Young Wayne Blazed a Big Trail
Discussing John Wayne's first major film, The Big Trail, with Richard Schickel.
Categories: Westerns
By: Henry Cabot Beck 06/01/2008
It’s a really well-made movie in its way. I think the first thing you notice, looking at it from today’s perspective, is John Wayne is so gorgeous—he’s just the most beautiful man you ever saw in your life. He can’t act all that great, but he’s a beautiful specimen. But who had ever heard of him? You’ve got this big picture with a star that nobody’s ever heard of. You can’t just blame Tyrone Power Sr. And Wayne is not yet the practiced actor that he would become. John Wayne became a great film actor, but he wasn’t that then. He’s awkward, very kiddish. There are some scenes that are overwritten but very sweet, like when he talks about being out in the wild, twilight falling—it’s awkward but very touching. He does well with the action scenes. I suppose if things had gone right with The Big Trail commercially, he would have been a major star much sooner. As it was, he sank down into B-Westerns and had to fight his way back.
It’s not a bad debut, because he’s so handsome and so earnest, and sometimes, that’ll take you a long way.
He seemed to have everything in place in The Big Trail—the hand gestures, the pauses in the dialogue that were so much a part of Wayne as we knew him later on, everything but the Wayne stride.
He had naturalness, but he lacked technique at that point. Technique is something you learn—some people never learn it, but he did.
The character that established him, The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach, was roughly the same age as the character he played in The Big Trail years before. They even both shared the same revenge motivations. But one made him a star, and the other one didn’t.
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