Once again, The Duke will make the season bright for viewers throughout December.
John Wayne fans, rejoice! INSP has made a list, and checked it twice, to schedule titles for its second annual December-long stay-at-home film festival showcasing The Duke.
You can learn how to access INSP on the channel’s website. And you can check out the lineup for Duke the Halls: John Wayne Movie Month here.
December 3
Rio Lobo (1970) — Howard Hawks’ swan song as a director showcases Wayne as Cord McNally, a Civil War veteran who joins forces with two former Confederate enemies (Jorge Rivero, Christopher Mitchum) to battle land-grabbing varmints in the Texas town of Rio Lobo. If the plot of Rio Lobo seems a tad familiar, well, that’s because it is. As critic Roger Ebert noted: “We go to a classic John Wayne western not to see anything new, but to see the old done again, done well, so that we can sink into the genre and feel confident we won't be betrayed. To some degree Wayne movies are rituals, and so it is fitting that they resemble each other. El Dorado was a remake of Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1958), and Rio Lobo draws from both of them. (It is said that when Hawks called Wayne and offered to send over the script, Wayne replied, ‘Why bother? I've already made the movie twice.’)” Co-stars include Jack Elam, Jennifer O’Neill — and Sherry Lansing, who would later become the first woman ever to head a major Hollywood studio (20th Century Fox). (8 pm ET)
December 4
The War Wagon (1967) — Call it a Wild West heist movie, and you won’t be far off the mark. When cowboy Taw Jackson (John Wayne) is paroled from prison three years after being framed by greedy mining-company boss Frank Pierce (Bruce Cabot), he seeks revenge against the bad guy — and the return of his gold-rich land — with an audacious assault on the steel-plated, heavily guarded “war wagon” Pierce uses for cross-country gold dust shipments. Chief among Jackson’s co-conspirators: Lomax (Kirk Douglas), a flamboyant gunfighter who’s introduced in a saloon/brothel where he sports a dragon-bedecked silk robe while enjoying the company of two Chinese prostitutes. (When Jackson complains about the presence of the latter during a confab, Lomax grins and explains: “Can’t get more private. Neither one of them speaks a word of English.”) Slow-burning Wayne and live-wire Douglas develop a richly amusing give-and-take under the efficient direction of genre specialist Burt Kennedy, and are at their best when trading quips before, during and after gunplay. “Mine hit the ground first,” Douglas brags after they dispose of two would-be assassins. Wayne dryly responds: “Mine was taller.” The strong supporting cast includes Howard Keel, Robert Walker Jr., Keenan Wynn and — briefly, as one of those would-be assassins — Bruce Dern. (8 pm ET)
December 5
Hatari! (1962) — Director Howard Hawks takes John Wayne far from the realm of the Wild West for an easygoing comedy-drama set in the wilds of the Tanganyika plains. The Duke stars as Sean Mercer, who leads African expeditions during the 1950s to capture wild animals for zoos and circuses while riding — well, no, actually driving — for the Momella Game Company. Hardy Kruger, Elsa Martinelli, Red Buttons and Bruce Cabot are among the supporting players, and Henry Manicini’s merry tune “Baby Elephant Walk,” written especially for the movie, will stick in your head for weeks afterwards. The title, by the way, is Swahili for “danger.” (2 pm ET)
Rooster Cogburn (1975) — John Wayne once again dons the trademark eyepatch to play the role that helped him win his first and only Academy Award as Best Actor. Directed by Stuart Millar (When the Legends Die), this True Grit follow-up boasts another kind of distinction: It’s the first and only movie ever to showcase Wayne and Katharine Hepburn as co-stars. The plot — which owes more than a little to The African Queen — pairs Wayne’s cantankerous lawman with Hepburn’s Eula Goodnight, an elderly minister’s spinster daughter who relies on Cogburn’s help after outlaws kill her father. Veteran character actor Anthony Zerbe (Will Penny, TV’s The Young Riders) also figures into the mix as Breed, Cogburn’s former scout, who’s now aligned with the bad guys. (8 pm ET)
