to walk away. With their leader wounded, the cowboys allow Watts and his men to take the cattle for themselves. Eventually, Andersen succumbs to his wounds,but not before he notes how proud he is of the boys,having witnessed their turn into men.Though Nightlinger tries to convince the young men to turn back for home, they overpower him, retrieve their guns, and ride on after Watts and his men for revenge. Seeing their need for vengeance, Nightlinger changes his mind and decides to help the boys. With his aid,they eventually enact that revenge, rescue the herd, and complete the drive to South Dakotain Wil Andersen’s honor.
‘The Cowboys’ Is the Perfect Coming-of-Age Western, and John Wayne Is the Right Man for the Job
If there’s one thing to be said aboutThe Cowboys, it’s that there’s a lot of fun to be had here. Despite the often mature subject matter, there’s a deep levity in the small moments of this film that tie the whole picture together. The titular characters can joke with each other one moment, only to stare death in the face the next.The film is honest about the stark tension between childhood and adulthoodand oftenpresents its characters with opportunities to cross from one to the other.The traveling madam Kate Collingwood (Colleen Dewhurst) is a potential instigator in this, though she doesn’t stick around terribly long. The eleven cowboys — which include actorsStephen R. HudisandNorman Howellalongside rising stars Richard Carradine and A Martinez — are a delight on screen, and the way they hang onto Wil Andersen’s words is quite endearing. In many ways, he becomes something of a father figure for the young cowboys, and who better to teach them to be men than the Duke?
At the start of the film, there’s a childlike innocence to these young whippersnappers,who are trying too damn hard to grow upahead of schedule. By the end, any innocence they had is long gone, but that’s not to say that’s a bad thing. Their choice to avenge their fallen mentor and father figure is the ultimate cost of their boyhood. With blood firmly on their hands, they understand the harsh realities of growing up in a troubled time such as this.There’s no romance to the tough life presented here inThe Cowboys, and that’s perhaps the film’s biggest strength. Even though the joys of boyhood are occasionally explored, the brutal realities of frontier living always crash in, ever-emphasized byJohn Williams' delightful score. As the boys, especially Cimarron and Slim, slowly become more like Wil Andersen, they realize that there’s a toughness and a danger in becoming like him. Of course, in the end, they still choose so anyway.
In many ways,these boys represent the final generation to grow up with the Duke on the big screen.Wayne would die seven years afterThe Cowboyshit theaters, marking this as one of his final Hollywood Westerns. It was also one of only eight Westerns (a surprisingly small number in comparison to other years) he made that decade. Considering thathe appeared in nearly 90 Westerns totalthroughout his five-decade-long career, includinga cameo appearance onWagon Trainandhis infamous introduction toGunsmoke, that makes these last pictures quite significant. As such, this group contained some of the last young actors to work with this Hollywood legend and to grow up with the Duke while he was still making motion pictures. It’s no wonder then thatThe Cowboyshanded the reins of the horse opera’s future over to the next generation. This is evident in not just the way the story is framed, but in how Wayne’s character, Wil Andersen, effectively raises them as younger versions of himself. One almost wonders if he was trying to impart his own wisdom to young mindsbeforeClint Eastwoodhad the chance.
‘The Cowboys’ Challenges John Wayne’s Traditional Western Ending
There’s little doubt that Wil Andersen feels likeyour usual John Wayne protagonist. Pull the Duke out from any number of his motion pictures, and he’s often the same character through and through (even if there are some subtle shifts in personality).He has the same raised cadence, gruff exterior, and heart of goldthat you might expect from any of the Duke’s most famous heroes. In step with other pictures of his, such asSands of Iwo Jima, Wayne plays a father figure role here that suits him better than one might think. The way Andersen pushes his cowboys isn’t unlike how Rooster Cogburn pushes Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) inTrue Grit, only there’s perhaps a deeper love and appreciation here. Andersen seemingly had no living children of his own, yetthese eleven effectively carried on his legacy through the end. Of course, the biggest departure from many of Wayne’s usual Western tales is how Andersen goes out, not in a blaze of glory, butafter being literally shot in the back.
Unlike Rooster Cogburn, who defies death inTrue Gritand its sequel, or Ethan Edwards,who makes it back home by the end ofThe Searchers, Wil Andersen dies before the picture’s climactic finish. He doesn’t see the cattle drive through, put a bullet in the black hat, nor live long enough to ride out into the sunset. There is no happy reunion with his wife, nor is there any proud speech about how the boys stepped up to save the day. Instead,The Cowboysdefies our expectations of the types of characters that the Duke traditionally playsand forces its audience to come to grips with the harsh truth that even John Wayne won’t be around forever. WhileThe Cowboyswasn’t the first of Wayne’s pictures to kill him off, it remains one of the few in his filmography with the guts to pull the trigger. Other notable Westerns to do so includeThe Alamoand his final motion picture,The Shootist.
Of course, Wayne wasn’t meant to be inThe Cowboysoriginally. DirectorMark Rydell, an old leftie himself who despised the Duke’s overt conservatism, fought Warner Bros. when it came to casting Wil Andersen.He wanted someone who was less severe and outspoken regarding their right-wing political convictions,but the studio wouldn’t budge. According toScott Eyman’s biography,John Wayne: The Life and Legend, the director only came around after Wayne begged him to allow him the chance to play the part, promising not to talk about politics, religion, or anything else but acting. “He completely won me over,” Rydell later admitted, “and I agreed he should play the part.” Film historianEmanuel Levylater noted thatthe Duke considered makingThe Cowboys, “the greatest experience of [his] life,“which is some serious high praise considering how Wil Andersen goes out in the end. Nevertheless, Wayne’s reaction toThe Cowboysspeaks profoundly to the lasting power of this exquisite drama.
