Western Wednesday: True Grit (1969)

'Fill your hands you son of a bitch!'

True Grit is one of my favorite western stories ever told and although I loved the Coen Brothers 2010 remake and having never read the book by Charles Portis it left an everlasting impression on me. This version stars John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell as our unlikely trio, directed by Henry Hathaway and produced by Hal B. Wallis. Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) arrives at Fort Smith to take her father's body back home to Yell County but ends up staying to settle her father's affairs, and sets out to find the man who killed him she hires the unorthodox U.S. Marshal Reuben 'Rooster' Cogburn (John Wayne), but the presence of the Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Glen Campbell) who is also in search of her father's killer Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), for committing a different crime complicates things. Cogburn and La Boeuf plan to ditch Mattie but she catches up and is permitted to ride along. Together the unlikely trio goes deep into Native-American territory to find Chaney and Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall) and his gang.

Our unlikely trio.

I thought this was enjoyable and the cast had good chemistry that made it work, and was unique during a time when westerns were quite popular. Who in 1969 has seen a picture about an unlikely trio tracking down a killer? The performances are good, though some of the dialogue feel like the actors are just saying their lines and not really acting them. Kim Darby who plays Mattie Ross in this version I found miscast with the modern 60s haircut and frankly looking nothing like a 14-year old aside from acting highly annoying. John Wayne is John Wayne but I felt like he did better work than here and he definitely didn't deserve to win the Oscar for this performance, but I was surprised with Glen Campbell who was a musician and only had two credited film and tv roles to his name when this was made and I assumed he already had experience going by his performance here. We also get a young Robert Duvall who already looks to be comfortable in doing westerns despite his minimal screen time.

Filming mostly took place in Colorado.

However, the location sites where they shot the film was a lot better than the 2010 remake every scene after the trio crosses the river is breathtaking and captured perfectly by Lucien Ballard, it also features a musical score by Elmer Bernstein who also wrote the score for The Magnificent Seven and there are many similarities to it here and it's blatant though he does make up for it by writing the music to the song sung by Glen Campbell called 'True Grit' which plays during the end credits. Despite my criticisms for this version it's still a great film and I enjoyed watching it again for the first time in years.