Cahill U.S. Marshal (1973) — John Wayne reunited with director Andrew V. McLaglen (The Undefeated, McLintock!) to play a widowed lawman whose impressionable sons (Gary Grimes, Clay O’Brien) fall under the influence of a notorious outlaw (George Kennedy). Truth to tell, this isn’t one of Wayne’s very best westerns — even The Duke conceded, in a 1975 interview by Tony Macklin for Film Heritage, that it “needed better writing” and “a little more care in the making” — but for more than a few fans, it remains a sentimental favorite. (10:30 pm ET)
Stagecoach (1939) — Director John Ford’s must-see masterwork arguably is the first significant western of the talking-pictures era, the paradigm that cast the mold, set the rules, and firmly established the archetypes and conventions for all later movies of its kind. Indeed, it single-handedly revived the genre in 1939 after a long period of box-office doldrums, elevating the western to a new level of critical and popular acceptance. And, not incidentally, it made John Wayne a full-fledged movie star in the lead role of Johnny Ringo, the square-jawed, slow-talking gunfighter who’s willing to hang up his shootin’ irons — who’s even agreeable to mending his ways and settling down on a small farm with a good woman — but not before he settles some unfinished business with the varmints who terminated his loved ones. (12:30 am ET)
December 10
Hondo (1953) — The one and only John Wayne movie filmed in 3-D — all the better to make audiences duck when arrows start flying — this gritty, grown-up Western (based on a Louis L’Amour story) remains, even in 2-D, one of The Duke’s most enduringly popular movies. As Hondo Lane, an Indian scout, ex-gunfighter, and dispatch rider for the cavalry whose best friend is his mangy dog, Wayne makes an indelible impression in an iconographic role, playing the rugged loner as surprisingly sympathetic to the Native American cause — with good reason, it should be noted — even while protecting a neglected woman (Geraldine Page) and her young son (Lee Aaker) from their increasingly (but not unreasonably) hostile Apache neighbors. Not surprisingly, Hondo takes a hankerin’ to the lady in jeopardy. So it’s not altogether unpleasant for him when she agrees to pretend she’s his wife — if only to keep an Apache chief (Michael Pate) from slaying our hero. (8 pm ET)
December 11
The Fighting Kentuckian (1949) — John Wayne, Oliver Hardy (yes, that Oliver Hardy, of Laurel and Hardy fame) and Vera Ralston are featured in director George Waggner’s 1949 period drama set during the aftermath of the War of 1812. Wayne stars as John Breen, a Kentucky solider determined to help French exiles who may be cheated out of their land grants after settling in Alabama. Ralston plays a French general’s beautiful daughter — who, of course, falls in love with Breen — and Hardy costars as Breen’s loyal comrade in arms. (8 pm ET)
Angel and the Badman (1947) — Writer-director James Edward Grant’s classic crowd-pleaser showcases Wayne as Quirt Evans, a notorious gunslinger who’s sorely tempted to hang up his shootin’ irons when he falls in love with a lovely young Quaker woman (Gail Russell). Unfortunately, his conversion to non-violence may be short-lived: Two pistol-packing owlhoots from Evans’ past are bound and determined to make sure our hero doesn’t have much of a future. Angel and the Badman was one of several collaborations between Wayne and Grant. Among Grant’s other screenwriting credits: Sands of Iwo Jima, Flying Leathernecks, Hondo, The Alamo, The Comancheros and McLintock! (10 pm ET)
December 12
