favourite<\/g> film \u2013 ever. <\/p>\n\n\n\nI first saw it in a cinema in Malta where they rolled the roof back whenever it got hot inside. It\u2019s definitely the best of the Westerns Wayne made with the director John Ford and over the years it\u2019s grown in stature to the point where it now regularly makes it onto the top ten list of best films ever made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the years the film has influenced numerous other directors such as Martin Scorsese, Paul Schraeder and Steven Spielberg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
George Lucas nicked part of the story for the first Star Wars film \u2013 John Wayne\u2019s character Ethan Edwards (Hans Solo) helps a young man, Marty, played by Jeffrey Hunter (Luke Skywalker) to go looking for Marty\u2019s half-sister Debbie (Princess Leia) who has been kidnapped by the cruel Comanche warrior Scar (Darth Vader).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Attack of the Clones Lucas even recreated a scene shot-for-shot from The Searchers in homage to John Ford. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The poster was my holy grail when I started collecting over 20 years ago. After many years searching for an original copy and lying to my wife about how much I paid for it the poster has pride of place on the study wall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently<\/g> Buddy Holly saw the film in a picture house in Lubbock, Texas, took Wayne\u2019s signature phrase from the film \u2013 \u2018that\u2019ll be the day\u2019 – and turned it into a hit record.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTrivia note \u2013 In 2007 I met one of the actors who appears in the film, Harry Carey Junior. He played the ill-fated Brad who goes looking for his fianc\u00e9, Lucy, kidnapped along with her younger sister, Debbie. He told me the character he played in the film was supposed to be 19. Carey was 32 at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One final note. I remember a joke doing the rounds back in 1979 that John Wayne was dead but no one had the guts to tell him. A fitting epitaph I think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
…and slightly beyond.Like a lot of people who grew up in the 50s and 60s \u2013 mostly boys I have to admit \u2013 John Wayne was the ultimate hero and John Wayne Westerns were the best movie experience. He kicked … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4,308,106],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1998"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5255,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998\/revisions\/5255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}