This American actor holds the record for the greatest number of films shot as a headliner with 135 films under his belt and his name is… John Wayne!
With 135 headlining feature films shot between 1930 and 1976, and according to Collider, the actor with the most headlining roles is John Wayne! The figure of 135 may not seem like much, because there are actors with much richer filmographies, such as Danny Trejo, Michael Madsen, Eric Roberts and many Bollywood actors. But if they sometimes shoot 12 films in the same year, most of the time they are secondary roles.
Similarly, Bruce Willis technically has over 140 films to his credit, but in the later years of his career he only appeared in most of them for a few minutes of screen time.
How did he do it?
United Artists John Wayne in “Fantastic Ride”
In 1930, John Wayne played the leading role in Raoul Walsh’s western The Trail of the Giants. He made a few small films before working for the B series studios “Leon Schlesinger Studios”, “Lone Star Productions” and “Republic Pictures” for which he shot between 7 and 11 westerns per year, all headlining.
This lasted until 1939, a full decade, before director John Ford chose Wayne to star in The Fantastic Ride, which was a great success. The western marks the first collaboration between the two men, who will sign twelve other films together, not counting The Conquest of the West, a “segment” film.
Paramount Pictures
A hundred dollars for a sheriff
The Fantastic Ride allows John Wayne to leave the B series and reach mid-budget “A” films (like The Skippers), then big-budget prestige A films like Rio Bravo while remaining the headliner .
The anecdote to impress your friends, even the most knowledgeable
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The Ropes of the Gallows
It is rumored that John Wayne appeared in eight John Ford films made from 1927 to 1930, always as a background extra and almost ten years before Fantastic Ride, but these roles are difficult to find. You can have fun looking for it, here it is for example in The Executioner’s House (1928):
If John Wayne has remained at the top of the bill, it is in particular thanks to the character he displayed on screen in his westerns – to the point of sometimes wearing the same costume from film to film – and to his attitude of “tough” who doesn’t let bad guys count him out and doesn’t let injustice go unpunished. America fantasized in flesh and blood.