Bruce Dern Is Proud to Have Killed John Wayne in ‘The Cowboys’
When it comes to Western villains, few are as dastardly as Asa “Long Hair” Watts inThe Cowboys. While it’s Wil Andersen’s paternal relationship with the young cowboys that’s the pure bedrock of this picture, no Western is complete without a compelling villain. Though most Hollywood black hats are still somewhat honorable, Ben Wade from3:10 To Yuma(both the original and the remake) comes to mind; Bruce Dern’s Long Hair is anything but. His willingness to shoot a man, the Duke of all people, in the back and leave him to dieshows just how desperate and depraved this outlaw is. It’s no wonder that he ultimately gets what’s coming to him. BeforeThe Cowboyswas released, John Wayne had some famous words for his co-star. “When this picture comes out, and audiences see you kill me — they’re gonna hate you for this,” the Duke told Dern, and boy was he right.
“I knew on the day when I had to shoot him, when we did that scene, that he had never even had a bullet squib put on him before in his career,” Dern toldCowboys & Indians Magazinein 2015 before revealing thathe still gets hate from folks who were upset with howThe Cowboys’ handled Wayne’s character. Even Dern’s own daughter, the equally famousLaura Dern, had kids come up to her at the time,upset that her daddy killed John Wayne.The Cowboysmight’ve just been a movie, but the death of John Wayne in any fashion was a Western tragedy, particularly given that the Duke was shot in the back. “[The Cowboyswas] the only time I’ve ever been in a theater watching a film I was in where I heard an audience gasp,” Dern noted in his autobiography,Things I’ve Said, But Probably Shouldn’t Have: An Unrepentant Memoir. “They actually gasped.” That’s how you know you’ve made a compelling motion picture.
According to Bruce Dern’s memoir, John Wayne believed that audiences would gasp not because it was him getting killed in that way, but because Andersen’s death comes so early in the film. “That’s why the Ravetches [referencing married screenwritersIvan RavetchandHarriet Frank Jr.] put it halfway through the picture,” Wayne reportedly told Dern. “Scribes are always right when they’re good.” Of course, Wayne’s death itself is shocking, but we couldn’t imagineThe Cowboysending in any other way. Not only did itpropel Dern to legendary status as the only star to kill the Duke on screen, but it masterfully subverted all our expectations for the climactic finish. Now that’s good storytelling.
‘The Cowboys’ Has a Complicated Legacy — and Continued (Briefly) on Television
FollowingThe Cowboys’ theatrical release, the film received impressively mixed reviews from critics. While many considered this a classic John Wayne Western, others such asRoger Ebertexpressed their displeasure withthe film’s apparent violent message. “It’s a shame they had to go for the unlikely, violent, and totally contrived last thirty minutes,” Ebert wrotein his 1972 review. But in an odd oversight by an often attentive film critic, Ebert misses the point ofThe Cowboys.The film is not meant to act as a traditional Hollywood motion picture. Instead, it’s meant to feel a bit more realistic in its outcome. Andersen dies because Watts is dishonorable, and the cowboys are able to kill all the outlaws in the end not because of any magical plot armor, but because, unlike Watts and his ilk, they take the time to plan their attack and use their size (or lack thereof) to their advantage.Watts ultimately looses because he underestimated Andersen and his cowboys, and their love for one another.
But despite some arguments from critics,The Cowboyswas received well enough by audiences that ABC became interested in making a television adaptation. Like so many Hollywood Westerns (like the Duke’s ownHondo), the film jumped from the big screen to the small. Without the involvement of Wayne or his character,The Cowboyspremiered on the network on July 23, 2025. While most of the titular cowboys were recast, withLittle House on the PrairieandFather MurphystarMoses Gunnreplacing Roscoe Lee Browne as Jacob Nightlinger, a few returned to reprise their roles on television, namely A Martinez and Robert Carradine who played Cimarron and Slim in the original.The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-PresentbyTim BrooksandEarle F. Marshnotes thatSean KellyandClay O’Brienalso returned from the movie, though instead of playing “Stuttering” Bob and Hardy, they played Jimmy Phillips and Weedy (originally played bySam O’BrienandNorman Howell, respectively) for the television series. The show continued the story from where the movie left off, following the cowboys as they lived on in honor of their fallen mentor.
Unfortunately,The Cowboyswasn’t as big a success on television.The show was canceled in 1974 after only 12 episodes, a delayed victim of the aftermath oftelevision’s infamous rural purge. Though John Wayne has starred in plenty of exceptional Westerns,The Cowboysremainsone of the most underappreciatedin the genre. Its magnificent characters, thematic material, and stellar cast mix thoroughly into one of the most heartfelt of the Duke’s longstanding career. Even if the TV series didn’t live up to the hype of the original film,the John Wayne film has proven itself time and again as one of the most important pictures of the Duke’s career,even if it comes in only at the end. If you haven’t seen this one yet, now is certainly the time.
The Cowboysis available to rent digitally on Apple TV in the U.S.
The Cowboys
Rancher Wil Andersen is forced to hire inexperienced boys as cowhands in order to get his herd to market on time but the rough drive is full of dangers and a gang of cattle rustlers is trailing them.
