John Wayne and Clint Eastwood are perhaps the two best-known actors in the Western genre, but they came from two distinct periods in the genre’s history. Wayne rose to fame when Westerns represents black and white morality, and nobody questions the nobility of the white man’s reasons for heading west.
Manifest destiny was viewed as a positive thing, and there was no criticism of white encroachment on tribal land. Newer Westerns, of which Eastwood was the poster boy, were darker and morally ambiguous.
In the early ’70s, director Larry Cohen tried to combine the two eras of Westerns in a film called “The Hostiles.” He wanted John Wayne and Clint Eastwood to star in the movie together. Eastwood agreed, but Wayne immediately turned down the role. Eastwood made a second try at convincing him but was again rebuffed, this time in the form of a letter.
In the letter, Wayne told Eastwood exactly why he wasn’t interested in being in the film, and it was because he hated Eastwood’s most recent movie, “High Plains Drifter.” Wayne was unhappy that the movie hated the Old West and wanted nothing to do with a project that would likely take the same critical stance. Wayne felt that Westerns should continue to present a positive view of American expansion. That wasn’t something that Eastwood was particularly interested in doing.
He would only play roles that supported his tough guy image : John Wayne kept a tight hold on his image by making sure that the roles he played lined up with the public persona he wanted to portray. He only accepted roles that followed certain guidelines and demanded script revisions if his character did something he didn’t agree with.
Wayne preferred simple characters with simple understand, motivations. Moral ambiguity is something that he helped. His characters had to be “real men” with their own strict code of ethics. It was important to Wayne that none of his characters appeared weak or cowardly, and that they would always face challenges head on. “As a man, you can be scared, but you can’t be a coward,” Wayne said. This idea of manhood fit neatly with Wayne’s conception of the Wild West, in which brave, righteous men fought their way across the frontier to secure land for their families.