96 Fun Facts About Western Movie

Which 1903 film, made for the Edison company, is usually cited as the beginning of the Western genre?

The Great Train Robbery, directed by Edwin S. Porter for Edison in 1903, has outlaw Justus Barnes fire straight into the camera, a shot projectionists could run at the start or the end.

Which 1939 John Ford film made John Wayne a mainstream star after a decade of headlining B-Westerns?

Stagecoach was the one; producer Walter Wanger wanted Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich instead, and Ford refused to replace Wayne.

Which landscape in the American Southwest did John Ford make his signature Western backdrop from 1939 onward?

Monument Valley, on the Arizona-Utah border, stayed Ford's backdrop through Cheyenne Autumn (1964), even for a story set on the plains of Texas.

What is John Wayne's escaped-convict character called in Ford's 1939 breakthrough film?

The Ringo Kid has broken out of prison to avenge his father and brother, killed by Luke Plummer; the marshal who arrests him ends up stampeding the horses so he can ride free.

John Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, in 1907 under which first name?

Marion Robert Morrison became 'Duke' as a boy: firemen in Glendale named him after the Airedale terrier that went everywhere with him, and he preferred it to Marion for life.

For which role did John Wayne win his only Best Actor Oscar?

Rooster Cogburn in True Grit brought the Oscar in 1970; accepting it, Wayne joked that he would have put on the eyepatch 35 years earlier had he known.

What was John Wayne's final film, in which he played an ageing gunfighter dying of cancer?

The Shootist (1976) turned out to be Wayne's last film: he had beaten lung cancer in 1964, but stomach cancer killed him in June 1979, two months after a final appearance at the Oscars.

Which 1952 Western starring Gary Cooper unfolds in real time as a marshal waits for a gang to arrive?

High Noon counts down almost in real time to the noon train; the marshal's pacifist Quaker bride, played by Grace Kelly, ends up shooting one of the gang to save him.

Why did John Wayne turn down the lead in Fred Zinnemann's 1952 marshal-alone Western?

He saw it as an anti-blacklist allegory, and Wayne backed the blacklist: writer Carl Foreman was barred after refusing to name names to HUAC, and Wayne said he never regretted helping drive him abroad.

Which singer performed 'Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'' over the opening credits of a 1952 Western?

Tex Ritter sang Dimitri Tiomkin's Oscar-winning theme in the film and again at the Academy Awards, yet Frankie Laine's cover version became the bigger pop hit.

Which 1956 John Ford film was named the greatest American Western by the AFI in 2008?

The Searchers topped the AFI's 2008 list of Westerns; Wayne's recurring line 'That'll be the day' stuck with a young Buddy Holly, who turned it into a hit song.

Who plays the abducted niece Debbie in Ford's 1956 masterpiece?

Natalie Wood plays the teenage Debbie; because the search for her lasts years, her younger sister Lana Wood plays Debbie as a child in the early scenes.

John Sturges's 1960 gunfighters-defend-a-village film is a remake of which Japanese classic?

Seven Samurai (1954) had itself been released in the United States under the title The Magnificent Seven.

Which actor plays Chris Adams, leader of The Magnificent Seven?

Yul Brynner plays Chris Adams, the black-clad leader of the seven; he wore a near-identical costume again as the killer robot Gunslinger in Westworld (1973).

Which actor played the coffin-dragging gunman Django in 1966 and cameoed in Tarantino's Django Unchained?

Franco Nero played Django, whose coffin turns out to hold a machine gun; the 1966 hit inspired more than 30 unofficial 'sequels' that borrowed the name.

Which Spanish province's Tabernas Desert stood in for the American Southwest in many spaghetti Westerns?

Almería's desert played the frontier so often that film sets built there survive as Western theme parks, with staged gunfights for the visitors.

What nickname is given to Clint Eastwood's poncho-wearing gunman in Sergio Leone's three 1960s Westerns?

The Man with No Name was a marketing invention of the US distributor, United Artists: on screen the character is called Joe, Manco and Blondie in turn.

Who plays 'the Bad' and 'the Ugly' alongside Clint Eastwood's 'Good'?

Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach play Angel Eyes and Tuco; Wallach recalled nearly dying on the shoot when he swigged from a bottle of acid left beside his soda.

