While John Wayne had success in several film genres, including romantic dramas and war films, Wayne is, of course, best remembered for his unsurpassed dominance in the Western genre, in which Wayne won his only Academy Award for his performance in the 1969 Western True Grit.

One of Wayne’s last great Western films is the 1972 Western The Cowboys, in which he plays Wil Andersen, an aging rancher who is forced to seek the help of a group of schoolboys to help Andersen execute a 400-mile cattle drive. Through this relationship, The Cowboys provides a sweet mixture of adventure and drama, as Andersen becomes a mentor to the boys, who gain an appreciation and understanding of cowboy life.

However, The Cowboys is best remembered for Wayne’s shocking death scene. While Wayne died on screen in several films, the sadistic nature of Wayne’s death scene in The Cowboys cast a pall over the film, as well as the reputation of Wayne’s on-screen killer, co-star Bruce Dern, who still receives hate mail for what he did to Wayne in The Cowboys.

Shooting John Wayne Nearly Killed Bruce Dern’s Career

In The Cowboys, the cattle drive that John Wayne’s character, Wil Andersen, embarks on with a band of schoolboys is threatened by the lurking, malevolent presence of a gang of cattle rustlers, led by vicious outlaw Asa Watts, aka Long Hair, played by Bruce Dern. After one of Andersen’s boys stumbles upon Watts and Watts’ gang, Watts threatens to cut the boy’s throat if the boy alerts Andersen to Watts’ location.

When Watts and his gang, who intend to steal Andersen’s herd, surround Andersen and the boys in their camp one night, Andersen is forced to surrender his gun, while Watts cruelly taunts the boys, to whom Andersen has become a surrogate father. Andersen then challenges Watts to a fistfight, in which Andersen emerges victorious.

However, as the unarmed Andersen turns his back to the battered Watts, Watts proceeds to shoot Andersen in both arms and Andersen’s right leg before shooting him again, twice in the torso, as if Andersen was a disposable animal. While Wayne had died on screen prior to The Cowboys, he had never before been killed on screen in such a cowardly and despicable fashion.

The scene had a stigmatizing effect on Dern’s career, in which he was typecast as a psycho and villain throughout much of the rest of the 1970s. Over the past 50 years, Dern, who received Oscar nominations for his performances in the 1978 romantic war drama film Coming Home and the 2013 road film Nebraska, has joked about the enduring notoriety that resulted from The Cowboys. In a 2015 interview with Cowboys & Indians magazine, Dern said:

“I knew that would happen. I knew on the day when I had to shoot him [Wayne], when we did that scene, that he had never even had a bullet squib put on him before in his career. You know, he got shot in
Sands of Iwo Jima
. I think he got killed by some sniper. This was the first time he actually had a squib on him, where it was going to be close to his sin. After he got all fitted up, he told me, ‘Oh, I want to remind you of one thing.
When this picture comes out, and audiences see you kill me, they’re going to hate you for this
.’”

The Cowboys Is Wayne’s Ultimate Passing-of-the-Torch Western

John Wayne, who died in 1979 at the age of 72, was 64 when the filming of The Cowboys began, and just as Wil Andersen’s death in the film symbolizes a passing of the proverbial torch to a younger generation, in terms of Andersen transferring his life experiences to his young cowboys, Wayne’s death symbolized a passing of the torch to a younger generation of Hollywood stars, namely Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen.

Beyond Wayne’s jarring death scene, The Cowboys was most criticized for its perceived suggestion that Andersen’s cowboys can only achieve adulthood in the film by taking revenge against Andersen’s killers. However, while watching the boys achieve revenge seems to generate a cathartic effect, this is bittersweet and fleeting, as The Cowboys clearly establishes that the boys are still too young to be able to grasp the implications of death.

Wayne Died on Screen in Nine Movies

John Wayne’s first credited on-screen death happens in the 1933 drama film Central Airport, in which Wayne plays a pilot who drowns while trying to save a passenger amid a plane crash scene. Wayne’s most outrageous on-screen death occurs in the 1942 adventure film Reap the Wild Wind, in which Wayne plays the captain of a wrecked ship who is killed by a giant squid.

Beyond The Cowboys, one of Wayne’s most shocking on-screen death scenes happens in the classic 1949 war film Sands of Iwo Jima, in which Wayne, in his first Oscar-nominated performance, plays John Stryker, a grizzled Marine Sergeant who, in the aftermath of the film’s climactic battle scene, is celebrating victory with his men when Stryker is abruptly shot and killed by a Japanese soldier.

Wayne also died on screen in his last film, the 1976 Western The Shootist, in which Wayne plays J.B. Books, a cancer-stricken gunfighter who arrives in Carson City, Nevada, where Books’ legendary reputation makes him a target for fame-seeking criminals, while Books also becomes a father figure to a teenage boy, played by Ron Howard.

In the film’s climactic scene, Books survives a bloody saloon shootout, only to be gunned down by the bartender, who is then shot to death by the boy. After tossing the gun away, as a sign of the boy’s rejection of the gunslinger’s life, the worshiping boy places a coat over Books’ lifeless body, in a uniquely historical moment that serves as a fitting epitaph for Wayne’s titanic career.