In honor of John Wayne’s 119th birthday earlier this week, Fawesome TV has put together a list of some of the Duke’s greatest Western hits, free of charge. From his collaborations with John Ford and Howard Hawks, spanning from the black-and-white era to true-blue Technicolor, the streaming platform allows for anyone to celebrate his decades-long Hollywood career through the month of May — and the month is almost over.
While some of these pictures will no doubt remain on the platform throughout June as well, Fawesome TV has only guaranteed that its “John Wayne collection” — which includes more films than we could list here — will be highlighted through the rest of this month. So, it’s time to saddle your horses and get out on the open trail, because there’s no better time to revisit these Western adventures than this weekend. Even better, Fawesome TV doesn’t require a subscription — the app itself is entirely free.
Director Howard Hawks famously described El Dorado as “no story, just characters,” and that’s certainly what audiences got. Robert Mitchum starred opposite Wayne as the pair played old friends, Sheriff J.P. Harrah and gunman Cole Thornton, respectively. El Dorado is the typical Western fare, as the two men defend a local rancher from a rival cattleman trying hard to encroach on their land and take it as their own. It’s an age-old story, but one that continues to entertain.
Wayne and Mitchum were an unlikely on-screen pair, but “the big two” (as the poster referred to them) leaned into their respective Western styles for this Hawks picture. While often forgotten compared to some of Wayne’s other ’60s features, it’s a Western worth the watch for those hoping for something that’s equal parts different and the same from the Duke’s typical material. James Caan also stars.
Although not John Ford’s finest collaboration with the Duke, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon has long been praised by Western aficionados. When Captain Nathan Brittles (Wayne) is about to retire from his post in the U.S. Cavalry, conflict with a nearby band of Indians impedes his resignation. Forced to deliver the remaining women from Fort Starke to safety, Brittles finds himself in a bind.
Ironically,** Ford didn’t initially want Wayne to star in the picture due to his particular brand of “acting.”** However, the Duke surprised everyone involved, and delivered a fine performance in the end. Though certainly not Ford and Wayne’s most popular picture, it’s full of flirtatious romance and a complex leading man that keep the whole thing moving firmly long.
One of the few popular John Wayne films to be available in the public domain, Angel and the Badman was written and directed by James Edward Grant, and featured the Duke as the title “badman.” Of course, wounded gunslinger Quirt Evans isn’t so bad, especially not when his Quaker “angel,” Penny Worth (Gail Russell), nurses the gunman back to health. Forced to choose between his guns and his love, Quirt is brought to the end of himself as trouble closes in.
Angel and the Badman was the first Western that the Duke produced himself. Unlike many of his other pictures at the time, it was an intimate drama that challenged the macho gunslinger attitude and is far more dramatic than it is action-packed. But don’t let that fool you, it’s a great film — one that’s slated to be remade later this year.
Near the tail end of the Duke’s career, Wayne decided to make motion pictures a whole family affair. With his sons by his side both behind-the-scenes and on-camera, he starred as the title hero in George Sherman’s Big Jake. When outlaw John Fain (played by Have Gun — Will Travel star Richard Boone) kidnaps Jacob McCandles’ grandson, the old cowboy comes out of his exile to bring his wife, Martha (Maureen O’Hara), back the light in her life.
Big Jake was a bit controversial for Wayne at the time because it was the Western star at his most violent. After criticizing films like The Wild Bunch for their overly gory nature, Wayne’s “Big Jake” kills a man with a pitchfork. Seriously. Of course, by today’s standards, Big Jake is still probably pretty tame, and a solid horse opera perfect for an evening in.
Another one of Wayne and Ford’s earlier Westerns, Fort Apache remains beloved by many nearly 80 years later. The first installment of the pair’s unofficial “Cavalry” trilogy (which continued with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and concluded with Rio Grande), the film followed Wayne as Captain Kirby York who is paired with Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda) in dealing with the local Apache tribe. The problem is, Thursday wants nothing to do with the Indians while York has come to respect them.