Who composed the score for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

Ennio Morricone built the main theme on a two-note coyote howl and gave each lead his own version: flute for the Good, ocarina for the Bad, human voices for the Ugly.

Where is the gold buried in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

Sad Hill Cemetery, the circular graveyard of the final three-way duel, was built for the film in Burgos, Spain, and restored half a century later by an association formed to save it.

Which usually heroic actor played the villain Frank in Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West?

Henry Fonda is introduced gunning down a family; he had planned to wear brown contact lenses, but Leone wanted audiences to see those famous blue eyes on a killer.

Which future horror director helped Sergio Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci plot Once Upon a Time in the West?

Dario Argento and Bertolucci spent months watching classic Westerns with Leone, then packed the story the three devised with references to them.

Who wrote the original screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

William Goldman spent eight years researching the outlaws, then sold the script for $400,000, at the time the most ever paid for an original screenplay.

In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which country do the outlaws flee to?

Bolivia is where the film sends them, skipping the years the real pair first spent ranching in Argentina; they are believed to have died in a Bolivian shootout in 1908.

Which song plays over the bicycle scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head won the Best Song Oscar; B.J. Thomas sang the film take while fighting laryngitis, which is why it sounds huskier than the hit single.

Who plays Bart, the railroad worker made sheriff, in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles?

Cleavon Little plays Bart, a part first meant for Richard Pryor, who stayed on the film as one of its writers.

What is the name of the town the railroad must pass through in Blazing Saddles?

Rock Ridge is the town; when quicksand forces the railroad to reroute through it, attorney general Hedley Lamarr schemes to drive the residents out and grab the land.

Which bandleader cameos in the desert with his orchestra in Blazing Saddles?

Count Basie and his orchestra turn up in the middle of the desert playing 'April in Paris' as the new sheriff rides by, one of the film's deliberate anachronisms.

Dances With Wolves was the feature directing debut of which star?

Kevin Costner directed, produced and starred after several studios turned the project down, wary of an overlong script in a genre they thought had gone out of fashion.

Which Native American language is spoken through much of Dances With Wolves?

Lakota is spoken by the Sioux characters; Doris Leader Charge of Sinte Gleska University translated the dialogue and coached the cast.

Who plays the sadistic sheriff 'Little Bill' Daggett in Unforgiven?

Gene Hackman had pledged to avoid violent roles, but Eastwood persuaded him to play Little Bill, and the part won him his second Oscar.

What is the name of the Wyoming town in Unforgiven?

Big Whiskey is the town; William Munny rides there for a bounty the prostitutes put up after one of them is slashed by a cowboy.

Who plays the ailing gambler Doc Holliday in the 1993 Western Tombstone?

Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday delivers the line 'I'm your huckleberry', which Kilmer reused in 2020 as the title of his memoir.

Which Cape Fear star narrates Tombstone (1993)?

Robert Mitchum, the vengeful ex-convict of the 1962 Cape Fear, changed sides in the 1991 remake to play a police lieutenant, two years before he narrated Tombstone.

Which Quentin Tarantino Western strands two bounty hunters and a prisoner in a snowbound Wyoming haberdashery?

The Hateful Eight nearly died on the page: Tarantino shelved it when the script leaked in 2014, then revived it after staging a live reading in Los Angeles.

Which actor won an Oscar as the bounty hunter Dr King Schultz in Tarantino's Django Unchained?

Christoph Waltz played a part Tarantino wrote specifically for him, and it brought his second supporting-actor Oscar from two Tarantino films.

Which outlaw did Tyrone Power play in a hit 1939 Western, as a farm boy turned outlaw by a ruthless railroad?

Jesse James is remembered for a horse sent plunging off a cliff; the outcry led the American Humane Association to begin monitoring how films treat animals.

Which Sam Raimi Western stars Sharon Stone as a gunslinger called the Lady?

The Quick and the Dead (1995) pits Sharon Stone's Lady against a tyrant mayor in a fast-draw tournament; Stone co-produced and threatened to quit unless Sam Raimi directed.

Which star leads the gunmen in Antoine Fuqua's 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven?

