True Grit **** (1969, John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Kim Darby, Dennis Hopper, Robert Duvall, Jeff Corey, Strother Martin) – Classic Movie Review 3170

Director Henry Hathaway’s lumbering but loved old-style 1969 Western True Grit stars John Wayne in one of his most iconic performances for which he won his only Best Actor Oscar as the fat, old, drunken and one-eyed but hard-nosed U.S. Marshal Reuben J ‘Rooster’ Cogburn.

Kim Darby co-stars as the young stubborn teenage tomboy Mattie Ross, who hires the Marshal to help her track down the culprits behind the murder of her father in a journey quest that takes them through Indian territory.

The Academy voters were perhaps undoubtedly making a sentimental Oscar decision in favour of old favourite Wayne, who had cancer. But, still, it’s not entirely a sentimental result for he gives a wonderfully boisterous, life-affirming turn that helps to propel the regulation Western movie through its slow start and gradual pickup until it finally delivers satisfyingly in the last half hour.

Darby is winsome enough, and luckily there are Dennis Hopper (as ‘Moon’), Robert Duvall (as Ned Pepper), Jeff Corey (as Tom Chaney) and Strother Martin (as Colonel G Stonehill) to beef up the tasty cast, though legendary country music pop singer Glen Campbell proves an eager but modest actor here as La Boeuf, the Texas Ranger who joins Wayne in helping Mattie.

Wayne personally picked Campbell, which gave him a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer and a hit with the title song True Grit (Elmer Bernstein music, Don Black lyrics), which was nominated for an Oscar. He performed it live at that year’s Academy Awards Show.

Marguerite Roberts bases her screenplay on the novel by Charles Portis. Lucien Ballard’s cinematography and Elmer Bernstein’s score are huge assets to the project. Also in the cast are Jeremy Slate, Alfred Ryder, John Fiedler, Ron Soble, James Westerfield, John Doucette, Donald Woods, Edith Atwater, Carlos Rivas, Isobel Boniface, John Picard, Ken Renard, Jay Ripley, Myron Healey and Kenneth Becker.

Wayne was back for a sequel in 1975 with Rooster Cogburn. A True Grit TV series followed in 1978 with Warren Oates. And True Grit was remade by the Coen Brothers in 2010.

Wayne had only one previous Best Actor Oscar nomination – for Sands of Iwo Jima in 1949.

Glen Campbell played rhythm guitar on the Frank Sinatra classic ‘Strangers in the Night’, on Shelley Fabares’s April 1962 number one hit ‘Johnny Angel’ and on the soundtrack of Viva Las Vegas (1964) starring Elvis Presley. His many hits from the late 1960s and 1970s, on Capitol records, include “Gentle on My Mind,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Hey, Little One,” “Galveston,” “Honey, Come Back,” “Try a Little Kindness,” and ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’. He has sold 50 million records and has received 12 gold albums.

He died on 8 August 2017, age 81, after a long and courageous battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Charles Portis, the True Grit novelist, died on 17 February 2020 at 86. He also wrote the novel that provided the basis for Norwood (1970), which reunited Glen Campbell and Kim Darby.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3170

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