After we wrote about five of the best Old West cowboys and cowgirls last month, we kept thinking about our favorite movie cowboys — the men who brought the Old West into the mainstream and inspired many children to pretend to be cowboys. We decided to devote a blog post to the greatest cowboys of film this month. Here are our top five favorite movie cowboys:
5. Paul Newman — Playing characters such as Butch Cassidy and Buffalo Bill made Paul Newman a household name. One of our favorite roles of his has to be when he played John Russell in “Hombre.” Newman doesn’t talk much through the entire film, and most of his character shows through his mannerism and actions.
4. Clint Eastwood — Originally starring in spaghetti westerns, Eastwood earned his persona of “man with no name” through his roles in cowboy movies. With movies like “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” Eastwood captured the hearts of many movie goers. The cowboy boots Eastwood wore in his spaghetti westerns are still imitated today for his biggest fans.
3. Gregory Peck — Few Western stars had the range Gregory Peck did. In his first major role, he played an awful villain in “Duel in the Sun,” but he could also pull off the conventional hero role in movies like “The Big Country.” Gregory Peck’s western boots transformed him into one of the cowboys everyone remembers from the heyday of Western film.
2. Henry Fonda — Everyone remembers Henry Fonda as one of the most upstanding citizens of the Wild West, usually because of his role in “My Darling Clementine” in 1946. Fonda could play characters with less integrity, too, though: Toward the end of his Western career, he played a cold-blooded killer in “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Fonda earned the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards.
1. John Wayne — No list of movie cowboys would be complete without John Wayne. From “The Searchers” and “True Grit” to “Stagecoach” and “Rio Bravo,” John Wayne dominated the genre and came to represent the Old West for generations of movie watchers. Rumor has it that The Duke wore Lucchese boots exclusively, saying that the brand made the most comfortable pair of boots he had ever worn and he would never wear another brand.
Who’s your favorite movie cowboy? Leave us a comment and let us know!