Denzel Washington had never made a Western; director Antoine Fuqua said the whole remake began with simply wanting to see him on a horse.

Which actor became the screen's first cowboy star as 'Broncho Billy' in a long run of silent shorts?

Gilbert M. Anderson, born Max Aronson, also co-founded Essanay Studios, the 'A' in its 'S and A' name, later famous for its Charlie Chaplin comedies.

Which 1930 widescreen epic gave John Wayne his first starring role, then flopped at the box office?

The Big Trail was shot by Raoul Walsh in 70mm Grandeur, but Depression-hit cinemas would not pay to convert, and Wayne spent the next nine years in B-Westerns.

Following 'spaghetti Western' for Italy, Westerns made in Australia were jokingly labelled with which food?

Meat pie Westerns, by some counts, go back to the early bushranger films, outlaw tales so popular that New South Wales police banned them in 1912 for glorifying crime.

Eastern Bloc takes on the Western, often set during the Russian Civil War, went by what nickname?

Red Westerns, also called Osterns, include White Sun of the Desert, a Red Army adventure that Russian cosmonauts by tradition watch the night before a launch.

Which Kurosawa film did Sergio Leone remake, without permission, as A Fistful of Dollars?

Yojimbo was copied so closely that Kurosawa wrote to Leone, 'It is a very fine film, but it is my film'; the settlement gave him 15 percent of the Western's worldwide takings.

Which 1953 George Stevens Western ends with a boy calling after the departing gunfighter?

Shane's gunshots boom on purpose: George Stevens magnified them on the soundtrack so that audiences would feel the horror of the violence rather than see it glorified.

Which 1902 Owen Wister novel, filmed in 1929 with Gary Cooper, features the line 'When you call me that, smile'?

The Virginian grew out of trips to Wyoming that Wister began in 1885 to recover from a near breakdown; he dedicated the novel to his Harvard friend Theodore Roosevelt.

Which rock and roll star made his acting debut in a Western first titled The Reno Brothers?

Elvis Presley's Western was renamed Love Me Tender once advance sales of his single of that title passed one million, a first for a single.

Will Smith turned down the lead in which 1999 sci-fi hit to make a steampunk Western comedy instead?

The Matrix would have made Smith its hero Neo; he chose a Western built around a gigantic mechanical spider, a decision he later regretted.

Which actor named his Utah ski resort after the outlaw he played opposite Paul Newman?

Robert Redford got to play the Sundance Kid only after Steve McQueen backed out of the film following disagreements with Newman.

Which veteran screen villain marked his City Slickers Oscar with one-armed push-ups on stage?

Jack Palance was 73 when he dropped to the floor, and host Billy Crystal, his co-star in the comedy Western, turned the push-ups into a running gag all night.

What kind of animal is Rango, the stranded pet who becomes sheriff of a desert town called Dirt?

A chameleon voiced by Johnny Depp, Rango was animated by effects house Industrial Light & Magic, which turned down work on Avatar to make the Western.

Which comic actor took over as the Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles after the actor first cast collapsed on set?

Gene Wilder replaced Gig Young, who collapsed during his first scene from what proved to be alcohol withdrawal while playing an alcoholic gunslinger.

Which palomino, first named Golden Cloud, carried singing cowboy Roy Rogers through his Westerns?

Trigger had a film career before Rogers: as Golden Cloud he was the mount of Olivia de Havilland's Maid Marian in The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Which frontiersman did John Wayne play in The Alamo, the 1960 epic he also produced and directed?

Davy Crockett was a part Wayne took to get the film financed: backers wanted his face on screen, and he still took second mortgages on his houses.

Which martial arts star played Chon Wang, a guard named to echo John Wayne, in a comedy Western?

Jackie Chan's partner in the comedy, Owen Wilson's outlaw Roy O'Bannon, ends the story by revealing that his real name is Wyatt Earp.

Which James Bond actor played the amnesiac outlaw Jake Lonergan in Cowboys & Aliens?

Daniel Craig was a late replacement: Robert Downey Jr. left the project to make a Sherlock Holmes sequel, and Craig was hired later that month.

Which actor played Long Hair, the cattle thief who guns down John Wayne's rancher in The Cowboys?