This is probably partly why *Fort Apache *still boasts such a high audience score. Not only is the film a classic Western in every sense, but it was notable in its portrayal of Native Americans, offering them a human dignity and respect that other pictures had not. Though Ford had a complicated history in his depictions of Indians on the screen, Fort Apache was a step in the right direction — and, of course, Wayne is great here as always.
The Western that earned the Duke his Oscar, True Grit is a stunning picture that, for many, is the definitive John Wayne adventure. When U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Wayne) is hired by young Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) to hunt down her father’s killer, the pair are soon joined by Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Glen Campbell). Together, they hunt Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey) across the turbulent American West.
Wayne loved Rooster Cogburn so much that he was the only character he ever reprised on the big screen. While the cash-grab sequel is a bit lackluster by comparison, the original True Grit is a masterwork of Western filmmaking that was certainly worth that Academy Award. Of all the Duke’s most popular characters, Rooster may be his best.
While Wayne would conclude his on-screen tenure in 1976 with The Shootist, his initial “passing the torch” film, The Cowboys, is arguably his best Western send-off. When Montana rancher Wil Andersen (Wayne) hires a bunch of boys to help him drive cattle across the state, he teaches them to become men on the open trail. Along the way, the cowboys are stalked by the merciless Asa Watts (Bruce Dern), who quickly sets his sights on Andersen’s property.
One of only a few Wayne-led pictures to spawn a television continuation, The Cowboys** was mighty controversial in its day** for being one of the only films to, well, if you haven’t seen it yet, we won’t spoil it for you. Let’s just say that this Mark Rydell film is a bit shocking toward the end, and certainly got audiences talking after leaving the theater. It may just do the same for you.
The Western that put John Wayne on the map, Stagecoach is an excellent John Ford film that helped elevate horse operas from B-picture fodder to A-list material. From the moment Wayne’s “Ringo Kid” arrives on the scene, we know that this film is something special. Ford caught lightning in a bottle with this one, and as the small band of unlikely travelers ride across Apache territory, things go haywire in no time.
Few Westerns are as important to the overall genre as Stagecoach, and it was with this film that the Duke found his true calling. Sure, he had starred in Old West pictures before, but this film brought everything to a bigger level. No longer was the Western simply mindless entertainment, it was now a genuine romantic and emotionally complex genre. To this day, it’s still one of the best.
Arguably one of Howard Hawks’ finest achievements as a filmmaker, Rio Bravo was his and Wayne’s answer to High Noon, a film neither particularly cared for. Rather than watching a lone lawman beg for help from those he’d sworn to protect, the pair believed that Wayne’s Sheriff John T. Chance ought to demand help, with an eclectic group of deputies around him to protect their small Texas town. The results more than speak for themselves as Wayne is paired with the likes of Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan, and Angie Dickinson.
Rio Bravo has enough action, suspense, romance, and overall Western flair to fascinate, entertain, and rouse audiences. In many respects, it’s Wayne’s perfect lawman picture, proving that he can play the sheriff just as well as the soldier, the gunslinger, or the wounded old vet. A Western masterpiece that keeps getting better, Rio Bravo is a must-see for Duke fans everywhere.
Of course, even Rio Bravo must bend the knee to** both John Wayne and John Ford’s greatest motion picture**. The Searchers is everything you could hope for in a Western. When former Confederate soldier Ethan Edwards (Wayne) returns home to find his family murdered by Comanches and niece missing, he partners up with Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter) to track her down across the wild frontier. For years, they obsessively search for young Debbie (Natalie Wood), at risk of losing themselves in the pursuit.
Wayne stated on many occasions that The Searchers was his favorite of his films, and it’s often been considered one of the greatest movies ever made. That’s why we ranked it #1 on our list of the 20 greatest Western masterpieces. It really is that good, and if there’s one film to revisit in honor of the Duke this May, it would undoubtedly be this one.
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.