Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: the second western directed by Stuart Millar.
Despite an established notoriety, John Wayne must wait until the age of 62 to obtain his only Oscar for Best Actor. A reward he won for his performance in a role at odds with the honest and virtuous protagonists he was used to playing.
Indeed, in 100 dollars for a sheriff, adaptation of the novel “True Grit” by Henry Hathaway, the actor lends his features to Rooster Cogburn, a one-eyed and alcoholic marshal with casual manners. Six years later, he resumed this leading role for A Bible and a Gun, this time under the direction of Stuart Millar.
His character, ever so formidable and feared, has his sheriff’s star stripped by Judge Parker. But that does not prevent him from continuing to defend the law. Launched in pursuit of a troop of bandits who have stolen nitroglycerin, he meets the daughter of a pastor, Eula Goodnight (Katharine Hepburn), who wants to avenge her father shot by these same bandits, and a young Indian named Wolf. (Richard Romancito).
The role of Sheriff Cogburn in A Bible and a Gun was John Wayne’s penultimate screen appearance. Plagued by cancer, the “Duke” will only turn once, under the direction of Don Siegel in The Last of the Giants, before succumbing to his cancer, three years later, in June 1979.
A Bible and a Gun by Stuart Millar with John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Anthony Zerbe…
Tonight on C8 at 9:20 p.m.