Bruce Dern paid a price for it: shooting John Wayne on screen left him typecast as a villain and psychotic for much of his career.

Which star won his first Oscar as Hugh Glass, a frontiersman mauled by a grizzly and left to die?

Leonardo DiCaprio had five previous Oscar nominations without a win before The Revenant, a Western survival epic, brought him Best Actor.

Which singer starred in Calamity Jane, the 1953 musical Western made to answer Annie Get Your Gun?

Doris Day's frontier musical was Warner Bros.' reply to MGM's hit, and its ballad Secret Love won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Which Tombstone star played Wyatt Earp and later claimed he secretly directed the Western himself?

Kurt Russell said credited director George P. Cosmatos was brought in as a front after the first director was replaced early in production.

Which real conflict rages around the three gold hunters in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

The American Civil War bridge scene was costly: Spanish army sappers had to build the bridge twice after the first explosion went wrong.

Which actor played Billy the Kid in Young Guns alongside his real-life brother Charlie Sheen?

Emilio Estevez led a cast so starry that Tom Cruise, visiting friends on set, slipped in for a silent cameo as a henchman shot in the final gunfight.

Which songwriter both scored Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and acted in it as Alias, one of Billy's gang?

Bob Dylan had never scored a feature before, yet the job produced one of his most popular songs, since recorded by Eric Clapton and Guns N' Roses.

Who replaces John Wayne's ranch hands on the cattle drive in The Cowboys when they join a gold rush?

Local schoolboys make the 400-mile drive and finish it alone: after outlaws kill the rancher, they win back the herd and sell it in Belle Fourche.

Which comedy Western won Lee Marvin an Oscar as both a drunken gunfighter and a tin-nosed killer?

Cat Ballou also holds the final film appearance of Nat King Cole, who strolls through it with Stubby Kaye as a singing minstrel narrator.

Which comedy Western has out-of-work silent-film cowboys mistaken for real heroes by a village plagued by bandits?

Three Amigos was co-written by songwriter Randy Newman, who also composed its songs and voiced the Singing Bush the heroes meet in the desert.

Which star played lawyer Ransom Stoddard opposite John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?

James Stewart gave his last film performance in a Western of sorts, voicing Sheriff Wylie Burp in the animated An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.

Which instrument gives Charles Bronson's nameless gunman his name in Once Upon a Time in the West?

Harmonica is all anyone calls him, and Bronson won the part only after Clint Eastwood turned down an offer to play the film's protagonist.

Which Howard Hawks Western cast Dean Martin as a drunk deputy and pop idol Ricky Nelson as a gunman?

Rio Bravo worked so well that Hawks and John Wayne reworked its story twice more, as El Dorado and then Rio Lobo.

Which Sam Peckinpah Western about ageing outlaws in 1913 became notorious for slow-motion bloodshed?

The Wild Bunch stars William Holden as gang leader Pike Bishop, and its rapid-cut mix of normal and slow-motion images was revolutionary in 1969.

Which musical Western has Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin sing as Gold Rush partners sharing a wife?

Paint Your Wagon gave Marvin a real hit: his gravelly Wand'rin' Star, backed by the film's choir, went to number one in the UK.

Which rock band play the Old West festival band in the sequel Back to the Future Part III?

ZZ Top play at the town's 1885 festival in the science fiction Western, where Marty McFly goes by the alias Clint Eastwood.

Which composer's score for The Cowboys led a young Steven Spielberg to hire him for his own films?

John Williams caught Spielberg's ear with The Cowboys and The Reivers just as the director was preparing his feature debut, The Sugarland Express.

Which rodeo clown turned Western actor rode a falling H-bomb like a bronco in Dr. Strangelove?

Slim Pickens took his stage name from a rodeo manager's warning that the prize money would be slim pickings for him.

Which star of television's original Maverick returned as a marshal in the 1994 Mel Gibson film?

James Garner's marshal, Zane Cooper, turns out in the final scene to be Bret Maverick's father and his accomplice in the con.

Which comedy duo perform a soft-shoe shuffle outside a saloon in the Western comedy Way Out West?

Laurel and Hardy also sing The Trail of the Lonesome Pine in the film, and released as a single in Britain in 1975 it reached number 2 in the charts.