Donovan’s Reef (1963) — As Michael Patrick “Guns” Donovan, a World War II vet who operates the eponymous bar in Haleakaloha, French Polynesia, John Wayne spends much of his time brawling with Lee Marvin, perfectly cast as his longtime buddy and fellow vet Thomas Aloysius “Boats” Gilhooley, in a hugely entertaining adventure-comedy that director John Ford memorably described as “a spoof picture – a whammy, crazy sort of thing.” The plot has something to do with a ruse to keep their friend William Dedham (Jack Warden), an expat doctor, from being finessed out of his inheritance by his snooty visiting daughter (Elizabeth Allen), but it’s just an excuse for some rough-and-tumble fun. Co-stars include Dorothy Lamour, Cesar Romero, Dick Foran and Edgar Buchanan. (2 pm)
Chisum (1970) — The Duke stars as land baron John Chisum in a drama loosely based on real-life events that defined the 1878 Lincoln County War in the New Mexico Territory. Fun fact: At one point during pre-production, Wayne suggested his old friend Ben Johnson should be cast in the role of Billy the Kid — until someone tactfully reminded him that Johnson, already in his 50s, might be a smidge too old for the part. Geoffrey Duel (brother of the late Peter Duel, star of TV’s Alias Smith and Jones) wound up playing Billy, while Glenn Corbett of Route 66 was cast as the gunslinger’s frenemy, Pat Garrett. (8 pm ET)
Red River (1948) — John Wayne may be remembered as an all-American hero, but that doesn’t mean he never slipped over to the dark side. Indeed, The Duke sounded positively proud when he explained to an interviewer, “I was playing [Charles] Laughton’s part in Mutiny on the Bounty in Red River.” No kidding: Wayne gives one of his darkest, most psychologically complex performances in Howard Hawks’ acclaimed Western, playing a cattle rancher who slowly evolves into a brutal, paranoid tyrant not unlike Laughton’s fearsome Capt. Bligh while leading a massive drive to Missouri. The upbeat ending is a cop-out — everything leads you to expect, even demand, a shootout between Wayne and the adopted son (Montgomery Clift) who leads a rebellion against his harsh rule. Still, Wayne rarely had a more richly textured role to play, and he rose to the challenge with extraordinarily impressive results. (10 pm ET)
McLintock! (1963) — The original advertising tagline says it all: “He likes his whiskey hard ... His women soft ... and his West all to himself!” Wayne gives a big, blustery, and bodaciously funny performance, brimming with seriocomic swagger, as cattle baron George Washington McLintock, the role that defined his on-screen persona for many Baby Boomers. McLintock owns all of the land and almost everything that’s built upon it in the Arizona town that has been named after him. But that doesn’t make it any easier for him to ride herd on his spirited wife (close friend and frequent co-star Maureen O’Hara) and their college-educated daughter (Stefanie Powers). And he’s scarcely more successful when it comes to anger management, especially when a farmer brandishes a lethal weapon and cues one of The Duke’s most memorable outbursts: “I haven’t lost my temper in 40 years — but pilgrim, you caused a lot of trouble this morning, might have got somebody killed ... and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth. But I won’t, I won’t.” Slight pause. “The hell I won’t!” And then he does. (1 am ET)
December 17
The War Wagon (1967) — 8 pm ET
December 18
Cahill U.S. Marshal (1973) — 8 pm ET
Stagecoach (1939) — 10 pm ET
December 19
Angel and the Badman (1947) — 2 pm ET
Rio Lobo (1970) — 8 pm ET
Rooster Cogburn (1975) —10:30 pm ET
The Fighting Kentuckian (1949) — 1 am ET
December 24
McLintock! (1963) — 8 pm ET
December 25
The Fighting Kentuckian (1949) — 1 pm ET
Rio Lobo (1970) — 3 pm ET
Hondo (1953) — 8 pm ET
Donovan’s Reef (1963) — 10 pm
December 26
The War Wagon (1967) — 2 pm ET
Hatari! (1962) — 8 pm ET
Chisum (1970) — 11 pm ET
Cahill U.S. Marshal (1973) — 1 am ET
December 31
Rooster Cogburn (1975) —8 pm ET