What is your favorite Western and who is your favorite actor in a Western?

[Hoosier_Daddy]

High Noon is sensational and my favorite. A superb action movie, and a classic western.

Gary Cooper was sensational.

But Brad Pitt as Jesse James in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is my favorite performance of an actor in a western and one of the more recent gems of the genre. It’s the best of the “modern western” films.

Though maybe not technically a western, The Man From Snowy River is an amazing movie. The sequel… not so much.

Being that you are in Australia I wonder what your take is on that?

Also, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a great movie as well.

Geesh, all of the sudden I want my wife to take the kids out of town for a loooong weekend…

 

[7_Sorrows]

El Dorado and The Cowboys are my two favorite westerns of all time. Both with the Duke.
I could watch either every day for all my life and not get bored.
BUT I also like the modern 90s westerns. Young Guns 1 and 2 and in particular Tombstone are my guilty favorites.

Eastwood movies are good, and The Good the Bad and The Ugly is my favorite of those, but who has got that kind of time!?

El Dorado is really good. A great cast. And I liked Tombstone a lot too.

 

[Pax2u]

I’m a huge fan of westerns! I always thought “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” was a perfect western story, and had the greats in it…John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin.

I also really liked “Lonesome Dove”, “High Noon” and “Tombstone”. And I will not surf past “Cat Ballou” if it’s on.

It’s too hard to pick a favorite!

 

[meltzerboy]

How the West Was Won.
Dances With Wolves.
Shane.
Friendly Persuasion.
The Big Country.

I’m not sure who my favourite actor among those would be, probably Gregory Peck who was a favourite of my late mother.

I agree about The Big Country, which was my father’s favorite western as well. Perhaps also Gregory Peck or Burl Ives, two of the many stars in that great film.

 

[on_the_hill]

Tombstone

404

I forgot to add this one to my list.

I saw “The Quick and the Dead.” It was pretty good, but don’t know if it’s a favorite.

 

[Seamus_L]

Shane is my favorite, but I also like High Noon, Wyatt Earp, Tombstone, and Young Guns. Favorite Western actor, maybe Clint Eastwood.

 

[Exiled_Child]

My favorite western is Dead Man, and my favorite western actor is easily Brandon deWilde, from Shane.

 

[on_the_hill]

Favorite Western actor, maybe Clint Eastwood.

I never really turned on to Eastwood. I totally understand the move toward anti-heroes in Westerns after decades of White Hats, though.

When we were kids my bets friend would wear his mother’s poncho and carry his cap gun underneath. Now that I think of it, he may have worn *my *mother’s poncho.



As for Tombstone–I saw it right around the time I was diagnosed with asthma, and could completely relate to Doc Holliday’s breathing problems, and thought Val Kilmer’s acting was spot on.

 

[Exiled_Child]

I never really turned on to Eastwood. I totally understand the move toward anti-heroes in Westerns after decades of White Hats, though.

When we were kids my bets friend would wear his mother’s poncho and carry his cap gun underneath. Now that I think of it, he may have worn *my *mother’s poncho.

For me, what made his westerns cool was mainly Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks. Eastwood himself wasn’t even that crucial to those films, in my view at least.

 

[Pax2u]

For me, what made his westerns cool was mainly Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks. Eastwood himself wasn’t even that crucial to those films, in my view at least.

Totally agree on this…I loved those spaghetti western soundtracks! And the movies were so cheesily entertaining…the dramatic faces with raised eyebrows of the bad guys.

 

[Seamus_L]

Tombstone is very entertaining, and while I can accept the condensing of the shootings of Virgil and Earp into the same evening, I have a harder time with the movie’s treatment of the Earp Vendetta Ride, which get’s down right ridiculous for historical accuracy. Young Guns is fairly accurate, but Buckshot Roberts (Brian Keith) doesn’t go down fighting in an outhouse, it was actually a dental office.

 

[Exiled_Child]

Thanks for the tip, I’ve never seen that one. I’m going to find it online and watch it tonight.

 

[Seamus_L]

Sorry, I meant the condensing of the shootings of Virgil and Morgan Earp into the same night.

 

[Burt_Macklin]

Shane is my favorite, but I also like High Noon, Wyatt Earp, Tombstone, and Young Guns. Favorite Western actor, maybe Clint Eastwood.

I thought Shane was really good as well. I really noticed many similarities between Shane and a more modern western that came out a few years ago, Drive. They are both the story of a silent loner with a violent past who falls for a married woman. Unable to get the girl, the hero sacrifices himself to protect her family and then, mortally wounded, rides off into the sunset.

 

[meltzerboy]

And John Wayne’s pairing with Lauren Bacall is most interesting. The film also features James Stewart and Richard Boone.

 

[Pax2u]

And John Wayne’s pairing with Lauren Bacall is most interesting. The film also features James Stewart and Richard Boone.

Is that the one with Ron Howard as the boardinghouse lady’s son? If that’s the movie I’m thinking, it was an excellent one. I really liked John Wayne in that.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

My Dad loved westerns.

His favorite one was “A Fist Full of Dollars” he had seen that one in an outdoor showing in a village square in Sicily.

He also liked “Duel in the Sun”.

I had rented for him, “Unforgiven” but he didn’t like it at all.

And of course he loved “Bonanza” when it was on.

 

[DakiniArtist]

I have not seen many Westerns, but of the few I’ve seen, I would have to say The Searchers is my favorite. It may in fact have been the first Western I ever saw; we watched it in a film appreciation class I took in my freshman year in college, in the spring of 1989. I recently got it on Blu-ray, and it looks GLORIOUS on that format.

I also liked the remake of True Grit. (dodging rotten fruit from the “remaking a John Wayne classic is a travesty” crowd)

The Searchers is excellent.

My great-grandmother had the novel True Grit and I grew up with it and the film. Love the Coen Bros and saw their adaptation in the theatre. It was excellent.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

I forgot to add this one to my list.

I saw “The Quick and the Dead.” It was pretty good, but don’t know if it’s a favorite.

ohhh which one? The 1987 made for TV movie with Sam Elliott as an adaptation of "The Sackett characters from Louis L’amour

Or the 1995 with Hackman, Sharon Stone, Leo, and Russel Crow.

Both are guilty pleasures of mine though I would not put them at the top of westerns.

 

[7_Sorrows]

ohhh which one? The 1987 made for TV movie with Sam Elliott as an adaptation of "The Sackett characters from Louis L’amour

Or the 1995 with Hackman, Sharon Stone, Leo, and Russel Crow.

Both are guilty pleasures of mine though I would not put them at the top of westerns.

Someone mentioned Dead Man. I have never heard of that one.
I like High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but I have never seen either movie in its entirerty. They both had great casts.
I get El Dorado and Rio Bravo confused.
Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott were both good in westerns.
Has anyone seen Shenendoah with Jimmy Stewart and Katherine Ross (from The Graduate and later married Sam Elliott)?
Wasn’t Elvis Presley also in a western?
One of my favorite tv westerns was Cimarron Strip with Stuart Whitman. I had a teenage crush on him!