Which Michael Cimino Western flopped so badly in 1980 that its studio, United Artists, was sold off?

Heaven's Gate cost $44 million and took just $3.5 million at the US box office, and within a year United Artists had been sold to the owner of MGM.

Which actor aged to 121 under latex makeup to play Jack Crabb, the narrator of Little Big Man?

Dustin Hoffman found the old man's hoarse voice by sitting in his dressing room and screaming at full volume for an hour.

Which tycoon directed The Outlaw himself and fought the censors over shots of its leading lady?

Howard Hughes finished the Western in 1941, but it did not open until 1943, after the Code office made him trim footage dwelling on his star's bust.

Which star directed One-Eyed Jacks himself after Stanley Kubrick quit, his only film as a director?

Marlon Brando's company had signed Kubrick, who stepped down just two weeks before production began, reportedly to get Lolita made instead.

Which composer wrote the Magnificent Seven theme that sold Marlboro cigarettes in adverts for years?

Elmer Bernstein's score earned an Oscar nomination, and from 1963 its main theme rode on for many years in American commercials for the cigarettes.

Which Western star and much-decorated World War II soldier played himself in To Hell and Back?

Audie Murphy was brought to Hollywood by James Cagney, who had seen him pictured in Life magazine as the war's most decorated soldier.

Which future crime novelist wrote the 1953 short story that became the Western 3:10 to Yuma?

Elmore Leonard began as a Western writer: The Tall T and Hombre were also filmed from his work before crime fiction took over.

Which comedian played Painless Potter, the dentist Calamity Jane marries as cover, in The Paleface?

Bob Hope sings Buttons and Bows in the Western comedy, and the song went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Which silent comedian befriends a cow called Brown Eyes in his 1925 Western comedy Go West?

Buster Keaton directed the film himself and plays a drifter known only as Friendless, who bonds with the neglected cow on a ranch.

Which actor played Doc Holliday to Burt Lancaster's Wyatt Earp in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral?

Kirk Douglas shared the film with a young Dennis Hopper as Billy Clanton and DeForest Kelley, later Dr. McCoy of Star Trek, as Morgan Earp.

Which epic director debuted with The Squaw Man, the first feature shot in what is now Hollywood?

Cecil B. DeMille rented a barn at Selma and Vine as his studio for the Western; the barn went on to house the Hollywood Heritage Museum.

Which Bollywood hit about two crooks hired to catch a bandit chief is called a 'Curry Western'?

Sholay blended Indian bandit films with Italian and Hollywood Westerns, and ran for more than five years at Mumbai's Minerva theatre.

Which country produced The Good, the Bad, the Weird, a 2008 Western set in 1930s Manchuria?

South Korea's homage to the Italian classic was dubbed a kimchi Western by Variety, a nod to the spaghetti Westerns it plunders.

Which rock musician wrote The Proposition, a Western set in the Australian outback?

Nick Cave also scored the film with Warren Ellis; its outlaw hero is offered freedom if he will hunt down and kill his own older brother.

Which future Revenge of the Nerds star made his feature film debut as a drover in The Cowboys?

Robert Carradine comes from an acting dynasty begun by his father John, and first appeared in television Westerns such as Bonanza.

Which character actor won his third supporting Oscar as Judge Roy Bean in The Westerner?

Walter Brennan's judge is so besotted with the actress Lily Langtry that he renames his town after her and buys every ticket to her show.

Which three-lens process, shown on a huge curved screen, was used to film How the West Was Won?

Cinerama's three-strip process was used for only two dramatic feature films, this Western and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.

Which Hollywood star played Vienna, the strong-willed saloon owner in Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar?

Joan Crawford held the film rights to the novel, which its author had dedicated to her, and had the studio hire Ray to direct the adaptation.

Which cattle route to Kansas does the herd finally take in Red River, with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift?

The Chisholm Trail drive in the film is a fictional account of the first to take cattle from Texas to Kansas, bound for the railroad at Abilene.

Which rodeo rider turned stuntman doubled for John Wayne and staged the chariot race in Ben-Hur?

Yakima Canutt received an honorary Academy Award in 1967 for his stunt work and for developing safety devices to protect stuntmen.