Eastwood Reveals His Favorite Performance by Rival John Wayne
Clint Eastwood and John Wayne were titans of the Western genre, but they were far from friends. Discover the surprising story of their professional clash and the one performance by 'The Duke' that Eastwood himself called a stroke of genius.
No two actors are more synonymous with the Western than Clint Eastwood and John Wayne. Yet, their on-screen legacies were built on opposing philosophies, and their personal opinions of each other were hardly glowing. The genre itself was built on the larger-than-life personas of its leading men. More than any other style of film in Hollywood, a Western's success hinged on its hero, which meant that actors who found even a little success were quickly typecast and put to work. This system launched stars like Wayne and Eastwood into the stratosphere, filling the cinematic catalog with their iconic performances.
A Clash of Hollywood Titans
The two men, however, represented opposite ends of the Hollywood spectrum. Eastwood was a restless and dynamic artist, never content to be confined to a single genre. Wayne, on the other hand, was largely comfortable staying in his lane, rarely straying from the roles that made him famous, except for his notable pursuit of an Oscar. Their differences weren't just professional; they were ideological.
As his career wound down, 'The Duke' grew increasingly frustrated with the way movies were changing. Eastwood was at the forefront of that change, reinventing the Western for a new era with his groundbreaking Dollars trilogy and later with revisionist films like High Plains Drifter and The Outlaw Josey Wales. This didn't sit well with Wayne, who didn't hold his successor in high esteem.
One-Sided Animosity
Wayne's disapproval was no secret. He once sent Eastwood a furious letter, taking the younger actor to task for how High Plains Drifter “wasn’t really about the people who pioneered the west.” The old-guard star simply concluded that Eastwood “wouldn’t understand what I was doing” by pushing the genre into new and darker territory. If 'The Duke' had a problem with another actor, he made sure they knew it, one way or another.
But Eastwood never seemed to hold any grudge against John Ford's favorite leading man. In fact, he often praised Wayne's monumental place in American film history. The actor-director even drew a comparison between one of his own Academy Award-winning dramas and one of Wayne's most celebrated films.
A Masterclass in Subtlety
While discussing his movie Mystic River with Film Comment, Eastwood explained his belief that it's better to “provoke certain emotions and let the imagination take over” rather than explicitly showing everything to the viewer. He noted, “If sometimes something is left unsaid, it’s much more picturesque in the person’s mind that’s drawn out for you, which could be disappointing because you wish it were something else.” This line of thought led him directly to The Searchers.
In the masterpiece from Wayne and Ford, there's a powerful scene where Wayne's character, Ethan Edwards, comes back to the family home after finding the body of his niece, Lucy. The audience never sees the body; instead, Edwards sternly tells the others to “never ask me what I saw.” For Eastwood, this moment perfectly illustrated his point about storytelling and showcased the character's deep complexities. “That’s one of his brilliant performances, and brave, because he wasn’t afraid to play the flat-out racism,” the four-time Oscar winner stated. “And when you look at his eyes at that moment, you know it wasn’t something good that he saw, and you’d almost resent it if he started explaining it.” Showing Lucy's body would have been a far less powerful choice. Instead, Wayne conveyed more horror and grief in a single, haunted look than any graphic scene or piece of dialogue ever could. It's that kind of nuance, delivered through a troubled expression, that defines the character and elevates the entire story, making it arguably his greatest performance.